Question 5

5) How did you attract/address your audience?
Our audience would have very particular expectations of our genre of film, seeking emotional and visceral pleasures, and already linking it in their minds with other films of the same genre – so by creating a film of the horror/thriller genre, it is already set up to be recognised by a mass audience made up of fans o that genre. As Rick Atman (1999) argued, genre films ‘are also the medium of an additional mode of communication that groups of consumers carry out with each other’, and also suggested that genre films share a repertoire of elements, but that audiences have to recognise the same repertoire of elements. With our film, although we only made the opening, we included a lot of elements of the horror genre, such as:
· using the ordinary – taking the ordinary setting of an ordinary house and making it scary (also helps audience in suspension of disbelief)
· a big knife
· mirrors and reflections
· [the suggestion of] attractive female victims
· close-up camera range (lots of ECUs at the beginning)
· HAs and LAs – changing levels
· victims & villains
· high body count
· personality extremes
· young, beautiful people
· vengeance
· obsessions by the villain (beauty)
· low, slow strings/high-pitched, frenzied strings

The title of the film itself, Blink Murder, a pun on the game Wink Murder, is an indicator of the genre, incorporating the word ‘murder’, an immediate signifier, and the pun on the child’s game plays with the idea of childishness, subverting the sense of fun and innocence - especially with the themes of sexuality, revenge, envy, and death.
Atman also argued the case of counter-culture attraction, involving the actions that are outside established morals and laws, and allowing the audience an escape to these pleasures. Our film would have this attraction to audiences, partly as envy is common among a lot of women – but they would not go to the extent of killing over it. We thought that there were a lot of different elements in our film that gave it a lot of appeal to both genders; in particular, we gave the female portion of our audience something strong to relate to, but also something that would horrify them.
Barthes’ narrative theory on different codes includes the enigma code, which is one that draws the reader in, as they want to find out the answer to the mystery which has been set up. We utilized this in our product – there is immediately a mystery surrounding the opening of CUs and ECUs interspersed with credit titles – ‘who is the girl? What is she getting ready for? Is she good or bad?’ etc. The same is true of the appearance of the housemate walking upstairs, also leading the audience to wonder what is in the drawer that is so secret. In the short dialogue between the two characters, more questions are raised: what ‘poor women’ and what has happened to them? It leads the audience to make guesses as to what is going on, and as we have the classic moment of the drawer opening and the knife being revealed, some of the audience’s suspicions are confirmed, but although some questions are answered, it leaves more to be asked. This is one of the key elements that will make our audience want to see the film.
Audiences may also draw links to other films they’ve seen in the past that have similar themes or scenes. For example, we drew some inspiration for the beginning of our opening from Robert Luketic’s Legally Blonde (2001), as in the beginning scene Elle is getting ready, and we don’t see her face until the end of the sequence, as in our own product. While still in production, we also found a similar montage in James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta (2005), with cross-cutting between Evey and V, waiting a while before revealing their faces. We also took a lot of inspiration from Se7en’s opening sequence, mainly for the music and credit style – like Se7en, our soundtrack includes random diegetic foley sounds from things related to what is happening, but in the wrong places, e.g. an eyeliner pencil being sharpened. We made the text of our credits shake and move, similarly to how in Se7en they flicker and are ‘scratchy’. These films that inspired us have all been very popular, and as the opening sequences of films are key to drawing in the audience and setting up the film, I feel that these elements will be successful in attracting an audience.