Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Firstly, Sam and I attracted our audience through the main female character as she is attractive and portrayed as being sexual active, this therefore attracts the ‘male gaze’ and makes the film appeal to the male audience. Also, the main character, who is the only person to be killed in the film opening is a 17 year old stereotypical teenage boy who is also represented to the audience as sexually active and this could also appeal to the female audience. With the two main characters being teenagers, this would address a teenage audience.

With the female character being attractive, Red Run follows a very common technique, using an attractive, blonde and busty lead woman as a scream queen; by providing anchorage to the audience that the character is sexually active and also could be involved with drug abuse as her boyfriend in Red Run is associated with drugs due to a Bob Marley poster in his bedroom, Ellie Hargreaves, the actress is a typical scream queen that are often killed first in films of the Slasher genre. Some examples of this are Scream. In Scream, the scream queen is also blonde, busty and sexually active. Her boyfriend is killed first which relates to Red Run and she is killed soon after. Therefore the audience for Red Run could be attracted through following existing techniques that have been used in successful film, Scary Movie being an example of this, where the scream queen character is manipulated and dramatically exaggerated which goes to show that the audience do like the typical scream queen character.

Typical 'Scream Queen' Character.

Also, the male character in the film opening of Red Run is a stereotypical jock, who is very often the scream queen’s girlfriend, this is also supported by Scream and the jock is the first character to be killed. Like the scream queen, the jock is also a very well liked character within the majority of film audiences. For example, Twilight which grossed $382,133,300 worldwide in 2009 included the Jock character. Also, to attract the audience to the fact that the killer is alive is kept a secret until the end of the film opening. By doing this we were using narrative enigma and adding suspense to the film opening. However, we hinted at the doll coming to life by the male character saying “It’s not going to kill me is it?” and also showing the doll being thrown in a corner and then having a bra thrown on it. By having the bra thrown on it, the audience are being given the information that the characters are having sex and therefore according to the majority of slasher films, they deserve to die!

Typical High School 'Jock' Character.

A way in which LS29 Productions addressed the audience for Red Run was to look at existing media products that relate to Red Run such as Child's Play and Scream and to look at how successful they were, going to show whether they had a large audience or not. Child's Play (1988) had a budget of $9 Million, and as of March 1989, made around $33 Million in the USA only! Also, Scream (1996) had a budget of $15 Million and as of July 1997made $103 Million in the USA and £8.2 Million in the UK. This gave Sam and I confidence that Red Run would successfully be able to be addressed to a large audience.

Child's Play Poster

Another way in which the audience were attracted was by creating a false scare towards the beginning of the film opening by not revealing who the mysterious character walking towards the house is. The character isn't shown and therefore creates mystery and confusion. Also, the male character inside the house gets scared from the noise that the female character makes outside when banging the gate. By doing this, Lucy, the character walking towards the house is portrayed to the audience as dangerous and evil and should be feared, resulting in the audience's heart beat increasing with the soundtrack also slowly getting faster as Lucy approaches the house. The false scare then ends when Lucy is revealed to her boyfriend and they start talking in a friendly manor.

I also addressed the audience by using social networks sites such as Twitter and Facebook. By using these sites, thousands of people, mostly friends and family were easily accessed and exposed to our film opening Red Run. Many people were able to watch the film opening and leave comments as to what they thought and by doing this, Sam and I were able to gain feedback as to how to improve the media product and also get a good insight as to what the audience want.

The Social Networking Website That I Used To Promote Red Run.