Music Ideas

To help me decide upon the music genre and styles, I need to collect an understanding on what my target audiences enjoy. If they enjoy the soundtrack to the trailer (and film) they are more likely to enjoy the trailer and have an interest in it.

The music which I, and many of my year group, enjoy at the minute includes indie music such as Blossoms, The Last Shadow Puppets, and Catfish & The Bottlemen.

Only Catfish & The Bottlemen are on YouGov, people who enjoy this enjoy the film 'The Inbetweeners Movie', although my film is not a comedy, it relates to my product as it is a low budget British film.

I decided to explore the royalty free music industry and found a website with great songs:

It is hard to clearly see in this image, but the problem with this site is that each song costs $80 to download, which is just too much to pay for a track.

After struggling to find a good site for music, I discovered a forum on Vimeo where other film makers had the same issue I had. It is full of great Royalty Free websites.

Pete Buckingham

This is Pete Buckingham's division of cinema audiences. As displayed above, there are seven different groupings:

• Hero Seeker - Don't go out much, plan well in advance
• Impulsive Materialist - Fashion victim, word of mouth is key
• Film Fanatics - Male, pre-plan their trips, 25-44, go in 2s, review-led
• Impressionable Socialites - Under 25. Like blockbusters, led by ads
• Modern Parents - Kids pressuring the parents
• Fun Lovers - Not film literate. Big film and video consumers
• Youth of Today - See films as soon as they come out.

The Impulsive Materialists would possibly be interested in my film as it is an independent film, they will most likely hear about it from other people over a dinner.

As my film will be featured on a magazine and a poster, Impressionable Socialites may have an interest in my film due to the fact that they are led by ads, however, they like blockbusters and my film will be far from that.

Alongside this, the Youth of Today will have an interest in my film and I will target my product to be relatable to the teens; this is a good idea as they watch films as soon as they come, therefore relating my film to the Youth of Today means that I will have an immediate audience and fan base.

Audience Research

Thanks to David Lewis, I have been able to improve my knowledge on audience demographics and psychographics. This is secondary audience research.

Demographics and psychographics from BigDproductions

My audience, which I am focused on appealing, would have the demographic letter code of 'E'. Their job status would be Students/casual workers as described on slide 3.

Psychographics, which divides people by their lifestyle and characteristics, includes:
Aspirers (seek status and materialistic values), Explorers (seek discovery, individualism, values adventure, traditionally a student), Strugglers (seek escape, few resources beyond physical skill. Buys alcohol, junk food, lottery tickets. Lower demographics), Reformers (seek enlightenment, social awareness and independent judgement. Aware of good taster but anti-materialistic).
I will be focusing my product at explorers (as they will want to explore new and indie films), strugglers (as they have low demographics and do things teenagers do - such as eat junk food and buy alcohol) and aspirers (as they are often students or young people at the start of their career).

Audience Primary Research

Create your own user feedback survey

I created a survey for primary research as seen above.
Here are the results that I collected

Target audience survey results from mlevesley

From this, my search points to the ideas that male teens:

• Enjoy Drama, Comedy and Documentaries
• Do not like multi narrative films
• Would watch a teen multi narrative teen film if nothing else was on

Young adult men:

• Enjoy horrors
• Would watch a teen multiple narrative film

Young adult females:

• Enjoy all genres
• Would watch the film

The older generations:

• Enjoy dramas and documentaries
• Would not be interested in my film

Changing Briefs

As stated in my previous blog post, the acting limitation issue means that brief 10, a short film in its entirety, will appear to be really low quality. Because of this, I have decided to change briefs to brief number 2: a promotional package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with a poster for the film and a website homepage for the film (the other option is a film magazine front cover).
Changing to a teaser trailer will allow me more freedom for the narrative, I think I will explore Cameron's modular narrative theories episodic anthologies and/or anachronic. Feel free to explore my narrative theories research post.

Reflective Comment
This post is to the point and allows the reader to see the previous posts leading to the change of brief. To improve on this, I could have added examples of teaser trailers, posters and film websites, but this can be done in my analysis of the media forms.

The Problem - Actors

My plan was to hire actors from a professional site, however, you have to be 18 years of age so that is not possible, I also do not like the idea of having to rely and order complete strangers.

Another possibility is using members of the sixth form drama class, however, they are busy people with high demand therefore it will be hard to arrange meetings and filming; if they are to be used they have to be done within the next months, if there is then any continuity problems then they will not be able to be re-shot.

The approach which I am taking is using friends with basic acting skills, this will seem really low quality in a short film though.

Reflective Comment
I should have bared this in mind from the beginning of the course to allow myself a better approach for the production and planning. This post is simple, allowing the reader to clearly see the problem and the actors I will use (my friends).

Narrative Theories

I have been studying the narrative theories by Todorov, Propp, Barthes, Strauss, Cameron, Freytag. The information has been collected from Slideshare, by MissConnell:

Narrative theory from MissConnell

In relation to my idea, I considered three narrative theories which I could use as seen below:


Reflective Comment
Before my research, I was very unaware of the different narrative theories and the theorists who have created them. This post provides evidence where I gained an understanding and my own work that I produced; the presentation is interactive for audiences and, in my opinion, is clear to understand; I have also finished on a concluding slide which states the narrative style I may wish to include: theorist Cameron's anachronic style where there is a prevalence of flashbacks and/or flash forwards.

Initial Pitch and Presentation

My Initial Ideas Pitch Presentation from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.



Reflective Comment
After changing my brief, the presentation is fairly redundant. My research on film posters was fairly useful on an introductory stage, similar to my target audience research.