Audience research

Edd Wright 12DB                                      Media                                           13/10/11

Questionnaire for Audience research

This questionnaire is designed to help with my media project & to gather ideas of what kinds of things are most important/popular to my target audience when it comes to films. Please can you take a few moments to fill in the information below.

Gender:          
Male: [ ]      Female: [ ]

Age:               
10-15: [ ]         15-20: [ ]         20-25: [ ]         25-30: [ ]         30+: [ ]

Occupation:  
Full time student:     [ ] 
Full time employed: [ ]                                                
Part time employed:[ ]                    
Unemployed:          [ ]

What are your 2 favourite film genres?       
Horror:                   [ ]       
Comedy:                 [ ]      
Thriller:                   [ ]                                                                           
Sci-fi:                      [ ]          
Action :                   [ ]             
War:                       [ ]            
Western:                 [ ]     
Crime & gangster:   [ ]

What is the name of your all time favourite film? __________________________________________________________________________.

Why is this your all time favourite film? (Please give as much detail as you can) ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

In your opinion what is it that makes a film interesting? (use examples if you wish) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

What was the name of the latest film you saw at the cinema? __________________________________________________________________________.

What encouraged you to see this film? (e.g. genre, friend recommendations & trailers etc) (give as much detail as possible) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

Personal comment

The questionnaire will be distributed to roughly 15-20 people & it will hopefully give me the information I need to help adapt my own film.
The main questions that I will be looking at when reading the questionnaires will be what 2 genres are most popular & what things make a film interesting to people. I think that these questions will be the most important when thinking of ideas to put in my own film.
All the questions are relevent & they should hopefully give me an over all view of peoples opinions of films & genre etc.

Questionnaire results


- I handed out my questionnaire to 15 people & most of them (10/15) were aged between 15-20.
- 9 of the 15 people are in full time education.
- The 2 favoured film genres was comedy by a long shot (11/15) & sci-fi with 5/15.
- 12 out of the 15 people who participated in the questionnaire said that it was the story/plot that makes the film worth while to them .

Personal comment 2
The questionnaire has helped greatly with some key parts of making my own film such as focusing strongly on the story & trying to make sure that it is as gripping as it can be & fits nicely together.
There could be a few problems with the genre of film that I have chosen because out of the 15 people that were questioned only one of them said that thriller was one of their favourite genres.
I am going to have to work around this by mainly focusing on the story & maybe throw some twists in the plot to temporarily confuse the audience but still keeps them interested in what is going on.
It could prove very difficult to get the ideal balance between the 2 but we shall give it a go.

Audience targeting

Edd Wright                    Audience targeting for Edd’s dead baby                 06/10/11

All films are aimed at a defined audience this can be related to age, gender, interests, & socio-economic classification. For instance a Disney film will be aimed at children between the ages of 3 to 10 but at the same time many older people will still watch a Disney film perhaps from childhood & still enjoy it just as much. Target audience is the term used to describe the general type/group of people that you would expect your film to attract, however various other types of people & age groups may still enjoy watching the film. The interests will not be overly important as it is made to entertain children of all sorts. Also the socio-economic classification does not come into this film as most children will enjoy the film. The reason for this is that most Disney films are simple because they have an easy to follow plot, fun scenarios & entertaining plots. The basic jumble of these things means that children of a very young age can connect easily to what is going on.

Our film is titled “Edd’s dead baby” & the title suggests it will be based around a death of some sort which means the film will be of a dark nature. This means that the targeted age of the viewers will be 15 years old & older. This film will be mainly directed towards a male audience due to the nature of the film but could still be viewed & enjoyed by female viewers as well. Seeing as the thriller genre is such a widely enjoyed genre the stories usually involve some sort of love interest & can be very emotional & take some thought.

The characters within thriller films are also usually very strong with charismatic & confident personalities. You can participate in the film by trying to work out the murderer before the truth is revealed by the end of the film.

People that this film is aimed at don’t really need any sort of interests related to the film because it is aimed at a fairly large audience & will interest people that want to be entertained more than anything else.

Personal comment

It has been useful for me to think about what the target audience for my film will be because some of the material may be inappropriate for younger people. The age rating for my film will be "15" because I think that people of this age are mature enough to understand the concepts within the film.
The main thing that I have learnt from my audience targeting is how to aim my media text at a certain audience by focusing on the story & content within my own film. It has also given me things to consider which may be worth leaving out to keep within the age rating bracket.

Textual analysis of films that relate to genres

Personal Comment
The textural analysis i have done is designed to help me with my own film making project because it allows me to see what other films of similar styles have done before.
Obviously I do not have a huge Hollywood budget & cast so I have to work around what i have available to use.
It has been very beneficial for me to do a textural analysis because I did not realise that you can gain so much information about  the plot from the first 2 minutes of a film. By breaking down each scene into sections it allows you to pick out all the different shots used, sound effects & characters etc.
From the first 2 minutes of a film you can quite often gain an idea as to what sort of plot it is going to be, establish main characters & setting of the film.

It has also been helpful for me to do a textual analysis to help break down the film & pick out such things as key camera angles, sound effects & the use of music to help give setting to the film. 

The main thing that I have learnt from doing a textual anaysis is that it has given me an insight into how much detail can be gathered from watching barely the first two minutes of a film.
Normally you would not think about it because you would watch the whole film & the story would unfold as it goes along.
But by breaking each scene down, looking at what is going on, the music & the sound effects it has given me things to think about & what kind of things I would like to tailor to possibly put in my own film. Picking the correct music & sound effects can also greatly influence how the viewer percieves what is happening & this is something that I am really going to think about when working on my project.

Synopsis of Edd's Dead Baby

Edd Wright                   Synopsis of “EDD’s Dead Baby”                             11/10/11

Our film titled Edd’s dead is a story about a person who has mysteriously been killed after a party. The body of Edd is found after a character walks up stairs to go to bed in the morning & as the opens the door a body falls out (Edd’s dead body). The party scene will either be used as the opening while some titles are running & then cut to a shot of a blank screen with writing saying “the morning after” or the opening scene will start with the character that walks up the stairs & discovers Edd’s body & then cut to a blank screen with writing saying “the night before” cutting to shots of the party. There are multiple arguments that take place between Edd & various other characters when Edd has left the main party & has gone to Cei’s house (Edd’s friend) for a slightly smaller “after party”. There is an argument that breaks out between Edd & a character because Edd has been sleeping with the characters fiancé. Another argument breaks out between Edd & a character who accuses Edd of stealing his bag of cocaine. The final argument that will be in the film will be about a character who is angry at Edd for breaking a valuable family heirloom.

The rest of the film will shows events from each of these characters arguments & their points of view using memory flash backs to emphasise that multiple people had a reason for having a grudge & possibly wanting to kill Edd. The 2 minutes of the film will end on a cliff hanger with no one really knowing who killed Edd.

The rest of the film will contain clues to Edd’s killer & it will not clearly show who the killer was but point fingers in the direction of someone you would least expect.

Personal comment

It was very useful for my group & I to do a synopsis of our film idea because it gives us all a good idea as to what is going on. At the same time this is just an incredibly brief over view & some things here & there may be altered & improved as we go along with the filming. The part I have written in red is one part that we have not yet decided on because we do not know which way around would give the best effect. So we will work this out when it comes to editing.
By writing out a synopsis/overview of the whole film we can look to it for reference when filming & figure out what we have filmed & what we have left to film.
From writing out a synopsis I have learnt that it is a good idea to have some kind of grounded plan of what it is that we are trying to achieve. It is always good to have some kind of plan with anything you do & by having a general guideline it means that we can change things as we go along if something works out to be better.

Codes & Conventions of Genre

Personal comment

It was helpful for me to do the research in to these genres because one of them will be chosen for use in our own film making project. Learning about what kind of charcaters are in each genre & using the location & sound effects to define what type of film it is going to be.

I have learnt that words are not always needed to tell a story & quite often alot of information can be gained by listening to the music or sound effects being used & just watching the opening scenario that the character/s are faced with.

I also discovered in my research of genre's that with some films the focus is mainly on location & surroundings to what is going on (mainly horror), Others focus mostly on the characters & location is not overly important (comedy) & some vary between the 2 because you are interested in the individual characters because they shine through as being important in some way but you also pay alot of attention to what is going on around them.