Evaluation 5

Question 5:- How did you attract/address your audience?

We would use film posters to market our production and allow the general public to grow awareness for our production. Our film posters would be exhibited in tube stations, in libraries, inside certain schools and universities, inside offices and outside sophisticated shops. It is important that we choose the correct places to advertise our production as certain places may attract members of the public that will not particularly enjoy our production. For example, if we placed an advertisement outside a low-budget night club, either not many people will show up, or the people who do attend will not be particularly entertained by the concepts of our production. Instead, we would like to invite people who attend libraries, universities and certain schools as they would have background knowledge on our narrative.

In our opening sequence, we start with establishing the scene, we show the date first and then an office using a low far angel shot panning of the office. We then move on to show our main character, “Cornelius” with a medium-close shot of his face and is seen sleeping, though it can be seen that he is twitching and jolting, this illustrates his uneasiness. At this point, news reporters with different accents are heard talking about the first plane that had flown into one of the twin towers and describing the devastation, we wanted the audience to make an attempt to link what they are hearing with what they are seeing. At this moment the audience will be confused, for they will be speculating the link between Cornelius and the voice-overs. Suddenly, Cornelius is seen opening his eyes with an extreme close up and he then sits up staring forwards blankly; this shows his unpredictable personality which is vital to the progressive narrative. He starts to then fiddle with numerous papers on his desk trying to find something, he does this very franticly as we wanted to demonstrate the characters behaviour and personality. We used a high angle shot of the character to show the papers and folder he has on the desk. We did this because it foreshadows his social status and how people may look down to him. This will become clearer during the progressive narrative. He then finds a notepad from under the piles of papers and puts it in front of him. Cornelius is then seen reaching for a pencil, we showed this motion with a medium angle and then used a close up medium angel for when he takes the pencil from the pencil pot very quickly then revert back to the medium shot to establish the fact that he as started drawing. We used a medium shot to show his hand going down onto the paper to start drawing and then an extreme close up of the lead printing a line down the paper. This shows the significance of the drawing and is giving the audience clues while trying to figure out the connections between the date, the news reporters and Cornelius drawing. We then show a POV (Point of view)  angle shot of Cornelius losing focus while drawing and an extreme close up of his eyes rolled back are seen and then back to the POV shot, we see him bang his head on the table. The voice-overs, at this point, are paused and the music is heard as we see Cornelius in a straitjacket in various positions to show that he has lost his mind in an unknown place. This foreshadows the fate of this character to the audience. We then hear the news reporters come back and carrying on speaking about the attacks and a POV shot is used while Cornelius is getting up. We then see that the drawing has been completed, we use an over the shoulder shot of Cornelius to show him holding his notepad up in astonishment. We then see small clips of the parts of the drawing where you see a building with a gaping hole and smoking coming out from it and a plane next to the second building. We presented the image like this because it gave the drawing extra significance and mystery, it also hinted to one of the themes of our film, investigation. We showed parts of the image because each shot acted as a puzzle, to what the audience will be perceiving and trying to figure our later in the narrative. Just as the second plane is seen, the news reporters cry “Oh my god” and they explain that another plane has crashed into the other twin tower. This was important for us, as it distinguished what the presents and future was in the opening sequence to the audience.  The news reporters then say the date in which the attacks were on and as this is said, the title of the film is shown, “Premonition”. Then the date that was shown in the beginning of the sequence is shown again to show that Cornelius had predicted the 9/11 attacks. This is all to challenge to minds of the audience and to make them make sense of what they see, hear and understand from the sequence. From this alone, we introduced many genres from our narrative but one of them was most highlighted, psychological thriller.

We attempted to use many varieties of shots that may have particular significance to the narrative. I felt that this was an important factor to include in our sequence because many psychological thrillers show audiences bits and parts of the whole picture, and right at the end, they show the whole picture which is greeted by jaw-dropping gasps of astounded audiences. We wanted our character to be very mysterious at first, as we tried to elevate his actions more than himself. We wanted the audience to know Cornelius only from how he has reacted to the 9/11 attacks, his background information will remain anonymous. This is a conventional technique used in psychological thrillers.

As the 911 attacks is the bases of our story, and it was a global issue so some background knowledge is necessary such as who was in the end held responsible for the 911 attacks and the people who benefited from the attacks as well, though they are all explained during the narrative it is important that the audience have an idea about them. Films such as “Shrek” require the viewers to have knowledge about fairytales to fully understand the concepts from the narrative.

The way we have structured our media product is to arouse questions by the audiences. Our opening sequence is based upon the introduction of the 9/11 attacks being predicted by Cornelius, therefore, it was vital that we showed the clearly to the audience. The way we found how to achieve this was to use voice-overs of the first reactions of the 9/11 attacks, when the second plane hits the twin towers. We edited this in such a way where the audience is able to make a variation between what the future is in the sequence and what the present is of the sequence. Like “Se7en” it is unclear at first what is going on and what time period the sequence starts in, but as the opening sequence progresses, like “Premonition” it gets clearer and the audience is able to understand. We included the date that Cornelius was in, or in other words, the date of what the audience was seeing. Later in the sequence, the voice over says the date, which is different to the date stated at the beginning; it is in fact in the nearby future. Also the use of rapid shots developed a sense of hastiness which Cornelius shows when he is looking for some paper and a pencil to draw with.

  

The combination of genres present in our film may attract a number of audience members. The psychological thriller aspects of our film challenge the audience’s precedent knowledge about the events that our narrative shows. The fact that it is about different conspiracies and contrasting information about the 911 attacks, acknowledges the audience in an entertaining way. The exploration of a schizophrenic and his treatment from a society shaken by a catalysing event. Films such as “Saw” offer similar themes and entertainment, the fact that it is about solving a puzzle is key to the narrative. “Inception” is also a film that challenges the audience’s knowledge and educates them in an entertaining fashion.