How did you attract/address your audience?

To begin our film making process we presented a film pitch to a group of people who are representative of our target audience. We carried out this film pitch in order to ensure that our idea would appeal to our target audience and to build on our ideas further. Our film pitch was very helpful because we received lots of helpful constructive critism at the end from our audience which brought up many things that we had not yet thought about as a group. Some of the questions asked were whether the viewer is going to see that Jays Father has been shot, or not, how were we going to make it look futuristic and how do you know where Jay is running to. All of the audience’s questions prompted us to think further into the aspects of the opening and I think enabled us to make our opening much more effective. We decided to not reveal that it was Jays father who he had shot and instead foreshadow the events to come, include a cctv shot which revealed the futuristic date and to show Jay with his gang and then receive a text saying "We're ready", which is where the journey begins. I hope that by adding in these aspects to the film it will make more sense to the audience what is happening as well as adding to the openings tension, and this will therefore gain more of the audience’s attention.

We also attracted our audience through the use of music. We have incorporated Chipmunk and Tinchy Stryders song ‘Man dem’ into our film opening. We decided to choose this song because we thought that not only did the fast pace fit with Jay’s running, but it gives it the grimey atmosphere that we wanted to create.  Also, by using a mainstream song by established artists Chipmunk and Tinchy Stryder, we are enabling the film to break into a mainstream audience and attract the fans of these artists to watch the film. Also, I think that by using two British artists, chipmunk a British rapper and song writer  from Tottenham, London and Tinchy Stryder a Ghanaian British musician who grew up in Bow, East London it is appropriate for our film because we are doing a British twist on the gangster genre.

Lastly, in order to engage our audience and engage them into the film we wanted our characters to fit the stereotype of young Black gang members and to attract audiences who are familiar with other British gangster films in which these stereotyped characters are familiar. To do this we had to choose our costume and props very carefully. We decided to dress our main character Jay In a hoodie, with the hood up and wearing a bandanna and also wanted his fellow gang members to be wearing hoodies with their hoods up. We did this to indicate to the audience immediately that the film is based on gang culture. Also, the bandanna incorporates the feeling of crime, because its an obvious way of trying to hide your identity. We are showing a very negative stereotype of gangs however I think that this will benefit us because it means that the film becomes more of a reality to the audience as we are depicting a familiar figure to the public that is shown frequently in the media about gang crime and street culture, especially having had riots not very long ago that which was a worldwide topic of conversation. Therefore I think by doing this we are attracting an even wider audience.