Audience Research

For my audience research I wanted a detailed analysis of what my target audience is interested in when regarding comedy films. So instead of conducting a standard questionnaire, I decided to create this reaction video. It includes 3 of my classmates (whom all fit within the age range of my target audience) and my teacher who is in his early 30s. I decided to include my teacher in my audience research because I was interested in seeing his answers and analyzing what the similarities and differences would between each age group. If there were a lot of similarities with each age groups answers then that could mean I would be able to target a larger amount of people, thus increasing the chances of obtaining more viewers for my film. I was not able to include all the footage I shot because the video would have been over 1 hour long and very boring. So instead I recorded all the responses that were given and only showed the best responses in the video.

Here are the questions that I asked my participants.

Each question was particularly tailored in order to generate the best responses from the participants, which I could then use and incorporate into my short film. I made sure to create two sets of questions. This is because I was unaware if the participants had seen all 3 of the movies I used, which were 'Anchorman', '21 Jump Street' and 'Bridesmaids'. 

The first question I asked was "Have you ever seen this film before?" This was an important question to ask because depending on whether the answer was "yes" or "no" it would then allocate them onto a particular group of questions. 

On the day of recording I decided not to ask the second question in my 'yes' group of questions, which was 'Would you recommend it to someone else? Why/ why not?' I chose to remove this question from the survey because after evaluating the question I couldn't figure out how receiving their answers from this question would improve my film. 

So the first questions I asked for the "yes" and "no" responses were "What aspect of the film did you most engage with?" and "After watching this trailer would you go see this movie?"  This was important to know because if I know what characters, story plot, style of comedy and so forth my target audience most enjoys then I can include those aspects into my own film, thus making it more enjoyable and more successful. What I found very interesting was that all my participants had similar answers to these questions for all 3 trailers. The general consensus was that dialogue is a highly important factor in the success of a comedy. This is good to know because when I come to the script writing stage of my production I shall be sure to research what makes good storytelling and how to make it funny through the use of dialogue. 

The second questions I asked for the "yes" and "no" responses were "What particular aspects of the film did you not enjoy?" and "What particular aspects of the trailer did you not enjoy?". This was a highly important question to ask because the responses given would help me establish what not to include in my comedy film. This research has illustrated that I should avoid including any context that may be seen as 'dark humor' such as sexually derived comedy. This was brought to attention by a female participant who found that this form of comedy, which see saw in the 21 Jump Street trailer, made her feel a bit uncomfortable. However, she found the same style of comedy amusing in the Anchorman trailer. The main aspect that made it enjoyable was that she understood that it was meant to be a joke due to the fact that the character saying it was so outlandish so the participant never took it seriously. This tells me that if I attempt to use this dark humor I should include an outlandish character that the audience can't take seriously in order for the dark comedy to be received well.  

Now I shall be evaluating the responses given from my participants about the first Anchorman question, which was titled "What are your first impressions of Ron Burgundy?" I decided to include this question because I felt that this character broke away from the stereotype that viewers like characters because they are relatable. Anyone who has seen Anchorman can easily say that this character is very outlandish and very hard to relate to, but is still considered one of the greatest characters within comedy of all time. So I was interested in finding out why this is. One response that I picked up on was that the participant enjoyed not only Ron Burgundy, but he also enjoyed the responses given off by other characters when they see and speak to Ron. This is useful for me as it tells me that if I decide to go down the route of only having one lead character then I shall need to include supporting characters that react to my characters antics and show the audience that this character should be enjoyed, but not taken seriously (if I choose to use dark humor for this character).

The second Anchorman question was called "Do you prefer a male lead in comedies?" I felt this question would provide me with good responses from my participants, which would then help me decide whether to include a male or female lead in my short film. All the responses given by my participants were very similar. They all said that they didn't have a preference on if they prefer male or female leads. One of my participants stated that the gender of the lead character was dependent on the context of the film. This made sense because in the context of Anchorman (1980's news reporter) people were more likely to see a man being sexiest to females than the other way round. When it comes to me choosing the gender of the lead character in my film I will most likely choose to have a male lead. This is because I am a man and it would be very difficult for me to create humor that a female audience would like more so than a male audience. So by having a male lead it should allow the male audience to relate to this character more. 

The first and only question that I specifically asked for the 21 Jump Street trailer was called "Do you prefer comedies with more than one lead character?" This question generated a lot of great responses from my participants. All of them stated that they prefer comedies with more than one lead character. However, some participants had different reasons why they prefer multiple leads. For example, one participant mentioned that he related more to the pudgier lead character in 21 Jump Street than the muscular lead character. This is good because it told me that by having multiple lead characters it would provide a greater opportunity for a larger audience to engage with my film. This larger engagement could be done if I decided to have a male and female lead, thus aiming at two large markets. Another great aspect that one of my participants brought up was the fact that by having two lead characters it would provide the actors to 'riff' off each other, This is good as not only does this provide more footage for me to choose from, but this chemistry also translates through the screen. This is good as the audience can see this chemistry and they can see the friendship between the actors is authentic, thus making it more enjoyable for the audience to watch. 

The last question I asked all of my participants after the Bridesmaids trailer was called "Do you think women can be as funny, if not funnier than men?" I asked this question because I was interested in finding out my participants preferences on females in comedies. This interest stemmed from the fact that compared to the amount of comedies with males lead there aren't many films with female leads. The responses correlated with my interest as all the participants stated that they thought women can be as funny if not funnier than men. With some of the participants stating that it was a difficult question to answer due to the fact that they hadn't seen many comedies with female leads, thus making it harder for then to evaluate whether they thought women are funnier than men, These responses are very useful to me because when it comes to me writing a story plot for my film I shall be looking at other successful comedies for inspiration. So if I don't find many examples of good comedies with female leads this won't hinder me exploring the option to either include a character or make a lead character female.

History and development

After completing this piece of work I feel that I not only have a better understanding of where the comedy genre originates from and how it has developed over time, but also an idea on some aspects that I should include in my final piece. I have learned that the two most popular forms of comedy over the years have been slapstick and dialogue based. This is good for me to know as I can incorporate these aspects into my own short film. In the future if I am unsure on whether to base my film primarily on slapstick or dialogue I can create a focus group and show them examples of both forms of comedy. This would allow me to see which was more popular among, what would be, my target audience. 

Another interesting thing that I noticed while researching the history of this genre was that there has been evidence of early comedy female stars such as 'Doris Day' and 'I love Lucy'. This was interesting because it is a well known fact that the comedy genre has consisted of mostly male directors, producers, actors, writers and so forth. Knowing that not only has there been female's working within this genre, but working to the same standard, if not higher than the men, is a reassurance to me. This is because originally I thought I needed a story plot that revolved around a males perspective of the world in order to get more laughs. This feelings stems from the realisation that comedies based from a females perspective can be criticized harshly even before people have seen it. A good example of this occurred when there was a remake of the classic comedy 'Ghost busters' with a female team of ghost busters instead of male. However, learning that having female characters doesn't necessarily mean it won't be hated has inspired me to expand my thinking and ponder what my film could be about. 

  

Introduction to the brief

I have chosen to do brief 10, which is a short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may  be live action or animated or a combination of both. This piece will accompanied by two ancillary tasks, which will be a poster for the film and a film magazine review page featuring the film.

I have decided to attempt this brief over others because in my year 12 coursework I made a 2 minute opening scene for a horror film. Personally I feel that it was not as good as it could have been. So I want to try and do something similar for my year 13 coursework, but make it have a more cinematic flair to it, like better quality film footage and better audio, instead of it being  homemade.  

I was tempted to go with brief 2, which is to create a promotion package for a new film. It would include a trailer and two of these three ancillary options: a website homepage for the film, a film magazine front cover, featuring the film or a poster for the film. The reason I decided not to go with brief is because I feel that making a short film would take less time to shoot for, which be at most 3 days. Brief 2 may require me to shoot in various location, which will be more time consuming.

So since I know what brief I am going to do (brief 10) I now have to decide what genre to do for it. I have created a prezi that answers this.

Audition Skills (Research)

In this post I will be talking about my first attempt at creating a radio advert through using the Adobe Software called "Audition". I will mention my experiences learning to use this software and why I think this software is the best to use for my future ancillary task of creating a radio advert for my short film.

Before using this software I wanted to first come up with an idea on what the radio advert would be about and what it would roughly include. That is why I created this timeline that depicts what I wanted to include. First I came up with a product that I would sell. I decided to use the children's game known as "Zombie Dice". This meant that I needed to think of sounds that would resemble the genre of the game (horror), sounds that would appeal to a young audience (9 to 12 years old) and fit within a 30 second time frame as that is the standard length of time for a radio advert. As you can see in the timeline below I have clearly written what I wanted to include in my advert and the justifications for them. Something that was really helpful in the production of this radio advert was that when I visited the website for the game it had a text depicting what the game is in a child friendly way. I then read it aloud and timed how long it took to say. It came to 40 seconds long. Once making a few changes to shorten it I then had a script, which was really useful and saved a lot of time than making a script from scratch.
























After finishing my timeline I began working on creating the radio advert for "Zombie Dice". In the picture below you can see the audition software and the final edit for my radio advert from 0:22 to 0:32.5. This piece of software was relatively easy to use. Embedding the audio files was easy to do as it was a simple drag and drop process. As you can see in tracks 1 and 4 I used a fade out. This was easy to do as it only required me to move a square in the top right corner of the track and drag it to the point where I wanted the track to start and fade. Something that I really liked about this software was that I had the ability to change where the tracks could be heard. This was great as it gave the advert some spacial awareness, thus making it appear realistic and therefore more exciting to buy. However, the software did have its problems as well. For example, I wasn't able to put 2 audio files in the same track. This meant that synchronizing the audio together was very difficult to do. Overall I think that this software would be great to use for my ancillary task in my coursework as it is easy to use.






























Here is the final product.

Stabiliser (Research)

Photoshop Skills (Research)

In this post I will be talking about my first attempt at creating a movie poster through using the Adobe Software called "Photoshop". I will mention my experiences learning to use the software and why I think this software is the best to use for my future ancillary task of creating a movie poster for my short film. 

Before I began using Photoshop I wanted to make a rough sketch of what my poster would look like. I designed it so that it would meet the target audience of anyone who enjoys crime. I followed the codes and conventions of crime films by drawing a character in the stereotypical investigator outfit, which is a black suit and tie with sun glasses to make them appear mysterious/shadey. I also decided to draw the title in bold italics. This is because bold italics indicate action and excitement, thus making the poster more interesting for whoever sees it. I chose to do this sketch in order to help me follow a rough plan when creating the poster. This is to prevent me going in any tangents and make the poster less effective to the target audience. 

Once I finished my sketch I began creating my film poster. Here is the final product.

As you can see from my poster I managed to follow my sketch fairly well and changed some elements to make the poster more aesthetically pleasing. The first thing that I did was to blend the middle head to the body. This was fairly challenging as I struggled to fade the neck with the shirt collar. To combat this struggle I went on to YouTube and searched for a tutorial on how to do it. The next edit that I made was to change the colour and lighting of his face to match the other two. I decided to make the shot a bit closer compared to the sketch because I feel it is more engaging and intense, which helps create a good sense of what the film is about.

By researching and using these Photoshop skills I feel more prepared for when I have to make a poster for my short film later on. I am more confident in using the various lasso tools, gradient tool and brush tool.