Thriller Evaluation - 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

  As we were new to the field of film making, we decided to follow some typical thriller conventions in order to attract our audience's attention.
  We decided to make our protagonist in around the same age range as our target audience. We also had our protagonist as someone older, in a more authoritative position, so the audience could help relate to the protagonist (in the sense that most people in the 16-24 age range will be able to relate to times when they may have felt somewhat 'oppressed' by authority, and had a want to fight back). We also tried to portray our protagonist as being innocuous and unsuspecting, with a want to do good, to make the audience want to be rooting for his struggle against the more powerful antagonist.

 Many successful films have employed the use of having a young protagonist to appeal to most movie-going audiences, such as The Hunger Games.


We also employed the use of putting certain clues in, e.g. the USB which seemed ever important to the mysterious character in black, and the giant wall of text that looked like a computer code (that most people would've been puzzled by, drawing them in). We also wanted to take the audience to the tense action first, leaving them wondering "How did it get to there?", to capture their attentions and leave them wanting more.

Examples of successful films in which the film opening started off with the main action (leaving the viewer wanting more) are: The Matrix (left), Source Code (middle)