A2 Media Coursework
Target Audience Screenings
The first stage of my audience research revealed that our short film may be better recieved in front of our demographic, one of these being teenage girls. It was important to follow this up, as these screenings are more likely to give accurate audience feedback. Another bonus of this being the second round of audience research was that I could then pitch solutions or new ideas to my target audience, using them as a focus group at the same time, after being informed by the first stage of my audience research.
Name: Sara Sheriff
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Name: Hannah Gundry
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Sara understood the narrative well, even if she said she wasn’t fully sure, she did describe back exactly what we were aiming for. I’m not worried at all that she wasn’t completely confirmed about what the film meant, as it means that it is more complex and has more than one reading. As Barthes theory says, it is more of an open text and can be unraveled in more than one way. This complexity means our audience is more likely to want to talk to each other after they’ve seen the film, encouraging more people to see it as it then becomes part of personal relationships (1974 Blumler and Katz). It is good that she enjoyed the editing and cinematography, which shows our film is more than just the narrative, it can be watched and appreciated for how aesthetically pleasing it is. This is a wonderful thing to hear as a director, which is a positive about audience research, as it can help the creators feel surer of their abilities and motivate them to create more and take more risks. It is good that it reminded her of our AS production, which she also saw, as there is clear synergy between our AS and A2 directing and editing styles, while at the same time being more technically advanced.
Gundry liked the editing; the layering between different scenes helped the story come together, even in the party scene where many different shots of different things were put together. This style was risky, as it could just look messy and be hard to understand, however, our audience research shows that it worked well, and in fact improved the story as we hoped. This evidence will mean that in future productions, we wouldn’t hesitate in taking this risk again. She once again understood the narrative, which helps to show that with our teenage audience, female teenagers; it may be more easily understood. This would be more effective if we could have a bigger target group to show the film to, but these two interviews still show we are on the right track. It was still clear that certain aspects were still hard to understand, such as the ending of the film, and what happened to the girl after the bath scene. It also gave us secondary opinions on whether to include extra titles to make the film easier to understand, which from our audience research, seemed to potentially have a good impact on improving the understanding of the film.