Final Opening Sequence - Emily

Director's Commentary

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The primary audience for our media product is late teens and adults. As the genre comes under psychological thriller it would contain dark and distressing scenes which would be inappropriate for children under 15 years of age. Similarly, the film Orphan is also rated 15 for the same reasons, as both Orphan and our product also contain elements of drama and horror. Our target audience in terms of gender would be predominantly women and girls in their late teens. This is because the protagonist is a female; with the film being based around her life. However, 'Thrillers' and 'Horrors', largely have a target audience of men. Therefore, because of the films genre, it would also attract a lot of male spectators as well as female. Because the genre is a psychological thriller, our product is aimed at a niche audience. People with specific interests in elements such as mystery, drama and process of the mind would have interest in the film. However, this would be a smaller audience with more unique taste, rather than the majority audience who have more interest in romantic-comedies and dramas, in which they can relate to.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre of the opening sequence is psychological thriller and we used a variety of ways to show this genre and grab the audiences attention. To start, our audience is more likely to be females of the age between 15-30. It is a big age range but the plot line, camera work, sound etc keeps everyone interested. To start of, we chose the title of the opening film to be Emily and the reason for this is because we wanted the audience to see our media product from Emily's perspective. This makes the media product much more personal and distinctive. We could not target anyone under the age of 15 because we had to remember that this is a form of thriller and it could affect anyone under the age of 15. The location is eerie and Emily is alone which increases the tension. She looks upset and focused on what she is upset in an isolated graveyard. This ultimately shows off her independent personality. The female target audience can understand this which makes them even more interested even though Emily is 11 years old. Age does not matter in our media product so that's why it is aimed for women aged between 15-30. The fact that Emily is walking very slow at the beginning creates a sad mood to engage the audience with her pain and suffering. The opening of the film approaches an emotional mood very subtly and we want our audience to understand this. However, the main genre is psychological thriller and not long after her walk, Emily visits a mysterious grave and the audience do not know whose grave it is or why Emily is connected to it. We used an over the shoulder shot as Emily is wiping the leaves of the grave to symbolise that she is being watched over by someone. This camera work technique has also been approached very subtly but what follows on links the two shots together. Emily hears mysterious whispers calling out her name of which she response in a shocked way. This suddenly increases the tension and keeps our audience engaged. It also rained on the day we filmed which to our luck amplifies the eerie mood of the graveyard scene. As she runs, she trips over a branch next to small pink flowers. This branch is juxtaposed with the flowers as a way to show that Emily messed up in various points of her short life which led her to this troubled life while the flowers represent her life before all this trouble had entered her life. The flowers also represent her girly lifestyle before these events which links to the target audience of our media product. However, there are elements of Emily's old lifestyle in her present situation when you consider her bedroom. Thus, there are quite a few aspects in this opening film which relates its self to the target audience.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

The Orphan and the Knowing are films which to some extent is similar to ours. Orphan’s main production company is Warner Bros. Pictures which is a big company and it also distributed the film. Knowing is produced by Summit Entertainment and distributed by Summit Entertainment. These production and distribution companies are big and being realistic, they wouldn’t produce or distribute our media product. However, we did some research about what kind of low budget independent British film companies would produce or distribute our product. Hammer Film Production is a British film company. This company produced a lot of films that have a genre of thriller, science fiction etc. As our media product fits into a psychological thriller genre, we thought it could be possible that they could produce our media product. Another option could be Film4 Productions which is a production company owned by channel 4. They produced a lot of films made in the UK and all of them were reasonably low budget films e.g. East are East. Shaun of the dead is a British film of low budget and was produced by Working Title 2. Other films successfully produced by Working Title 2 are Billy Elliot and The Calcium Kid. Working Title is a production company which might be interested in our media product because it is a bigger production company than Working Title 2.