Welcome to my blog for my A2 Media Studies coursework. With Hayley Pitcher, we have planned and created a 5 minute pyschological thriller entitled 'Mind Trap', which focuses on the life of Lucy, a teenager suffering from schizophrenia. As well as this, we have created two anciliary products; an audio advert that would be fit to broadcast on the radio and a poster to advertise our film to our demographic.

Note: all images in posts can be seen in a full-sized version by clicking on them.
Showing posts with label Audience Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Audience Research. Show all posts

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

13th October 2010

In our theroy lessons, we have been looking at Postmodernism how the modern era has made media products less about substance and more about style.
We think that our media product is reflective of the Postmodern view because our media product questions what reality is what different people's interpretation of reality. Postmodernism is sceptical of once secure theories of the truth and questions whether our perception of the truth is distorted by the media. Our media product also questsions the truth and one's perception of the truth by using a character that is not of sound mind.
Our media product also doesn't have that much of a plotline (not as much as our old idea, which was very plot-heavy and dominated by dialogue); we are mainly relying on camera shots to convey the plot and to convey the emotions of the characters rather than dialogue. This is quite typical of a Postmodern text; looks are more important than utility. We hope to bring in these ideas to our media product to make it more professional and artistic, thus more entertaining for the audience.
We have now recieved all of the 20 questionnaires that we handed out a few weeks ago and below are the results in pie charts:
















Most of the people who responded to our questionnaire fell into the 16-19 bracket, which is exactly who the film is aimed for. None of the respondants were below othe age of 12, 15, which is what we wanted, s we didn't think our film idea would appeal to them as much.















We made sure that we gave the questionnaire out to 10 males and 10 females so that it was unbaised in terms of gender and then it wouldn't affect any of the other questions.















Altogether, 14 people wat 1-8 short films a month, and only one person watches 17-20 films a month. This is not what we hoped for, but it is what we expected. We hoped that we would find people that be interested in short films, but it seems that nowadays short films are not that popular. However, with our film, hopefully we can introduce people into watching more short films.
















The vast majority of the people we asked use the Internet to watch films, which is hardly surprising. With the ever-growing popularity of the Internet with young people and the increasing number of websites that allow one to upload films easily and for free, the Internet is highly important for short films. Sometimes, short filsm are shown before feature films in cinemas and on DVDs, but this is rare.















Unsurprisingly, YouTube.com is the most popular video hosting website that our demographic use to watch short films. However, MegaVideo.com is also quite popular. Hayley and I will post our short film on both YouTube.com and MegaVideo.com to ensure that we attract the moast amount of viewers.

















Judging by this graph, 16 poeple whould be interested in seeing a psychological thriller, which is good. Despite the fact that 6 of these 16 said maybe, I think that if we make a good film, they will want to see it.

















In this graph, we can see that the majority of people asked said that they would like to see a female protagonist. This is what we hoped the result would be like; we planned to use Hayley as the main character; If the audience wanted a male main character, we would have to rely on other people outside the group to help us, and we would rather use the two of us because we know what we are both reliable and serious about this coursework.














The audience said that they would like a teen protagonist, perhaps because they can relate to the character more and it a break from the norm. An adult protagonist would be more true to the nature of schizophrenia as it more common in adults, but the beginnings of schizophrenia comes in late teens, so it would more effective with a teenage protagonist as the character would be uncure of what was going on and more scared.















Plot-heaviness seems to be a favourite, as shown here. This goes against what we originally planned, as we going to rely on camera shots to tell the story, but I think that we may be able to work in more dialogue than we planned to have without it becoming too dialogue-heavy like our old idea.

Now that we have got our audience research, we asked one our friends who filled in a questionnaire if we could be used as our audience profile. He agreed, and it is shown below:

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

22nd September 2010

For our theory lesson, we have been looking at the Male Gaze, the Female Gaze and the Feminine Mystique.
We thought that our media product demonstrates the 'Feminine Mystique' well because Lucy is shown to be a very vunerable and terrified character throughout. This will be shown through lots of close-ups of her face and her facial expressions, and the use of shaky camerawork to convey tension and fear.
Also, Roxanne is portrayed as a Mother-Hen figure, as she looks after Lucy and is concerned when Lucy runs out of the house. Also, in the last scene, Roxanne is shocked to find her friend unconscious and almost acts in a hysterical manner.
However, none of our characters fit the Male Gaze or the Female Gaze because of their costumes. All the characters are appropriately dressed for their roles and there is no nudity or skin being shown. We decided on the costume being casual yet sensible because it is a more serious film, not a chick flick or romance. Also, the weather has an effect on this. Because we will be shooting at the end of October, the weather doesn't really permit us to use more reavealing costumes.
Having said that, it can be suggested that the Male Gaze is evident in our short film because the girls chracters will be wearing skinny jeans and feminine clothes which flatter the figure of the actors, so it can be argued that we are conforming to the 'male gaze' in that way, but only very subtly.
Also this week, Hayley and I devised a questionnarie that we will ask our target audience to fill in to fine out what they would like in the film, as this film is being made for their viewing pleasure and not ours.
Below is a SlideShare copy of our questionnaire: