Evaluation Question 5.

How did you attract/address you audience?

Genre Conventions: The genre conventions that we intended to include in our film are meant to be closely linked to the genre conventions normally found in other crime films e.g Kidulthood. These conventions often include: Urban locations which are often derelict (used in our film), Youths (used), Drugs/Alcohol (used), genre related music (used), Slang or expletive phrases (not much dialogue in film to include much), Informal clothing (used), Strong sense of masculinity (used). A suspicious and tense atmosphere is gradually created as the lighting gets darker as the two characters meet in the dark underpass , this also occurs when Billy stops skateboarding and takes out the head phones, at which point the background music stops. This is when the audience gets the idea that there may be some kind of trouble coming up.

Use of Music/Sound: The Background music we used in our film opening corresponds really well to the genre because the hip/hop genre we chose is a popular genre with our audience.The song we used was and instrumental of Still Dre by Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. As mentioned above there is not much dialogue in the opening so we kept it short and to the point to keep the audience in focus with what's going on.

Use of Mise-En-Scene: The Mise en scene in our opening is closely linked to the genre conventions e.g. the urban locations. As the location is in sync with the typical conventions, we feel that they will be attractive to our audience. As I have mentioned before, costumes we chose for our characters link to how we attracted the audience. The Hoodies, baggy jeans and t-shirts are obvious conventions of our chosen genre and our audience could also be related to the social group the costumes represent. The use of props also links youths with the crime genre such as the drugs package, ipod, skateboard and knife. These props wouldn't be inappropriate in other films such as Shifty, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction ETC.

Cinematography: We used digital cameras and natural lighting which worked well with the darkening tone and feel of the film, this was also useful in helping the audience picking up the growing tension towards the end. Our main aim to attract our audience was realism and we believe this was the most risk free way of doing so.

Editing: By using lots of short cuts of film placed together we managed to create a fast paced opening which links to the fast paced lifestyle of our audience. By using a skateboarding sequence this was fairly easy to create. The skateboarding was a nice touch because we could film Billy doing different things and experiment with what went best with the rest of the opening, so by editing time we had a lot to cut, but a lot of good material to choose from. Aside from using graffiti type font for our titles which work well with our genre, we decided against using any special effects because it contradicts the aim of realism we wanted to create. There is a really thin line between was can be realistic and what is obviously put in to exaggerate reality, and a lot of crime films rely on realism to draw in suspense and tension, so we didn't want to add in things that weren't needed.

The USP (Unique Selling Point): Concluding from the last point, our idea of realism and how the younger side of the audience can relate to the kind of lifestyle we created here. Many younger viewers need to be confronted with blunt, in-your-face realism in order to acknowledge how other social groups, or even their own social group, lives and deals with problems they are faced with. Many people just don't want to see actors pretending to be in a situation that has so many flaws and realism issues.