(RESIT JANUARY 2012) How did we attract the audience to our film? (Q5)

Red lettering is used to show which work has been modified or added for the resit of January 2012.

A good marketing skill for attracting a particular target audience is the use of music and how an opening, or, equally as important, a trailer uses music to connote to the audience particular genres. ‘Superbad’(2007) was a extremely successful comedy and the music in the opening captures the audiences’ attention and creates a brilliant fun, excited atmosphere; which is vital for the setup of a film. Here is the ‘Superbad’ intro to help illustrate my point.

The tune is very fun and without assistance of the visuals can confirm to the audience that firstly this film is upbeat and secondly that it is not heavy going and will promise that the film will require little to no thinking, following one of the uses of gratification theories which suggests audience watch films to be just entertained. The lyrics also help confirm the following, this can be considered as enigma coded information as audiences usually won’t pay attention to these lyrics but none the less they will still hear, process and configure them.

‘Yeah, hey, hey
Oh, yeah

I'd been having my
Eyes on you for awhile
Girl, it's something about your act
And I sure do like your style

Maybe it's the way
That you carry yourself
Maybe it's the way
That you ride around

You move with the feeling
And you sure know how
Girl, I'm out to get your love
And I'm too hot to stop now

Yeah, yeah, yeah......

I don't mind if I'm considered uncool
Cause I believe to each his own
I don't play that rule

When you find the special one
That really drives you wild
You owe it to yourself to try
Cause soon they might be gone

Getting next to you
Is what I want to do
Girl, I wanna get it somehow
Cause I'm too hot to stop now

Yeah, hey, hey, yeah

Getting next to you
Is what I want to do
Getting next to you
Is what I want to do

Getting next to you
Is what I want to do
Getting next to you
Is what I want to do

Yeah, hey, hey, yeah’

It tells the audience of the narrative for the film, this has to advantages. Number one it can tell the viewer that the plot isn’t to serious, once again supporting the theory for uses of gratifications. Secondly it leaves the narrative open, as a result capturing their attention.

Now our film uses some traits from the audio of ‘Superbad’. Firstly the song was upbeat and was designed by a musician that is relatively highly recognised within the local community for his contributions for the band ‘Forgetting the fallen’. The advantages of having an establish musician create our soundtrack  was that he has an understanding better than our own of how audiences’ will react to songs and how to create good quality music which fitted our requirements which are listed below.

Requirements – Firstly the song must fit the length of our opening, which will build up and end perfectly in time for our final shot.

-Secondly the film must be fun and upbeat to insure we capture the audiences’ attention and connote that the film is a comedy.

- Thirdly, the song must not conflict with any copyrighted music; a result of this would be withdrawal of the created song.

After listening to the song and placing it in time with the video I feel we have insured that the song fits perfectly with the opening, it has connoted not just the genre but that the film is easy going and by not conflicting with copyright laws it can be used as a fun upbeat piece of music which our target audience will love.