Evaluation - Part 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

To create a successful thriller; it relies on slowly creating tension and building suspense for the viewer, encapsulating them through aspects such as music/ audio, the mise-en-scene, characters and their appearance, effective locations and artistic camera shots and angles.  I had researched the kinds of films that engage me - thrillers such as Friday the 13th (dir. Marcus Nispel) engage you with a flashback at the beginning shown in dark lighting and scary ambient music that intrigue the audience and make us question what we are seeing.  Contrasting the typical dark and gloomy lighting; I opted for bright yet a low key brightness that will engage the audience making them wonder why it is set like that.  Using a horror ambience sound that contrasted strongly with the abrupt silence, it makes the audience intrigued as they are being shown the reality and the flashbacks whilst the suspense and tension is being built.  The telephone ringing and tap dripping intrigues the audience - making them wonder who is on the phone, why is the character not responding etc.  This way the audience feels engaged in the film and want to watch more to find out what is happening. I attracted the audience through interesting camera angles such as above the bath tub - they can be attracted through the character that looks directly upwards to the camera almost staring the audience straight into the eyes.  The make-up used to enhance the dark eyes and surrounding bags creates the tension in the characters face being an effective element of the mise-en-scene to address the audience.  Close-up shots of the character's face bring the audience in close and makes them more intrigued as to why she is visualising those flash-backs and what the story is behind the lake that is seen - along with close-ups of the hair that again attract the audience in.  The setting alone of the bath-tub seems to be strange, making the audience question why the character is there - what the strong focus on the bathroom is - what is the story behind this character?  Attracting the audience through the visual element and the TV static of the production ident makes the audience also wonder how it relates to the film itself - with the effective titling that appears on screen.  The editing of the film is fast give a disruptive feel to the film; being in sync with the long still shots to intrigue the audience further as to why some footage is shorter than the other.  I believe that I took all of these elements into account carefully and exploiting the visual elements strongly to create suspense and tension to attract an audience as much as I can.  The end scene was also a very effective way of making the audience intrigued as to what will happen next after the character has descended into the water - with the white fade out effect.