Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?



In order to attract the right audience to our film, first we had to understand our target audience very well and then we had to shape our film around what would attract them to watch it.






When we came up with our idea, we decided we needed an actress for the main character that was average. She needed to be someone the audience could relate to – in looks, personality, dress and lifestyle. We achieved this with our final actress.

We chose a crime-thriller film as it would attract a wide audience and satisfy what a lot of people look for in films. We also knew that if there were tense moments that could be scary in our film; young adults would want to come with their friends or partners for comfort – drawing in yet more viewers.

- We shot our sequence during the night to add drama and effect to our piece – the darkness makes everything more eerie.


- The film is also shot in an abstract style – with flashbacks telling about half of the film and explaining what led up to the present situation.
 - Our audience fits into a small, niche group of which our knowledge was already good. We knew that they spend a lot of time on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter so to interact with them for events such as our feedback screening, we created a Facebook group.

Go to our Facebook event
 
 
- Our screening attracted an audience of about 50 viewers, it was very succesful as it allowed us to get feedback on our sequence from those outside of our group at whom the film was aimed. We created a questionnaire for the audience to fill out and from this we established what worked well in our sequence, whether it was understandable and what the audience thought could be improved upon.
 
Photos of our screening:
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Our questionnaire filled out with the most common answers:
Media Questionnaire

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our Primary target audience for ‘The Safehouse’ would be young women between the ages of 18-32

This is Becky Thompson:

- She is a 21 year old female from London, England. 

- She is at Leeds University studying Psychology.

- She loves watching films and TV in her spare time and her favourite programmes are CSI and Lie To Me.

- She particularly likes watching films that make her think, her all time favourite films are Seven and Hannibal.

- She loves to go out clubbing - she finds letting her hair down at the weekend after a long week is the best way for her to relax. 

- She goes to the on cinema campus on at least once a month to see the latest blockbuster – although when back home in London she tries to go to her small, local cinema as it shows smaller indie films which she also loves to watch.

We chose the girl in the film to play the role as she is a very relatable character – a naive young woman who is extremely unfortunate to be caught up in this situation. She leads a typical life that any of our audience could relate to - making the film experience all the more real.  By adding the element of rape to the film, it entices and intrigues the audience because not only is rape a scary and scarring experience, but it is something unknown to audience.

Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our production company is GPH Productions – it is a production company based in the UK that specialises in making low-budget, indie films that tackle real problems with today’s society.

Our distribution company is Heartbeat Films – this is also a UK based company that work alongside GPH Productions to distribute their films. This is a mutually beneficial relationship as the companies work in synergy – building their relationships and the reputation in the industry together, whilst also making each other money.

PROBLEM WITH ALIGNMENT HERE

Two companies that worked similarly in synergy in real life for the film Paranormal Activity (2009, Peli) are Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks. 

As Paranormal Activity was made on a low budget, like our film, the production company didn’t have the money to distribute on a large scale. They couldn’t afford to put the film in cinemas so it travelled around on the film festival circuit before eventually being seen and liked by people high up in the film industry – the film then got picked up by Paramount and was advertised, screened and distributed on a worldwide scale.

This is the same path I think our film would follow. As both our production company and our distributor are small companies who deal with low budget indie films, they would not be able to afford an elaborate marketing scheme. Instead, the film would be screened in small, independent cinemas such as The Phoenix in North London. Although this would not be ideal to attract our primary target audience – The Phoenix doesn’t tend to attract a young, female audience – our secondary audience of older women who enjoy psychological thrillers would be able to see it there. Our aim would be to eventually build up enough hype around the film, via word of mouth, that the audience demand for the film would go up - like with paranormal activity - and a larger distribution company would step in and pay for large scale advertising.

Hopefully they would be able to advertise and screen the film in places where our target audience would see it – on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, on TV channels such as MTV and E4 and show the films in large multiplex chains such as the Odeon and Vue.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our product targets two social groups in particular – age and gender.

Women 

Our main target would be women – our film is based on a female perspective and has a very female storyline. In a way the film goes against typical conventions of films aimed at women – it is filmed and edited in a very gritty style which isn’t necessarily what a female audience it looking for and is about a non idealistic topic - rape. However, the main protagonist driving our story along is a woman and the character is very relatable s as she is just an average girl like our audience who gets caught up in this horrible scenario. The naivety of the character may worry the audience and the film tackles a very real, serious problem of rape and its’ effects.

Young adults 

In terms of age, our product could appeal to a wide range. As the main character is young, an audience of viewers around a similar age group would find the film appealing and relatable – making this our primary target audience. The girl is similar to some characters already on the radar for young adults in popular culture for example the character in teenage drama skins – Effy Stonem. 

The characters are similar in their ‘party-girl’ lifestyle and the clothes our main character wears, and her social life – which would be shown in flashbacks throughout the film – is very similar to that of the popular teen character. However, our film could also be appealing to a secondary, older generation that enjoy psychological crime thrillers such as ‘Seven’. As our film requires deep thought in trying to work out who the rapist is and what will happen next, this more mature audience will find this factor satisfying, despite the younger cast.

COURSEWORK STARTS HERE