AUDIENCE RESEARCH

10/9/14 | PLANNING | AUDIENCE RESEARCH

I did some research into audiences and how to target hem as part of my research for my audience profile. To start with, I researched how audiences are targeted by brands, and part of the way they do this is through marketing strategies. Therefore I will aim to market my film through social media like Facebook and Twitter pages, a website for the film and a poster. This will help me reach as a broad an audience as possible, and market my film more effectively than sticking to one type of marketing strategy. I will also need to consider why my target audience would want to watch my film. I must think about what makes my film stand out from competing films in the same genre, why my target audience would be interested in my film, and if my film meets the expectations and requirements of my target demographic.

 

Who is my target audience?

1.     My primary target audience: Any nationality or gender, ages 15-30+ who enjoy psychological thrillers and general horror films like Pyscho, as well as TV series of the thriller/action genre like American Horror Story.

2.     What makes my film stand out from the competition: Our film is about a girl with multiple personality disorder who is simultaneously a sweet little girl and a merciless killer. The thing that makes our film different is that unlike some films with this concept, no one knows that she is the murderer or that her condition is so serious so she is not being treated. Of course would never suspect an innocent little girl, so the story will follow whether she is found out and what will eventually happen to her.

3.     Why my audience should watch my film: My audience should watch my film because Cinema Scope, “One of the most respected publications on film” (www.cinema-scope.com) says that it is: ‘The most thrilling, exciting, gripping psychological thriller of the year!”

Understanding my audience will be very helpful when it comes to creating my own audience profile and devising my marketing strategy. A good way to define or segment an audience is through the acronym ‘GEARS’:

Gender

Ethnicity

Age

Region/nationality

Socio-economic group

I used the Bauer Media Advertising website to investigate how all products have defined audiences, which are segmented using the ‘GEAR’ concept. Here are some examples from my research on the Bauer website:

 

I got these results by using their ‘Audience Finder’ and setting the age range from 15-30+, as the target audience for my film is. This screenshot shows some of the results the search returned with some magazines that people in the same age range are interested in.

My target audience may also be interested in other forms of media like radio. In marketing my film, I want to reach as broad an audience as possible so I decided to research a radio station and see if it would be a suitable advertising platform for my film. I discovered that Kiss reaches a lot of people via social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which are media platforms I want to use as well. Kiss also reaches ‘950,000 Adults 15+ a week’ according to their website, and this fits with my target demographics’ age range. Therefore Kiss FM would be a suitable media platform for advertising my film.

 

What audiences are currently offered and how they access it

My audience would not only use ‘second hand’ media like radio, but also the internet to find out about new films. They would use media such as YouTube videos and adverts, Facebook. IMBD Tumblr, Twitter and iTunes movie trailers to learn about new movies that are coming out. Mailing lists also help to advertise new films to our target audience, such as Everyman and Odeon.

I went onto the iTunes Movie Trailers website to research more into what films audiences were currently being offered and how they could access new films. This is what I found:

 

Audience behaviour

Audience behaviour is separated into models, two of which are passive and active. These models construct audience’s differently:

Passive: The Media Effects model (hypodermic syringe model) sees audiences as completely influenced by the media they consume. It views them as easily led and manipulated, constructing them as gullible and passive.

Active: The Uses and Gratifications model sees audiences as viewers who make active choices about what media they consume to gratify certain requirements. Blumler and Katz outlines the four main needs: entertainment, information/surveillance, personal identity and social relationships (on-screen and real life bonding with friends and family).

Audiences can easily access new films through a simple internet search; the iTunes website is especially easy to use. The list of new thrillers is also constantly being updated so I know that if my film was marketed like this it would be easy to audiences to access.

Maslowe’s Hierarchy of Needs

This model of hierarchy shows that the audience needs which drive them to consume media are only important when lower needs are met. These include things such as the need for air, water and food. The drive for consumption of media is only active when these lesser needs are met, as shown in this diagram:

The two-step flow model of audience behaviour

The limited effects paradigm is evidence that social factors, as well direct information from the media, influence the way audiences process texts. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet investigated the way audiences consume media during a 1940 presidential election. They concluded that information flows through two steps to an audience, firstly directly from the text, and secondly through ‘opinion leaders’ who then communicate the information and their opinions on it to the audiences that they influence. The audience listen to the opinion leaders as well as the direct text and make a decision based on what they learn through this flow model. Consequently, researchers found that the media was less powerful than previously thought due to the influence of these opinion leaders.

Socio-economic bands

I researched socio-economic groups so I could see how brands defined and segmented their audiences, and this is what I found out:

 

 



AUDIENCE PROFILE COLLAGE

 

 

Here is my collage of my audience profile which accompanies my 'Audience Profile' post:

 

AUDIENCE PROFILE

10/9/14 | PLANNING | AUDIENCE PROFILE

Today we started building our audience profile for our film:

Age: 15-30+

Gender: Male and female

TV programmes they are likely to watch: TV series of the thriller and/or action genre such as Breaking Bad and Sherlock.

Films they are likely to want to see: Other psychological thriller and general horror films such as Carrie, The Conjuring, Pyscho, and The Shining, and Panic Room.

In their leisure time: they will be out socialising with their friends; go to fast food restaurants like Macdonald’s or KFC, spend time online on YouTube and social media; watch television programmes or go to the cinema. They will also enjoy listening to music.

Clothes: Topman, Topshop, New Look, River Island, Converse All Stars. High street shops that are not too expensive and so within the price range of the young adults in our target audience.

Media: They will spend a lot of time on social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so are likely to promote our film that way. They will probably own an iPhone or Blackberry so they can always access the internet for social media etc. They will very likely own a laptop or iPad for playing films, games, online shopping, streaming videos on sites like BBC iPlayer and YouTube.

Pictures I could use for my audience profile:

 

RESEARCH INTO PYSCHOLOGICAL HORRORS FOR PRODUCTION LOG

23/9/14 | RESEARCH | PYSCHOLOGICAL HORROR FILMS

I already researched some psychological horror films using Scoop It! However I wanted to conduct some more research into the genre, surrounding the issue of multiple personality disorder (MPD) in the main character, because this is what we want our main character to have. Multiple personality disorder is defined as: ‘a rare dissociative disorder in which two or more personalities with distinct memories and behaviour patterns apparently exist in one individual’. In our film, this is what causes Erica’s sudden change in mood and causes her to go from a harmless young girl to a merciless killer within seconds. Erica’s change is triggered by a flashback in our film to a time when she was bullied.

Other psychological horror or thriller films involving multiple personality disorder include Fight Club, Pyscho and The Three Faces of Eve. I decided to look into The Three Faces of Eve and find out more about it. It is a about a woman called Eve with multiple personality disorder caused by a traumatic event in her childhood (the death of her grandmother). One of Eve’s personalities even has murderous tendencies and causes her to try and kill her own daughter. This is very similar to our concept so could be useful for giving us ideas as to how a person with MPD is portrayed in films. It could also give us ideas for a title for our film, The Three Faces of Eve is mysterious and intriguing as it immediately creates an image of someone who is confused or not quite together mentally.

 

PRODUCTION LOG UPDATE

10/9/14 | PLANNING | DRAWING THE FIRST STORYBOARD

We split the storyboarding process between the three of us in our group, and we drew whatever part of the storyboard we had written up for the shot list. I story boarded from the beginning shot to the moment when the title appears on screen. I drew rough sketches for every shot; although not a lot of the shots I story boarded included people. We then put all our story boards together to create the final storyboard. It was important that we did this before we started filming so that we had a good idea of exactly what shots we needed to film.

29/10/14 | PRODUCTION | FILMING

Over this half term break Harriet, Amber and I met up and filmed for a day. We filmed using a Canon D60 video camera and a tripod to create steady shots. We filmed several quick shots from when Erica (played by me) is at home and going to bed, when she gets back up and escapes out of her window and when she comes back to her room again and goes back to bed. Amber was in charge of makeup, I contributed costumes and Harriet did a lot of the actual filming. We all contributed in setting up shots as we each had our own ideas as to how to construct each shot and we each had a turn at filming. Amber did a lot of directing the shots.

We spent 4 hours filming these scenes as we tried to get the same shot from different angles and shot types to make the film more interesting and draw attention to certain shots. Overall this filming was successful as we managed to film quite a lot of the shots we needed and included a range of shot types such as close ups, mid shots and mid-long shots.

 

REVISION FROM BLOG

I answered an exam question on King Arthur to practice answering exam questions.

 

Q1 Explain two ways in which the narrative (characters and events) in the extract fits the action and adventure genre.

This extract is a fantasy action and adventure film. It fits the action and adventure genre because the narrative includes typical codes and conventions of the genre, for example suspense and jeopardy. This is shown when the two characters in the plane are being chased by the sand apparition and the plane only just manages to avoid being swallowed up by it. This creates tension and suspense as the audience do not know if they will get away and they come very close to being consumed by the sandstorm. Another example of jeopardy is when the plane nosedives down the cliff and the sandstorm follows it. This creates a sense of jeopardy as the audience does not know if the plane will re-emerge of if it will crash. There is also spectacle, another typical action and adventure convention, when the sandstorm becomes a face and roars. It is terrifying and spectacular to look at, so creates a fantastic spectacle. This suits the fantasy action and adventure genre.

Another way the extract fits the genre is through the characters. There is a clear antagonist, a typical character in an action and adventure film. This is the villain, High Priest Imhotep, who creates the sandstorm. He is clearly portrayed as the villain because he tries to cause harm to the hero by trying to crash the plane. He also has magic powers which he uses for bad such as the ability to create sandstorms. There is also a heroine, Evelyn. She is constructed as the heroine because she tries to save the hero by stopping the villain from using his sandstorm. She does this by kissing him, and her heroism and bravery in saving the plane presents her as the heroine. This clear construction of archetypal action and adventure characters helps to define the genre for the audience.