Evaluation
Title Sequence
Preliminary Task
Secondary Research - Film Openings
Technical Analysis
Audience Research - Screening
Audience Research - Rough Cut
Audience Research - Concept Development
Tuesday 7 May 2013
Monday 6 May 2013
Friday 3 May 2013
Question 4 and 5: Audience Research
Question
4 and 5: Who would be the audience for your film? How did you attract/ address
your audience?
Our target audience is a niche market. We
would believe that our film would most likely become and independent film,
released to an art house, or a platform release, however still attract a mass
audience, due to the well know horror genre, and conventions used. Our
demographics for our film would be teenagers or young adults, ageing roughly
from 15-24 years of age, who are fans of the horror genre, and are looking for
new takes on a traditional idea. It would attract a more male dominated
audience; however, it would include anyone who is a horror fan, so that does
not exclude females. It would appeal to a wide number of social groups, which
is where the mass target audience comes in, as anyone can understand the
narrative used in the film. The psychographics of of our film are people, who enjoy innovative ideas and want to try interesting, new independent films.
- The characters would appeal to our target audience, due to all characters being teenagers, who appeals more widely to a teenage audience, as it allows the audience to relate to the conventions and characters better, than if they were of a different age range. It also appeals to the audience, as there is the use of dramatic irony throughout the opening, where the audience know about the vampires emerging, however it is not clear if the victim does or not. The preferred reading of the opening is that it is left at a cliff hanger, so the audience would believe that it leads on from the death of the man from the vampires, and continues onto discovering how to defeat them, which is what we tried to portray in our film. We hope the audience are able to decode that information from what we have made
- We had many opportunities to test our project to an audience throughout the planning and development stages of the film making process. We began with the initial pitch idea, where we spoke to a group of peers and teachers, about 20 of them, where we discussed about what we are planning to do with our horror film, and the ideas we have come up with. This was our concept development, which meant after we pitched our idea, we received feedback from the group on what they liked about our film, what they believed the strengths were, as well as the weaknesses, and some ideas we need to improve on or change, such as they cast list we decided, which had to change, to have a variety of characters. This was useful to us, as we could then go away and improve our idea much more, before beginning the filming of the opening, and gave us a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve by the end of the project.
- A week before our deadline date for our film, we presented a rough cut to the same people as our pitch was presented to, to gain some understanding of what an audience thought of our film, and what we would need to change before the deadline. We exported our rough cut, to allow everyone to view, but soon realised we need to needed to change some aspects, such as the sound levels of the dialogue and soundtrack, as well as some of the ordering of our shots and edits.
- Audience feedback is very important when making a film, as it lets you know, what people enjoy about the film, what they don’t understand, or dislike about it, and what needs changing, adding or removing. We used our results from our surveys to find out what people enjoyed about it, so in the last editing stage, we could rearrange some of the clips and change parts that the audience did not understand, such as some of our narrative, so we changed the sound, so the narration comes in at a more appropriate stage, when the characters are in full view, and you can getter a better understanding of the character exposition.
- From our audience research, when we were planning our idea, and understanding our target audience, we found out what type of horror film people of our age range and target market wanted. We discovered that our audience enjoyed quite a gruesome horror film, and favourites are films such as 'Saw' (James Wan,2004) and 'Texas Chainsaw Masacre' (Tobe Hooper,1974).
- When we completed further audience research after our project was near completion, we found out what the audience thought the best of our film was, and what we needed to change. We came to the realisation that some of the shots during the narration we used at the wrong point, so we had to make changes to when the narration comes in, and the cutting rate of some of the shots, especially when changing the location by using a cross cut.
Thursday 2 May 2013
Audience Screening Results
We received the following results from our questionnaire, which were very positive, which gave us confidence about our film, and better understanding of what was best about our film, and what we needed to change.
We started off by finding out who our audience were, by asking a question on their demographics.
Are you male or female?
The following two questions we asked about the film's soundtrack and characters, and received positive results about them meaning our target audience enjoyed them.
Do you think the soundtrack anchors the visuals well?
Do you think the characters exposition was correct?
Our weakest part of our film we discovered from our research was the costume, with many people who did not think the costume was appropriate for our film, this was rather discouraging, however it was too late to make any major changes such as the costume, so we resorted to some editing, to try and use as many CUs and MS on the characters as possible, and show less of the costume off to the audience.
Do you think the use of costume was effective?
People agreed with our choice of location for the film, and thought it was suitable for our genre of film. The two people who disagreed with the location used, believed we should an abandoned house or an old fashioned castle, to fit the vampire sub-genre, but these people were in a minority.
Do you think a different location should have been used, and if yes, where?
The narrative was easy to understand, and no one did not understand what was going on.
How easy is it to understand the narrative?
In conclusion our results were positive and the audience seemed to enjoy the parody idea we used for the vampire horror genre. They understood what was going on the during the film, and thought the conventions of the film were well done, and used effectively.
Link back to Andy Cooper’s Key Links
Audience Screening Questionnaire
After we had finished our film, shortly before the deadline for the completion of our film, we handed out the following audience questionnaire to a randomly selected 16 candidates to fill out after watching our production, to gain feedback of what their thoughts were on our film opening.
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