EVALUATION Q4/Q5 Who would be the audience for your media product and how did you attract/address them?
EVALUATION Q4/Q5
Who would be the audience for your media product and
how did you attract/address them?
AGE RATING
I
decided to certificate rate my film at a 15. I chose to make it a 15 as I felt the elements
of alcohol intake and possible language content would not be appropriate for a film that
could be viewed by viewers younger than 12. The BBFC suggest that any of the
following would be appropriate to be viewed in a 15 rated film:
strong violence, frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***'), portrayals of sexual activity,
strong verbal references to sex, sexual nudity, brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal
references to sexual violence, discriminatory language or behavior, drug taking.
T
his film would also not be explicit enough to need to fall under the 18 rated category as
although there may be sexual references, there will be no explicit imagery or violence
featured what so ever. Henceforth why I chose to rate it at a 15, this will also allow the
film to be viewed by a wider audience.
INITIAL RESEARCH
I decided to ask 30 people to answer a few questions relating to genre of film in the early stages of the project. This information allowed me to decide on a genre of film to choose and which films would appeal to different types of audience members. Here is an example of one of the types of questions that I asked and the percentage of audience members that preferred each genre mentioned.
PROFILE OF TARGET AUDIENCE
Age: 17 Gender: Female Three favourite films: Mean Girls, Dirty Dancing and A Cinderella Story Favourite Actors/Actress’: Jenifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Emma Stone, Lindsay Lohan and Chloe Moretz Favourite genre of film: Rom-com Favourite film of the Comedy genre: Rush Hour Other: I enjoy going to the cinema with my friends whenever I can. I would rather watch a light hearted and fun film that was about characters that were near the same age as me. I enjoy storylines that are funny or have a romantic twist to them as they are more engaging and I would be more willing to spend money going to see them.
FEEDBACK FROM VIEWING OF PRODUCT
I
decided to ask some target audience members to view my final
piece and send me some feedback on what they thought of the
sequence and whether they’d be interested in viewing more of the
film.
RESPONSE TO FEEDBACK
H
aving looked at the comments I received in my feedback I could see that my film wasn’t going
to appeal to every member of my target audience. As I am targeting teens I tried to make the
film relatable to teenagers and the common issues that they face on a daily basis. However,
maybe the reason for the film not appealing to some audience members- particularly the male
members- might have been because the main character was a girl and the mise en scene that
I used within the piece all related to girls, eg the make up and the clothes etc. Perhaps if I
were to do this project again I would consider what sort of characters may be more appealing
to male audience members or even try to include some scenes that were more thrilling and
exciting in terms of action to address their needs and increase audience viewing rates.
However, this could be hard to achieve within my chosen genre. But overall I am very happy
with the feedback that I received and I am glad that a lot of people that viewed my sequence
would choose to go and watch it at the cinema.
HOW DID I REPRESENT MY CHARACTER IN MY PIECE TO ATTRACT MY AUDIENCE?
A
s my target audience is teenagers, I knew that I wanted my protagonist to be of
the same age so that my audience would be able to find ways to relate to her. I
tried to represent this through the mise en scene and the presentation of the
character. For example a stereotype of many teenagers is that they are
constantly miserable, this is why Rosie doesn’t tend to smile a lot throughout
the sequence- apart from when she is ‘drunk’. I also wanted to set the titles in
an environment that would be relatable to young people and this is why half of
the piece is set in Rosie’s bedroom, which contrasts quite nicely to the outside
setting which could feel quite unnerving to younger viewer, demonstrating the
negative protrayal.
Was the portrayal of Rosie’s character accurate and does she attract the
audience?
I
deliberately chose to represent Rosie negatively in my sequence. I
wanted to demonstrate to the audience the extreme characteristics of
some teenagers in today's society. Through Rosie’s character I wanted
to make people aware of the dangers that face some teens and the
sort of things they can easily get involved with. Whilst this
representation may be negative it is accurate in portraying the
extremes of teenage lives. I feel however that her character does
attract the target audience as she is relatable and does live the
‘desired’ teen lifestyle, but I wanted to show that this fantasy doesn’t
always end happily and can turn into a vicious cycle very easily.
Shots that help attract the audiecne
How these shots attract the audience
A
lot of the shots that I used throughout my sequence focus solely on
Rosie and commonly from her shoulders upwards. I chose to do this
so that the audience had a chance to follow Rosie and almost put
themselves in her shoes. I felt this let older audience members feel
sympathy for her and younger audience members were then able to
empathise with her. The way that I chose to shoot my footage was in
a deliberately personal way and almost invasive of Rosie’s privacy
so that her social issues were correctly highlighted. The close up
shots also allowed for the audience to see her emotional reaction to
the events that were taking place to see that she wasn’t always
enjoying what she was doing.
Why my actress took on the role
E
rin- who is the actress that played Rosie- decided to take on this role
as she felt that the storyline for my sequence was fun and exciting. As
a person Erin’s lifestyle is the complete opposite to Rosie’s as she isn't
involved in drugs and smoking like Rosie is. However, she wanted to
take on this role because of this. Erin has a very innocent look to her
that is young and fresh, making what she acts out as Rosie even more
shocking to the audience. As Erin is of the same age as my target
audience it felt right that she should take on the role to attract people
of a similar age to view the film and both she and them could relate to
the character.