Audience research

For my secondary research, I looked at audience theory and identification and how it applies to my film. I found that audience identification is split up into  two categories such as the demographics and psychographics. Furthermore, I looked at john Hartley and that he believes in demographics which is split into socially grouped audiences. For example social class, gender and age. For my film I have decided to have my target audience of 15-25 years old of the social class of C2DE. The reason why I chose to use the teenage drama as I looked at John Fiske who believes that education and the education received  by the audience offers different  ways in which they are targeted. For our film we decided to have a complex structure seeing as  our film is targeted at a specific audience who will understand the concept of the film. Also the regional links which is another demographic categories of the London gritty vibe this is set in an urban area. Having identified that our audience, as a group we wanted  to look at secondary behaviour theory. I looked at Richard Dyer who believes in the ‘Utopia solution’ theory where the media makes up for the inadequacies. For my film I’ve decided that the inadequacy should be confusion and isolation. This is because teenagers  between the ages of 15-19 feel that they are in a world of confusion and isolated by the older generation. While the solution is clear  is clarity and community. I decided that I could use this in my own film seeing as the setting and location is set in a communal area for example it is set in a pub and a club  these both follow the convention of my genre. My film is based on a urban teenager drama.

 furthermore, I the began to look at Abraham Maslow theory as he believes  in the ‘Hierarchy of needs’ theory. I have decided that my film should be based upon the affiliation as different audience groups respond to different motives. To be specific,  teenagers are more interested in hock tactics while women are more interested in emotional material. By me researching this, this has helped me to plan my own film as I know that females are interested about love and emotion, while males are interested in drama. Teenagers are a whole are also interested in shock and action. All In all I have decided for my film to be about drugs and crime.

Moreover, I can find out who my target audience are and what motivates them by looking at stereotypes and doing questionnaires as well as looking at films. All in all I then decided to look at films such as ‘KIDULTHOOD’, ‘Surviving summer’ and ‘Harry Brown’. By watching these films I have realised that they all have them same representation of teenagers and young adults . For example in Harry Brown, the main protagonist ‘Jack O’Connell’was seen living on a broken down estate near an alley way, this automatically gives the audience the impression that the teenager is unstable and aggressive in the taboo language that is used throughout the film. This is also highlighted  It then made me realise that these are a common theme in urban based films, seeing as they stereotype the characters, As they are normally in a dilemma. this is presented through the representation of the characters clothing, for example they are seen with hoodie, tracksuits and hats that tend to cover their faces and identity to society  this gives the audience the impression that they are up to no go, as well as them condoning violence overall, teenagers are seen as rebellious in as well as outside of school. Therefore, for our film I have decided to use a club for the films location thus I decided to stereotype the location for the urban teen drama. This will be supported with upbeat music to help set the scene of the partying lifestyle. This is apparent in our film where the main character is seen  with a spoon in her hand this is highlighted with a canted angle, this also how the audience that she is addicted to drugs while that is happening makeup is running down her face this gives the impression that she has been in the club for a long while. This is also in contrast to the teenage boy who is wearing a hood and smoking outside.

 The reason why film production companies do primary and secondary research is so that they can see who their specific target audiences are. My primary research is  going out of my way to collect information for my film for example, interviews, surveys as well as doing observations for secondary research from existing research for example audience theory. However for my primary research a I did questionnaires that asked teenagers (targeted around the ages 16-19 years old) as what they wanted from a teen drama. The reason for this decision was because  I wanted to know who was my specific target audience. As I collected my results, form the questionnaires I noticed that males preferred to watch drugs, alcohol abuse and violets whereas the females wanted to see crime and sex which relates to audience behaviour. This is because men are more interested in watching action whereas women are more interested in love. The social class of audience is of a C2DE, this makes the content of the film easier because they understand the troubles that teenagers of our generation have to face. They also preferred the location to be in a park or an estate however I decided against this seeing as it was too predictable of an urban teen drama, so I therefore decided to film the film opening at night clubs and pubs as I thought that this was a much better way to  convey our message across to the audience.

All in all, most of the students favourite films were , ‘Ill Manors and Kidulthood’ which were both good examples of representations of young teenagers. Both films link to crime, drugs and alcohol abuse and they films location were all set in the same locations that they preferred. All in all,  70% of audience wanted the main character to be a male and females in fact chose the location to be set at the local park as well as a broken down estates. This is because that urban teenage drama are normally based in those areas. In conclusion I am going to include,  that both male and female protagonist, this will stereotyped with the main character wearing hoodie and tracksuits clothing. As well as the music used to be upbeat house tempo. Also the location of my film will be set at night clubs and pubs due to the communal area.