Audience feedback

For our audience feedback we asked the year thirteens to watch our film opening so they could give us tips on improving. As there five different girls we were able to get a variation in detailed answers on the positives and negatives. What we showed the year thirteens was one of our drafts as we hadn't completely finished on making our final product.

The Agoraphobic

- Perhaps use some quicker cuts when the postman arrives at the door to show more of a panic

- The just shot of the wine cabinet is perhaps on for too short of a time

- The lightning is really good as well, so once colour graded it'll look even better!

- Shots are formed and strong

- Where is the background sounds?

- There is quite a lot of different shots which starts to make the narrative unclear

- Love the open shot. focus is very good and love pace

- Once shot doesn't quite match up

- Add sound 

- Strong and good lighting

- Good sense of enigma at the beginning where your not establishing your character straight away

- Perhaps you might need to add a lot of sound effects

- Quite strong narrative

- Some very strong depth shots, others are quite weak

-some drops in match on action (with book)

- too many shots, too quick 

- Lighting well framed

Uses and Gratifications

The ‘Uses and Gratifications’ model was first introduced by Elihu Katz; he asserted that audiences use media texts for gratification. Katz contended that there are four types ‘Uses and Gratifications’ audiences get from media texts:

* Personal identity: We can get a sense of ourselves and our peer group from media representations. This is probably particularly important for adolescents.

* Information: The media are full of information which we are at liberty to use.

* Entertainment: We often consume media texts for entertainment.

* Social interaction: The news, films or last night’s television programmes are common topics of discussion; we use the media to feed this social interaction. The media may also ‘keep us company’: radio, in particular addresses its audience on a personal basis. We may feel we know characters in, say, soap operas, better than we do our own friends and thus engage in parasocial (interpersonal relationships in which one party knows a great deal about the other, but the other does not) interaction when ‘interacting’ with them.

Audience Classification

The need to define audiences has been driven by commercial needs. Many media businesses need to deliver audiences’ eyeballs, or ears, to advertisers in order to be profitable and so the audience needs to be categorised.

The Registrar General’s Social Scale

The Registrar General’s Social Scale is the way the British Government defines the populace through their occupation:

Group Occupations

A Professional Workers (lawyers, doctors etc.), Scientists, Managers of large-scale organisations.

B Shopkeepers, Farmers, Teachers, White-collar workers.

C1 Skilled Manual (i.e. hand) workers – e.g. high grade, e.g. master builders, carpenters, shop assistants, nurses.

C2 Skilled Manual – low grade, e.g. electricians, plumbers.

D Semi-skilled Manual, e.g. bus drivers, lorry drivers, fitters.

E Unskilled Manual, e.g. general labourers, barmen, porters.

A benefit of the Registrar General’s Social Scale is that it can help companies to target audiences. However, the scale has been criticised for being both crude and rigid.

Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS)

Possibly a better way of defining audiences is by categorising them by the values and attitudes they hold and the lifestyle they have; these are psychographic (psychographics is the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles) variables. For example, one of the better known systems is the Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS):
*Actualisers: Successful, wealthy, dynamic people for whom image is important as an expression of their individuality

* Fulfilleds: Mature people who are well-educated professionals. This group values order, knowledge and responsibilities.

* Achievers: Successful and career-orientated people. They are politically conservative and value the status quo. Image is important to them and they tend to buy established, well-known products.

* Experiencers: Young, impulsive and rebellious. They like new products and styles but soon tire of them and search for new novelties. They spend as much as they can afford on clothing, fast food, music and films.

* Believers: Conservative people who believe in traditional institutions, such as the Church, and in the importance of the family and community. Their lifestyle tends to be very routine.

the importance of the family and community. Their lifestyle tends to be very routine. Their income is small but sufficient.

* Strivers: Tend to be unsure of themselves and have a low income. They are striving for approval from others, which they feel they could gain by ownership of possessions, most of which they cannot afford.

* Makers: Makers are do-it-yourself enthusiasts and tend to live a conventional, family life.

* Strugglers: Strugglers are on the lowest income and tend to be loyal to their favourite brands.

Selby’s Psychographic Clusters

Similar to the VALs system, Psychographic Clusters is a system invented by Keith Selby:

* Trendies: who crave the admiration of their peers.

* Egoists: who seek pleasure.

* Puritans: who wish to feel virtuous.

* Innovators: who wish to make their mark.

* Rebels: who wish to remake their world in their own image.

* Drifters: who are not sure what they want.

* Drop-outs: who shun commitments of any kind.

* Traditionalists: who want things to stay as they are.

* Utopians: who want the world to be a better place.

* Cynics: who have to have something to complain about.

* Cowboys: Who want easy money.

BFI

I looked at the BFI results to get an idea on what genre was most popular from different years and to see if it had an impact on the gender so I can get an idea on what people are more interested to see and what the different trends of the tables are.

BFI -'The Statistical Yearbook presents in one place all the available statistics on the UK film industry.'

  

What was really interesting from the results was that the film Gone Girl under the genre Thriller was an independent film Thrillers seems to be quite popular from the Box Office results however a thing which we need to take into consideration is that it wasn't the top genre to watch in 2014.

However, it somewhat surprised me that Gone Girl got into the top ten popular genres to watch as Gone Girl was given the certificate of 18. From the film being an 18 I would imagine there would be a decrease in views as it wouldn't appeal to anyone under the ages of 18 and families. This data was good for us to see our target audiences was aimed at young adults so it wouldn't have as big of an impact on the views.

Quantitative and Qualitative Research

We have learnt about the differences between quantitave and qualitative research and how they can be used for identifying target audiences

 Quantitative research
Quantitative research is ‘Explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics)’. The most common form of quantitative research is surveys. Quantitative research is useful for finding out specific information such as ‘Which is the most popular?’ The main benefit of quantitative research is that, if conducted properly, it can provide very accurate statistical information. However, one of the biggest shortcomings of quantitative research is that, whilst it can make it clear what is popular, it provides little insight into why something is popular.

 Qualitative research
Qualitative research is ‘Research that is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research’. The most common form of qualitative research is interviews. Qualitative research helps to address the why question: it is a means of speculating as to why something is popular. However, unlike quantitative research, qualitative research cannot be measured or quantified accurately.

Audience Profile

As a group we decided that the best age to suit our opening film clip would be aimed at ages 17 and above. The reason why we decided that the target audience would be older than the researched audience for a thriller genre was because we plan to make the thriller around a psychotic event where we would need a mature audience to understand and appreciate.
Thinking about Ethnicity, we didn't want our film to be aimed at any Religious groups as we wanted it to open to a wider/varied audience.

To see if our Genre of a psychotic thriller would appeal to the target audience set, me and my partner asked a few friends to see if they would watch and be interested in a movie from this genre.

Question asked: Would a psychotic thriller appeal to you?
 Natasha(17) -Yes     Alyssia(19)-No
Madeline(17)-Yes
Robert(58)-Yes
Linda(42)-Yes

The results from the questionnaire show that the psychotic thriller would appeal to our target audience, which are the results we wanted to hear!

Audience Research Secondary Sources Linked To Genre/Target Audience

The results of a survey taken place to a wide variety of the pubic show that the audience of the thriller genre tends to attract males aged 15 years and on words. The reason behind the genre branching out to more males than females and interesting teenagers may be because of the excitement and unpredictable moments held within the genre. The genre may attract more males as the stereotypical role within a thriller is usually held by a male so it may make the viewer feel that they can relate towards the leading man within the movie.