Informing
We attempted to express towards our secondary, female audience the positivity of female characters. With the inclusion of a strong, athletic and intelligent heroine we were able to show that women can positive characters which is very important for a large proportion of females in society. This evidently worked as a large percentage of the people who viewed the opening were female.
Entertaining
We used a number of different sci-fi conventions to entertain the audience. Straight away, we began with a chase scene, immediately engaging the audience by throwing them into the action. This has a number of effects. Firstly, it excites them as, since they came to see an action film, action is the first thing they want to see and this is given to them with the immediate chase and fight scene. Secondly, this instant chase builds suspense and curiosity, pressing them to continue watching in order to find out more. Again, it is evident that this desired outcome was what really happened, with 100% of the audience surveyed said they would continue watching the remainder of the film.
Escapism
The high level of fiction and lack of reality in the scene, for example the inclusion of time travel allows the audience to escape from their own lives for the duration of the film. This lack of relation to real life means their thoughts are on the world in the filming meaning they are lost in the film.
Personal Identity
The audience want to relate to the characters of the film to make it easier to be immersed into the story and empathise with the characters. This was possible, especially for the female audience, since they can look at Leora in a positive light and aspire to have themselves in her position with her abilities.
There were also some other ways that we attracted the audience:
Build up of enigma and tension
With the apparent disappearance of Leora and appearance in a whole new time, as well as the enigma of the character of the Henchman, the audience begin to ask themselves questions like who? How? And Why? This continuous questioning of the goings on of the sequence makes the audience want to continue and have these questions answered.
Continuity
Throughout our opening sequence we insure there was continuity. This was done with techniques like the 180 degree rule (ensuring the camera is always on one side of the action) and match on action, shown below. This allowed the audience to follow and understand the scene without becoming confused of where the characters were running and who was chasing who, as well as not allowing them to spot obvious mistakes, meaning they are able to focus on the story and not the editing and camera work.
Genre
The genre of our film is set out from the very beginning of the film opening this means that the audience immediately know what kind of film to expect. This grabs their attention as soon as the film starts.
I spoke to a 22 year old male about the opening sequence and the film and documented his responses.
He easily identified the title of the film, as well as the sci-fi action genre, a good sign. Not only did he notice this but he also understood that the theme of the sequence and film in general was time travel. This means that we successfully carried out the functions of the opening sequence (mentioned in question 1). He also mentioned that not only does it introduce the themes, setting and characters but also leaves a lot to be discovered, making him want to watch the rest of the film to find out these things.
He also identified himself as part of the young adult core audience, however, he named, not only males, but also females. This is proof that the inclusion of a female protagonist to attract females worked as a method of gaining female interest.
Below are some more graphs from our survey that show the general audience views on our opening, as well as their general film preferences.
As you can see, the majority of our viewers were action fans and were 16-19. This means that we have correctly marketed our film and have appealed to the primary audience that we attempted to target. Also with the majority of viewers rating our film 4 or 5 out of 5, it is clear that we properly researched the audience and included what they wanted to see from the genre.
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