We also felt that our target audience feedback was specifically
important for our production, being a low/no-budget film. As with
the Hollywood films, the film conventions tend to be based upon
stereotypes - yet as we were disobeying a lot of these, we had to
continually make sure of target audience were accepting of these
ideas. An example of this can be ‘Submarine’ (2010) which was
written and directed by Richard Ayode. This film is an example of an
art-house cinema film, with clear intertextuality from other French
films
The audience feedback from this film are greatly revolved around
the target audience for indie teenagers/young adults. It was evident
that they directed the film towards these audience as the reviews
are from them and were incorporated during the process.
Furthermore, this was also effective as although small scale, we
gained interested and people wanted to see our final trailer - which
could be replicated into actual professional releases of things. This
was seen due to the audience feel that their ideas were valued and
that they had a say in our production and were able to see
themselves in the final piece.
We felt that we both gained a lot of audience
feedback, which was interesting to hear as our
target audience all interpreted things differently to
each other or us. It's important to note that due to
conducting research and studying media
theoretically, we did have more knowledge of why
certain conventions were used, whereas the
audience tended to know of these subconsciously.
Therefore, some of their views were dismissed yet still
valued especially during the editing process. As this
meant our production met the needs of different
audiences with different likes and dislikes, even if they
are typically categorised into one original sub-group.
Most of these questions were asked whilst we were
editing, as during planning we used the audience
research questions to manipulate our planning.
. However, we also asked questions and gained opinions after in
order to view of our production - as not everyone can be fully
pleased with every film, even if we believed they would.
Additionally, by conducting all our target audience
research on social media/websites, we were able to
engage our target audience easier yet also more
willingly. Again, this was mainly as an effect of our
target audience being consumed by social media and
every point and many times a day. Therefore,
understanding the workings of social media and
already being a participator in such things, they were
happy to give feedback - even more so as they were
being mirrored in our production.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE WE ASKED??
In order to gain valid perceptions for our feedback, it is very
important to gain the idea from people that were a part of the
target audience we directed our production and ancillary pieces
towards. It is useful here to refer back to our target audience
research under the tab ‘Research’ and the section classed as
‘Audience Research’ called ‘Audience Profile’
We highlighted in this we were aiming towards 16-25 year olds
and people within the group of mainstream and
indie/’alternative’, as these people were more likely to enjoy the
genre of thriller.
However, gender, age, class race and other demographics were not
relevant in how the person may enjoy a thriller, it is typically only down
to their personality and already developed interests. The image below is
taken from our Micro-production research of the ‘alternative’ audience,
yet is valid here as it is the same group.
We also found it effective to obtain opinions
from people who were not a part of our target
audience. For example, asking someone from
the subgroup classed as ‘Traditionalist’ would
not supportive of all our certain conventions.
For example, we asked a 20 year old male if he liked the idea
of us breaking the gender stereotype and including two
females to play both the protagonist and the antagonist. To
which he replied “it’s fine in some instances, but it just seems
strange throughout the whole film”.
Whereas replies from mainstream audiences were accepting of the
change, yet they had to rely on main Hollywood films for examples of
where this is different. Additionally, our target audience of ‘Alternative’
were very accepting of this change and even seemed to enjoy it more due
to the connotations the conventions explored.