Sound/Soundtrack

Our group have realised that our new treatment idea will have to include one or two soundtracks to create a contrasting atmospheres. We need to spend a lot of time choosing the soundtracks, so we will continue to research these either at home or in any spare time that we get within lessons.

The first soundtrack that we must find needs to create a calm atmosphere, which will allow us to draw the auidence into a false sense of security and create a juxtaposition with the second soundtrack. This will probably be best created with soundtracks that include repetition of various parts.

The second soundtrack needs to have the completely opposite effect, it needs to create a differant type of mood, that being a frantic, fast paced one. This allows us to create the contrasting moods which our focus group said was needed in order to create an effective thriller opening.

Lesson Summary 13/12/11

Today, me and my group finished up our audience research by analysing our survey findings and comparing them with our focus group findings. Based on our findings, we created an audience research so we know exactly who our target audience is. We also started planning our screenplay based on the feedback we received from our focus group,  and we are finding more possible music to use in our opening sequence. Before next lesson we would have drafted up a full screenplay and be fully ready to start filming when we come back from christmas.

Survey Results

Survey Findings.

 In general our typical audience member would be of an age range of 21-40, as a majority 60.5% answered our survey being of that age range. We also found that generally people answering our questionnaires were females with 63.2% and males with 36.8%. Our audience member appears to be teachers, or just generally employed people, who are able to afford cinema tickets and DVDs. Although thriller didn’t come out as overall favourite, it did come out in top three, comedy coming first with 42.1%, romance with 21.6% and thriller with 26.3%. People liked thrillers because they liked the suspense and tension given by it, and they like the sense of mystery, as they like to keep guessing the outcome and they consider it generally entertaining. A majority of our answers came from people that watch films fairly often, with the vast majority of people accessing media on the Internet and TV. A majority of our participants said that they most commonly saw adverts on the TV, billboards and from the Internet due to easy accessibility

These results were fairly useful, as we now a definite age range group to appeal to, their responses also fit alongside our focus group, so with both the focus group and our survey giving similar answers, we will now be able to work on our screenplay and base it off their responses. E.g. we could add a romance story alongside the thriller storyline, as romance is the second most watched genre of our survey group, but not comedy as it would relieve the audience of the tension that must be kept for our thriller movie. To gain a better understanding of our audience and their relationship with the thriller genre, perhaps we need to create another questionnaire with more genre specific questions

Focus Group Findings.

On Tuesday, we showed our focus group our treatment pitch in order to gain additional comments and opinions on the idea and opening sequence we created originally as they are members of our target audience and as such the best judges. We also showed them the opening of American Beauty, an example of film from our chosen genre of thriller, after this we asked several questions regarding our opening sequence, the plot idea and the genre in general. As a group we feel that we gained a lot from our focus group and we will be able to create an opening sequence that our target audience will enjoy and want to watch more of.
Based on our focus group, we decided on a few things: 


1. Our target audience would be Males and Females from 25 to 50 years of age.

2. To capture our target audience in the opening sequence, we will use action to keep them enticed, as we found that it will add a bit of mystery to the opening sequence as to why this action sequence is happening. We will also add some slow paced scenes within the opening to create a juxtaposition, it adds more mystery and suspense. We will also have some dramatic and slow paced music to build tension and to keep the audience hooked and interested in the film.

3. We found that they wanted a mix of slow and fast paced shots within the opening sequence to keep them interested. A slow paced opening sequence may bore them and not keep them interested and a fast paced opening may not suit the idea of our film, and will be hard to do right. 


As a result, our group decided that our opening sequence needed some changing, and so we will write a screenplay based on the comments from the Focus Group. 

TV Drama Analysis - Misfits

Title:

Misfits

Who made the show?

Misfits was created by Howard Overman and written by Tom Green.

Who stars?
Robert Sheehan - Nathan
NathanStewart Jarrett - Curtis
Iwan Rheon - Simon
Lauren Socha - Kelly
Antonia Thomas - Alisha

What channel is it on?
Misfits is aired on the channels 4 and E4

What time is it on?
Due to the language used and the general content of the programme, it is on around 11Pm.

What genre is it?
The show is a drama, with elements of action, comedy and thriller.

Who is the target audience? 
Misfits is aimed towards teenagers living in England, although it does appeal to teenagers from other countries. It mainly appeals to English teenagers because they can relate to the characters and areas more than someone from a different country. A lot of slang is used, which an older auidence may not be familiar with.

What is the narrative?
A group of young offenders are given superpowers during a storm, their powers range from immortality to becoming invisible. They use these powers to overcome different scenarios e.g. a masked man following them.

What/who is being represented?
Misfits represents a very negative view of teenagers. The teenagers in the show are criminals in someway and have ASBO'S and have to do community service. .

Auidence Research (part 2)

As part of our work today, me and my group had to discuss the potential target audience of our opening sequence. This is important as it will help us determine how we can gather our research together in order to find a specific age group for our opening sequence and to see whether our originally planned target audience (20-30) goes along with this result. We will be holding a Focus Group, in which we have decided to try and get some teachers within our school to take part in, as well as the results that we receive from our questionnaire results.

We have decided to get teachers involved in our focus group as there are a variety of different age groups. Some of the teachers within our focus group will be our target auidence, as well as an older age group. This will give us a much wider age range to accurately determine the actual target audience that we will need to aim our opening sequence at. We have written a letter that we will send to a number of the teachers around our school. We are aiming to have 5-6 teachers within our focus group. We will also have to come up with a few questions that we will ask them in order to gather research into their particular views into both our chosen genre and opening sequence. We have discussed these in our group and have come up with the following:

What do you think are target auidence is based on the opening sequence idea?

How could we make the film more appealing to our target audience?

Would the opening sequence make you want to watch the rest of the film, and why?

Does the film idea appeal to you?

What aspects of the thriller genre would you expect to be in this film?

Audience Research (Part 2)

Focus Group Letter