PR1

Research TechniquesDemographic Scale

A – Upper/middle class. Managers & CEO of companies.B – Middle class. Managers of smaller companies / small groups.C1 – Lower middle class. Supervisory role, administrative or professional.C2 – Skilled working class. Skilled manual workers.D – Working class. Semi and unskilled manual workers.E – Unemployed/students/retired. No earnings or lowest grade of worker.

Qualitative Research – Qualitative research is mainly focusing on understanding. The information is harder to define but it is more complex than a simple measurement. This type of research is more in depth than just numbers.

Quantitative Research – Quantitative research is less mostly concerning measurements. This is most commonly recorded with numbers for example, measurements of a market.

Mainstream Film

Star Wars is an extremely successful mainstream film. The first film came out in 1977, with the latest coming out earlier this year. This shows the audience is very wide, ranging from various different ages. There are also plans for more films, showing the love for it is still massive.

Alternative Film

Monty Python – Life of Brian is a successful alternative film. It is a British religious satire comedy film, made in 1979. Some of the humour included within the film was controversial at the time of its release, showing the audience definitely wasn’t mainstream. You need a certain sense of humour to find it funny. 39 local authorities in the UK either imposed an outright ban, or imposed an X rating.

Niche Film

Justin Bieber – Never Say Never is an example of a niche film. This film was targeted for a small amount of people, which would be Justin Bieber fans. The film wouldn’t be appealing towards anybody else, so nobody else would want to see it. The film was given an awful rating of 1.6/10 by IMDB, as it would appear they aren’t Justin Bieber fans.

Audience Profiling

Gender – whether you are male or female, films may be targeted towards a specific gender.

Age – The age of a person is also a target for film makers. Certain films are certified for certain ages.

Socio-economic status – this is the economic and sociological combined total measure of a person’s work experience. This is based on income, education and occupation.

Psychographics – the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations and other psychological criteria.

Geodemographic – the study of the population and its characteristics, divided according to regions on a geographical basis.

Sexual Orientation – the term is used to describe what gender someone is sexually and/or romantically attracted to.

Regional Identity – how somebody is judged by where they live or come from.

Psychographics

Exit Poll Link

https://www.surveymonkey.com/create/?sm=9cQCP7IVZ4WOCodV2_2BnHPWY77U8J8oxbCIoIG5aGDtM_3D

Exit Poll Research Report

Primary Research

After watching Blair Witch, I created an exit poll for other people to fill in with their opinions about the film. This is a good type of primary research as it allows people to express their opinions on the film, through answering questions in sentence format and also tables. My survey included questions to find out information about, their age, gender and occupation so I had an idea of their demographic. This is important when finding out information from your research. This helps show who the most likely genre/age etc are to watch the film.

My results found, from the 9 results I gained, 6 of the respondents were male. 66% of the respondents were between the ages of 18 and 24. This helps show the target audience of this film.

I also then asked how they heard about the film (Blair Witch). The respondents could choose more than 1 option for this. The 2 highest picked answers were social media & trailer online. This shows the film had a good online marketing campaign, as from my results, this is where most of the viewers came from.

I went on to ask how well the actors fitted their character roles and also how scary the film was, 1 being the least and 10 being the most (seen to the right). This question gathered a large range of responses, ranging from 1 to 9.

I finally asked for a star rating out of 5, on how they would rate the quality of film. My results provided me with an average, which as you can see was 2.67. This would help the producer of the film see how well his film has done as an average, as obviously some people will rate the film 1 star, but others 5.

Poster Analysis

Bridget Jones’s Baby

Blair Witch (2016)

Primary Optical Area – Name of man character/star & name of the film.

Weak fallow area- Nothing of interest here, least likely place for the audience to look.

Strong Fallow Area – Names of other characters, type bar catchphrase ‘beyond complicated’ links with the images.

Mode of Address. -Main character directly looking at camera, other two aren’t. Hints towards storyline.

Colour Representation – stereotypically rom-com colours e.g. purple/pink. Helps describe genre.

Trailer Analysis

Avengers

In the primary optical area, you can see the main character’s name, along with the rest of the main cast. This may grab people attention, as the actors are well known.

In the weak fallow area, there isn’t anything that will interest the audience. There are some names of people who were involved, but they aren’t of any significance, as they are in small text.

Strong fallow area – this area includes other actor names, who are still of importance. This is the second place an audience would look.

Genre TheorySteve Neil – “genre constitutes elements in repetition and difference”.

Nick Lacey – 5 Key AreasSettingCharacterNarrativeIconographyStyle

James Bond - Spectre

The trailer for James Bond ‘Spectre’ was set in many different locations. It starts off with an establishing shot of Mexico City, which is where the start of trailer begins. There are also scenes in London and a lonely house.

The characters are very repetitive within James Bond films. There is always a James Bond & a bad guy. Women are also used to show they are just as powerful and persuasive as men in the film. James Bond also always attracts to a good looking woman within the film. This is a big convention of spy/thriller films, especially James Bond, so this will anchor the audience to the film.

The storyline is usually very similar throughout all James Bond films. James Bond will defeat the evil character(s). James will also meet a woman who he finds attractive and will have some sort of physical attraction too.

There are lots of iconic props and features used within this James Bond trailer. For example, the wearing of a suit by Mr. Bond. A suit is used in every film and is always expected to be within the film. The use of an Aston Martin car too is iconic for James Bond films. James Bond always drives a flash car, which is always an Aston Martin. This anchors the audience to watch the film, as they know what to expect within this genre.

The style of it is very similar to the other James Bond films. Mr. Bond has to go find the bad character, try and take him down undercover. Meet a woman he has an attraction too and survive in the end. This happens in the majority of Bond films, especially more recent films, so some people refer to this style of film as a ‘Bond style’.

Blair Witch (2016)

The trailer for Blair Witch was mainly set in a forest. The film was set in Burkittsville (Maryland), in an empty village/forest. This is a key convention within horror films, and would anchor people to watch the film as they enjoy the sense of being in the film and apart of the action. This setting helps create an eerie atmosphere, which is suited for this genre of film.

The characters used are the typical characters you would expect to see in a horror film. There are 2 main characters (boy & girl) who you know are the main protagonist. You also have the ‘final girl’, who acts in a certain way, who will always survive the longest. You then have the ‘what was that noise’ character(s). These usually die first as they are the bravest/most stupid to follow or look for a noise they hear. These characters are all introduced early on, so you can quickly recognize who is who. A familiar convention of horror films has the boy characters trying to be the hero for the female characters. The trailer of this film suggests the women get hurt first, so the male characters try and help them.

From the trailer you can see the narrative Is a group of friends go into the woods, to try and find one of the character’s sister, who went missing. They want to see if the Blair Witch stories are true, so they have to go and experience it themselves. You can also see they run into trouble & find the house they weren’t sure existed. Horror is the genre where it is most common the good characters won’t win.

From the trailer you can see many iconic features you would expect to see in a horror film. For example, dark colours and eerie non diegetic music. This is always used within horror films to create tension. You wouldn’t hear happy, fast paced music in a horror film. The colours used are also very dark, indicating death and pain, rather than bright, vibrant colours. The woods used looks creepy, which is iconic for a horror film as it adds a scare factor to the film. When the audience sees these conventions used, they will be anchored in to watching the film.

Summary

Media producers use numerous different research methods to gather all the necessary information. For example, audience profiling can be used to aim their trailer or advertising campaign at a specific audience; such as elderly, students or children. They can also look at geodemographic to find a specific intended target audience. My results from my survey on Blair Witch prove this, as the large majority of audience who completed my survey were aged between 17-24. These results also showed how people learnt of the film, whether it be through YouTube trailers or online campaigns etc. My results show their online campaign was strong, as the intended target audience was met, whereas older people may not have seen the campaign, as they won’t use social media as much.