HOW DO YOUR PRODUCTS ENGAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE AND HOW WOULD THEY BE DISTRIBUTED AS REAL MEDIA TEXT?
The audience is the utmost important element of producing a product associated with the different elements of media, be it film, print, radio etc. It is the audience that the product is produced for and the audience that plays a key role in the success or failure of a project. The product is produced for audience satisfaction.
The audience of a media narrative makes the product a hit or a miss. For this reason, careful use of information about the audience and their needs and wants is kept in mind!
The target audience and the age group, gender, ethnicity and race that the media product is trying to target is imperative to figure out before hand.
The target audience for our media project was young adults, mainly teenagers and people in their early or late 20s. The film can also appeal to ages that are above this limit but very rarely.
The survey I conducted for the audience research gave us a very clear cut ideal of what sort of age groups are interested in psychological thrillers.
films like Disturbia and joker are known to have an increasingly younger target audience.
The audience of our film was also relatively younger due to the young cast of the film, with the main leads in late 20s and teenage respectively!
the protagonists youth can be seen in his naive looks.
the target audience of our film was 15-30 year olds.
The genre 'psychological thriller' is also very popular amongst the youth in modern society!
The genre of our film is mostly popular amongst young masses for the purpose of a kick and intrigue youngsters get out of the product!
Basically, psychological thrillers let us feel fear in a controlled way, reeling us in slowly by deliberately building suspense. We go inside the heads of ambiguous characters as directors create moods of anxiety, fury and confusion amongst the audience.
this question of my survey shows how majority of the people from the age group I targeted are interested in psychological thrillers.
Themes
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Death.
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Existence/Purpose.
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Identity.
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Mind.
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Perception.
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Reality.
all these themes of a psychological thriller are carefully highlighted in my project to fulfil the prerequisites of being a thriller.
the popularity of psychological thrillers amongst masses:
you, gone girl and split are all blockbuster psychological thrillers shows and films.
our target audience showed most interest in them.
The gender interested in psychological thrillers:
usually boys are more inclined towards psychological thrillers however, women have been known to love crime novels, suspense and thrillers films as well.
why boys would like our film:
The film is supposed to be surrounding the story of a man stuck in his home trying to survive after an apocalyptic situation. Men are usually the target audience for films like 'World War Z' and 'I Am Legend' due to the action and adventure that they experience.
video games like 'GTA', 'Assassins Creed' and 'Mortal Combat' are also mostly consumed by men due to the same reasons. Our film doesn't have the same element of action as these video games but the element of thrill and suspense is there.
men would be interested in the vibe being given off.
why would women be interested in our film:
The female lead and the family envornment shown in the film are very attractive to women
women are also supposed to be very interested in crime novels, thrillers and suspense films. The novels turned into films like 'Gone girl' and 'The girl on the train' are very much liked by female audiences.
these movies were critically acclaimed by audiences for being hits amongst the masses and specially women.
will the audience like the film?
the audience survey I conducted regarding our film was very informative while concluding whether or not the audience was interested in our project.
this segment of our survey was very helpful while analysing whether or not the film was going to be liked by the audience.
the answer to this question shows that 50% of the audience was interested in mind boggling plot twists out of the 37 people we asked.
We also discarded a scene due to the fact that it was not appealing to the audiences due to not meeting the theme of the genre and for being unbelievable.
we redesiged this scene due to adequate mise en scene that we managed to pull off. We did this for audience satisfaction.
The first task which was a part of our ancillary tasks was the postcard advertisement. This was created for the purpose of representing our film at film festivals, much like real media text and we tried making the postcard as close to real media text as possible for marketing the film and appealing the audience.
The previous attempts at making the perfect postcard that would appeal to the audience and be eye catching!
our inspiration from real media text.
how will our product be distributed as real media text?
The ancillary tasks were imperative in distributing the film as real media text. The reason was so because of the fact that films are supposed to be marketed to the audiences through posters, social media and websites.
we printed hard copies of the poster and distributed them around our school and amongst our peers. This is the reason why our film was marketed and the hype was created, much like real films that are produced.
our film was also distributed with the help of our film website on wix.com.
we shared links of the website on our respective social media accounts and showcased the narrative with the help of a synopsis we drew up to attract audiences and from references by real media text.
blockbuster films like 'Aquaman' and 'Avengers:Infinity war' have eye catching posters and promotional websites.
We also merchandised a series of products for the promotion of the film.
We also used social media and youtube as an integral part of our post production process.
we uploaded our short film on youtube like many short films that are usually premiered on the platform like 'The Job' and 'Paperman'.
we also uploaded the wix.com link of our project on our instagram account bios for more coverage. This is usually done by many real media texts. This is how we distributed our product as real media text!
we also made an instagram account for our film to promote and create hype.
we also took inspiration from real blockbuster thriller films that gave us adequate guidance of everything we needed to do to make our film as close to real media text as possible.
the trailer of red lights.
being a huge fan of Cillian Murphy and Robert De Niro, this film is one of my most favourites with academy award winning star cast and narrative that shocks one to the bones. The portrayal of the narrative, the acting was a huge inspiration that we learnt from.
the trailer of inception.
inception is another film with an academy award winning cast and director, Christopher Nolan who happens to be one of my favourites. This film was also used as an inspiration in terms of the acting and how to pull off a strong narrative.
the trailer of meet Joe black.
even though meet Joe black is a film that is not a psychological thriller, the film is very inspirational. These films are very high budget, and critically acclaimed by the audiences. our film can never be as good as these films, but we used many scenes as inspiration in our shortfall from these and many other films.
we also booked a hospital room at Maroof International Hospital in Islamabad for the final scene of the screenplay meant to show the protagonist in a coma. We needed authentic hospital equipment like an oxygen tank and mask and a drip and canola amongst a hospital bed to resemble the real life situation as much as possible.
