5) How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

The Katz & Blumler Uses and Gratifications Theory was the most useful theory that we used to attract and address our audience. By using this theory, we aimed to appeal to the widest possible audience.

RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship between the characters and the audience and the relationship between the characters themselves is what interests the audience. The fact that Leora is seen as a vulnerable yet fighting character make the audience like her. This also means they feel more sympathy towards her as their relationship is stronger, therefore it affects them if Leora is in trouble or is hurt. The fact that the person causing her distress is the villain who is hated also increases the strength of the relationship between Leora and the audience.

Leora shown to be a fighting character 

ENTERTAINMENT

The device Leora is seen to be holding

There are many aspects of our film opening that we incorporated to entertain the audience. Firstly the film opens with a running scene, throwing the audience into the action and immediately engaging them. The audience have no idea what is happening or why and curiosity makes them want to find out. I order to do this they much watch further. After this initial scene, the action slows down, and we notice Leora holding a device. The dialogue between the characters reveals a bit about the narrative, but still manages to maintain a sense of mystery. After the dialogue is interrupted by the unknown device we decided to include another running scene to pick up the pace of the opening again. This leads nicely to the final shot, where Leora time travels, and the audience see the device being used, but are again thrown into a sense of unknowing as to where Leora has jumped to.

Leora time travelling

INFORMING
Although our film has no underlying morals you could say that we attempted to show our secondary audience (young women) that women can be strong and intelligent yet still desirable. We hoped to do this by having Leora as the inventor of the time device, and having a female protagonist in an action film, breaking the convention of having male heroes.

IDENTITY
Female audience members can relate to the character Leora and see themselves in the film. For example, Leora presents women as strong and intelligent., and the audience can look up to her as a role model because of this.

ESCAPISM
Our film provides a chance for the audience to escape from their own lives, as it involves fictitious elements, such as time travel. They feel immersed in the story and so can forget about other worries or troubles in their life and relax.

Members of my group conducted a survey using the web app survey monkey. The results showed that the majority of those watching the clip were female, and that they understood the genre and narrative, which means that we managed to create an effective opening, and that we managed to attract the desired audience.

These results were surprising as we intended to appeal equally to the male and female audience, although this could be down to the fact that the majority of people who filled out the survey just happened to be female. 

The results for this question show that we managed to clearly portray the genre of our film as sci-fi, and the few that answered in the action/adventure section noticed what our sub genre was. Overall, the feedback for this question was in line with our expectations.   

The fact that 100% of our audience would watch our film after viewing the opening means that our intentions to grip and engage the audience to a point of curiosity were successful. This is mainly because we made the narrative quite simple and not have any underlying political or moral messages as to appeal to the general audience.