Thriller Evaluation: Question 5

Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I know it may sound cliche, but we attracted our audience, by being our audience. We featured all the things that we wished to see in a thriller. As we knew what we wanted to see, we knew how we could please similar minded audiences. To attract an audience, you need to acknowledge  are known as 'Audience Pleasures'.
Five sub categories of Audience Pleasures are as follows:

-Narrative
-Genre
-Style/Aesthetics
-Thematic Pleasures
-Representational Pleasures

Narrative

Narrative has further categories:
-Hook
-Cliffhanger
-Resolution
-Enigma
-Climax.

The Hook is your first opportunity, to grasp the audience and entice them. The aim of the hook is to literally hook them in, so they are inclined to continue watching with their foremost interest. I believe are hook comes in the first instance that characters are involved - a title scene actually. 

The sound is purely diegetic - wind blowing through the trees. We first notice EVITO - the title scene, and Gerhard walking. Then we notice K. Not moving, he's just there. I firmly believe this is where we get our Hook. "Whoah, who is that?!"
He is well concealed, so at first glance you may not notice him, so this is where we feel the questions start. The mangled, curved, fallen trees around him all add to the mystery of this scene.

Our thriller doesn't use all of these all of these Narrative features though. We believe Enigma is maintained all throughout the clip, our use of subtlety, illusion and deception strongly carries that throughout. However, we were very intent on featuring a cliff hanger. Everyone loves a cliff hanger.

The final 20 seconds of clip, with the frequent cutaways to the dark cave like scene is a deliberately disorientating one. It appears to be happening simultaneously, but we are unsure of which ones past, or which ones future. We added static noise to add to the disorientation of the scene, and we feel it works perfectly, it's a repulsive, invasive noise and adds to the enigma. However, the grand cliff hanger is K dropping his mask whilst standing over him staring - the final thing we see is this image.

We thought this dimly lit, perspective shot of the mask was perfect. The black side and the golden side to the mask, and Gerhard's motionless body just laying there. The perfect mystery, as we felt. We were definitely full of questions like 'what next?'
That, was our cliff hanger.

We have no resolution, as it's just an opening scene, and the climax would come later on in the film also.

Genre

We kept it very genre-specific. We knew the features that a good Thriller had to have; we'd seen many, many thrillers and found different techniques and methods that we particularly enjoyed.
For the creation of KK - the masked character, I looked into the stereotypical slasher/killer archetype in thriller and horror, and add more mystery to them. I have stated several times the influence behind them, but I shall add some videos to this blog post to show.

See 4:55

This is where the idea for the blank expressionless mask came from.



All though this is a very pixelated, this also proved influencial.
Even though it was a video game, we felt it had captivated elements of a thriller - elements we could familiarly use.




(skip to 0:28)

Representational Pleasures

Representational Pleasures are often derived from Archetype or stereotypes within characters. For example, good guy/bad guy are usual archetypes in thrillers. However, instead we opted for anti-hero and kept KK unknown - he can be considered a villain, we do not know either way.
The anti hero status given to Gerhard matches up with his stereotypical appearance. He could be considered as homeless, or a 'low-life'/undesirable character. He could be considered to be involved with drugs or crime. This kind of inference is what makes a good character, when the audience questions for themselves.
KK as a character is brilliant. He carries the mystery beautifully, as we know nothing about him whatsoever. We don't know if he's cunning, or super human. We don't know if he's good, or bad.
He's pleasing as a character, because the bad guy should never reveal anything too quickly.

Thematic Pleasures

Everyone likes a mask.



The blank, expressionless mask worn by Harvey (KK) here works perfectly. It shows no emotion, and especially, conceals his eyes. This is exactly how I envisaged him; he works perfectly and is moderately intimidating. The Venetian carnivale style clashes but matches the formal attire in an odd way, which in turn contrasts with the background and the surroundings of the forest. Costume and Location worked perfectly. (For KK. Gerhard's fake beard was the aspect that let us down. It was there for a small sense of humour, which I see in hindsight may not be accepted)