Group: Evaluation question 7
Friday, 26 April 2013
Group: Evaluation Q4 &Q5
Group: Evaluation Q4 and Q5:
Who would be the audience
for your film? How did you attract/address your audience?
- · In our production we set out to appeal to our target audience. In order to appeal to them we first had to recognise their demographic information and interests. Our target audience’s demographics were young male adults, aged 15-25 who earns an average salary and lives in urban and rural areas. It is also important to distinguish the psychographics of our audience, our target audience, being young; would dress in casual wear and enjoy various popular forms of media in modern society, including films, music, television and radio. Our target audience would also fall into two psychographic categories being ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘early adopters’ who would help distribute the popularity of our film.
- · In our production, we have used stock characters of an antagonist and a protagonist to appeal to our target audience. Our protagonist especially does so, an example of this being the protagonists demographics as in our production the protagonist is a young male adult aged 17 whom dresses in casual clothes being jeans, a t-shirt, and a jumper. The use of matching the character exposition to our target audience demographics allows the target audience to relate to the characters in our film; in addition to this it helps position the audience on the side of our protagonist. Furthermore, we used the psychographics of our target audience to determine the interests of our protagonist. An example of this is our protagonist’s interest in modern technologies such as the shot at the start of our opening which consists of a close up of the protagonist calling his mum on a mobile phone.
- · To find out which aspects of our ideas appealed to the audience we carried out audience research using web 2.0 through ‘Survey Monkey’. Our choice of questions influenced the audience impact on our production, as a result we needed 10 questions that would identify the audience and then review our ideas against the opinions of our target audience. In order to identify our target audience, our survey included two closed questions which referenced the age and gender of each person that took the survey. This then showed us which ideas our target audience preferred. To test our concept on the target audience there then had to be questions highlighting the key areas in our production. These areas included location, music, characters, plot, and props. There was a question for each area as well as a question defining which area is the most important for a horror film. The answers to these questions included typical horror locations, characters and props such as an abandoned house, a psycho and a knife respectively. Resulting in a quantitative result highlighting the most effective aspect of each area in a horror film.
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| Example result from my audience research (Question 4) |
- · To collect results survey monkey gives the user a URL which links the participant to the survey. I used this as well as web 2.0's most successful social networking site Facebook to distribute my survey digitally among people whom qualify for our target audience.
- · The results from our audience research proved our ideas for a horror opening to be effective. In most of the questions asked we received a positive result towards a certain aspect of our film, an example of this being the result from question 4. Question 4 asks which location out of a selection would be most effective in a horror film. When put to the target audience the majority agree that an abandoned house would definitely be most effective with 38% of people voting for it out of the 30 recipients. Another result which showed the success of our ideas among the target audience was from question 6. To find out whether or not our plot would be appealing to the target audience we devised question six to ask which out of a selection of plots they found most interesting. The plot selection consisted of a chase between a killer and their prey, a ghost story, and our chosen plot - the abduction of a boy by a psychopath. The results from this question proved useful as the majority of the sample being 41% opted for our chosen plot idea as the most interesting and effective plot.
- · In response to our audience research most of our ideas remained the same as the audience seemed to favour all of them. On enhancement we could have made to our production was the inclusion of a knife to add a sinister mood, however, due to constraints we deemed it wise not to include a knife during the filming because of health and safety.
- · We also tested our film opening concept through a pitch to a group of our target audience. The pitch included the use of technology through a Power Point and reviewed different areas of our chosen ideas against the audiences’ opinions. Our power point gave a treatment evaluating the main plot of how the protagonist is controlled by a voodoo/ psychopath; in addition to this the Power Point presented our plans for key shots such as the pull focus used at the beginning of our film opening. Also in our pitch we explored our ideas for moving titles, similar to that of Zombieland; which we would create in Adobe After Effects including the bold ‘Riot’ font and colour from ‘www.dafont.com’. Finally in our pitch we presented what props we would use and the difficulties we would face on the days of filming, for example the risk of rain and the variety of terrains to film in.
- · Following the pitch we gave, the rest of the class gave feedback on what they thought about our ideas. The overall response was that we had a good idea but it needed to be clearer to the audience what was going on. A number of people commented saying the pen idea was a great, unique idea which would make our film stand out from others. A suggestion was made that during the shot where a curve is drawn and the camera cuts to Desmond following that curve, we fade both shots over the top of each other. We took this advice appreciatively as we think it would clear any doubt as to what is going on and would also be a nice change to the standard cuts we'd be using throughout the rest of the shoot to help focus the audience's attention to the storyline. In response to the feedback from the pitch we decided to take on board the suggestion of a cross-fade during a shot in our real production by changing the opacity of two shots, this elaborated the aim of our plot to the audience a lot better
- · In addition to the research and the pitch, we tested our rough idea through the screening of an unfinished version of our film opening being the ‘Rough Cut’. We screened this a week before the production deadline to receive audience advice before finishing our production. After screening our ‘Rough Cut’ of the opening to our target audience, we received many positive remarks regarding the footage. This included the variety of shots, the camera movements, the pull focus and slow motion shot and that the concept was good. However, we also received constructive criticism in order to improve our film. The criticism included, the sharpness of the shots, could include a faster cutting rate in order to create tension and a build up for a climax and finally our film could include more shots of writing.
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| Screenshot of one pen movement we added |
- · In response to the rough cut, the main criticism appeared to be the confusion of the plot and the amount of shots of walking. In response to this during post-production we re-arranged the shots into a more sensible order and then continued to add more shots of the pen controlling the protagonist. We also did this by adding in the suggestion for a cross-fade shot over a long shot of our protagonist walking towards the camera. In response to the criticism against the amount of walking we decided to cut down and remove many shots of the protagonist walking and instead added in more key shots for title which in my opinion enhanced the attraction of our plot for the audience.
- · The weekend after the production deadline, we screened the final cut to our target audience to review our finished products to see if we have earned their appeal. After the screening had finished I handed out 8 questionnaires to the target audience asking open and closed questions to produce quantitative and qualitative results which highlighted how we had appealed to the target audience.
- For the first question we wanted to find out whether or not we made the plot clear enough for the target audience to understand. The respondents found the production to be relatively easy to understand having 68% finding it easy, which was the challenge as we predicted one flaw with our plot was attempting to convey it on screen, however these results show our success.
- Next we wanted to find out whether or not the soundtrack we had chosen matched the visuals as in our audience research we found out that a good soundtrack is very effective in a horror film. The results from this question are very pleasing as the whole of our respondents believed that the soundtrack matched our visuals which we were pleased with as we spent a long time editing the soundtrack in post-production.
- Questions 3,5,6, 7 and 8 all received the same results as 100% of our sample responded yes. From this we received results that our film was completely effective in conveying the genre (Question 5), The villain in our film was very effective through the careful choice of mise-en-scene and costume, the 3D titles we created in after-effects were effective and enhanced our films appearance and finally the climax we created at the end was particularly effective to resolve the tension yet also leaving a loose end of which would be resolved in the film.
- In question 4 we used a rating scale to find out which aspect of our film was particularly effective. We predicted that the soundtrack would prove most effective due to our audience research, however, our results showed that our simple yet effective costume choice of a plain white mask and a leather cloak were most effective at creating an eerie mood in our production.
- Question 9 asked the question which ultimately proved whether or not our film opening was a success in general and from the graph it shows that 100% of our respondents would continue to watch this film. Which we were pleased with.
- Our final question was an open question asking whether or not the target audience would wish to change anything in the production, and luckily all of our recipients answered nothing which was brilliant to our delight.
- All in all when it came down to producing our film, we made most of our ideas based on our target audiences opinions and preferences, because of this we find the audience feedback extremely helpful and valuable as it evaluates whether or not our ideas match the preferences of the audiences in which we have essentially set out to do. Without the ethos of pleasing the target audience then in all I believe there is no momentum into making a good film, hence why we were pleased with the results we had gathered from our target audience being white, male teenagers after the final screening.
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