Notes

1. Unit 6: Critical Approaches
PR1: Research Techniques in Film.
1. Understand how media producers define audiences for their product
Quantitative Research
Qualitative Research
Audience Profiling
2. Understand codes and conventions
Selection and Construction
Modes of address
Audience feedback
Quantitative Research
This research is when you use numerical date rather than an in depth answer this
can be used for graphs and percentages.
Qualitative Research
This is when you use a questions which requires an in depth answer, this is a good
way to gather opinions and reasons. This focuses on the quality of your answer and
what you’ve written.
Demographic Scale
This refers to the social grade definitions which are used to describe, measure and
classify people of social grades and income and earnings levels. For market research,
social commentary, lifestyle, statistics and statistical research and analysis.
A. Upper Middle Class
Higher Managerial
Administrative
Professional
B. Middle Class
Intermediate or clerical
Junior Managerial
Administrative
Professional
C1. Lower middle class
Supervisory or clerical
Junior managerial
Administrative
Professional
C2. Skilled working class
Skilled manual workers

2. D. Working Class
Semi and unskilled manual workers
E. Those at the lowest
State pensioners or widows (no other earner)
Casual or lowest grade workers
Students
BBFC – BritishBoardof Film Classification
It was set up 1912 by the film industry as an independent body to bring a degree of
uniformity to the classification filmnationality. The BBFC overrule and make any decisions
and passing films, they can reject and ban films and any films which get passed and can cut
parts, can give them ideas on adding scenes and altering the categories for films exhibited
under their own licensing jurisdiction.
- Jurisdiction – the official power to make legal decision and judgements.
U – Suitable for all
PG – Parental Guidance
12A – Cinema release suitable for 12 and over
12 – Video release suitable for 12 and over
15 - Suitable for any over the age of 15
18 – Suitable for only adults
R18 – Adults works for licensed premises only.
Alternative
This can be an independent film or indie film this is normally produced mostly or outside the
major film studio system. An example of a alternative film is:
- Shaun of the dead (2004) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIfcaZ4pC-4
Shaun of the dead is an alternative movie because its aimed towards a small audience
and didn’t make it into the mainstream audience. Its towards a specific audience rather
than a mainstream one. It’s not like typical zombie movies, its pushed more towards a
comedy rather than a serious movie.
Niche
This can be a filmwhich is taken seriously like an independent film aimed at a niche market
rather than a bigger market. An example of a niche film is:
- Tell no one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bjgv7OWpmU
Mainstream
A film which is really big and has a large audience a is aimed towards anyone wherever they
are. An example of a Mainstream movie is:
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE
Star Wars is a mainstream movie because it’s a filmwhich has been aimed towards
anyone, rather than to a specific audience. The Star Wars films have always been

3. popular so when they advertised the new movie it gained the interest of a wide
audience and became mainstream because of it.
Audience Profiling
 Gender
This is talking at
whether you are
male or female.
 Age
This is talking about
what age group you
would fall into for
audience purposes
for example 16-18
 Socio-economic
status
This is aimed towards
people of different
working classes for
example people who
are middle class and
working class.
 Psychographs
Aimed towards different types of people with different aspirations and goals.
 Geodemographic
This talks about saying where someone lives.
 Sexual Orientation
This talks about people’s sexuality for example whether someone is gay or bisexual.
 Regional Identity
This is aimed towards people who are in specific places of the UK.
The Gutenberg DesignPrinciple

4. I have used the Gutenberg Design to help me analysetwo differentposters,
this has helped me define which bits of the poster are the key points and what
will be seen firstwhen you look at the poster, this persuades the audience
looking at the poster what’s moreimportant and whatisn’t.
Exit Poll Link
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/87YYN5R

5. Exit Poll Report
We were asked to create a survey based
around a filmwe went to see at the cinema,
the two choices were Blair Witch and
Bridget Jones’s Baby. Based on the film I
created a survey to help collect people’s
opinions on how they heard about the film
and what they thought of the film. From my
survey I got 12 responses from a variety of
people. The purpose of this is too find out
how people hear about the movie and their
opinions about other types of films and the
movie they went to see.
The first question I asked was what is your gender? From the chart that I have
screenshotted you can see that more males went to see the movies than females which
doesn’t fit the target audience of the movie as its
aimed towards a female audience but from my
results you can see that more males saw the movie
when we went to the cinema. This show’s that the
film is breaking into other target audiences rather
than the ones its aimed towards. The next question
I asked was what is your age? As you can see the
people who answered my survey were mostly 18
and under, the movie itself is a 15 and my survey
shows a lot of younger people saw the movie
instead, apart from the one result which is 45 or
older. This
show’s that the
age range fits
the target
audience the
film is aimed
towards. The next question I asked was How did you
hear about this film? This is a useful piece of evidence
to back up the purpose of this survey as this helps
understand where the strong points are in the
advertising campaign for Bridget Jones’s Baby from the
results I can see that a lot more people found out about
the movie from Social Media, this also backs up the
question about age as a lot of younger people answered
the survey and a lot of younger people are more likely
to use social media so they are more likely to hear
about the film through various types of social media.
One person heard about the movie through the film

6. trailer which can be seen either on TV or YouTube, especially when watching adverts and
then a few other people heard about the movie via the internet, friends or family and then 3
people saw the advert on TV, which again
means they found about the movie from the
film trailer.
I chose this next question to help understand
what people’s favourite genres were to see
whether they saw Bridget Jones’s Baby
because they were interested in the genre.
From my results More people chose Comedy
over any other option, Bridget Jones’s Baby is
a romcom so people preferring comedy over
any other genre helps me understand that the
people who answered my survey were
somewhat interested in the humour the movie
had in it. Comedy is a very popular genre for
movies as people enjoy laughing at movies and
the concept and story that comes with it.
Three people chose Horror/Thriller, 1 chose
Romance and 2 other people chose other and
said their
favourite
genres are RomCom and Fantasy. This next question is
another question which is really important to the whole
point of this survey, the question was Was the filmhow
you expected it, and the majority of people said yes, this
shows that the marketing campaign for this movie was
successful as the majority of people thought the film
turned out how they expected it. Because the marketing
campaign was successful it means that people have really
enjoyed it, Bridget Jones is quite a big franchise as there
are other movies but
this film turned out
how everyone expected and matched the other films
which meant people actually enjoyed it. This also
leads onto the next question which was Did you find
the advertisement for this movie useful and once
again the majority of people said yes meaning the
advertisement campaign was really successful and
useful to the people who watched it this helps me
understand and brings off a good image to how they
have marketed and advertised this movie.

7. My last question on my survey was
would you recommend this movie to
other people and majority of people
said yes and the other 4 people said
no and maybe this is still a successful
piece of evidence and is matches up
with the other questions, and gives
me more evidence to say that the
campaign was successful and that the
majority of people who answered
enjoyed everything about the
campaign and the film.
After looking at all the responses and
looking at the advertisement
campaign this shows that the way
they advertised on social media, on
TV and all the other forms of advertising had a successful impact on the movie and my
results help show this. The way the movie was aimed towards specific audiences also
matched with the results and with the amount of people who went to see the movie. From
what I can see looking at the research I have gathered people were very interested in the
movie they went to see and the forms of advertisements people said they found out about
the movie was successful as it was how they had expected it.
Poster Analysis – Bridget Jones’s Baby
By looking at the poster you can see that the
women in the poster is look straight towards you
rather than anyone else in the poster whereas
the two men are both looking at her, you can see
by looking at the primal optical area that it says
the actresses name above the title of the film
which helps the audience to understand who is
who, whereas the other two actors aren’t as
popular and as serious as the main actress. The
colours in the poster help the audience
understand what type of movie it is as well as
how the actors starring in the filmare standing.
Using the Gutenberg principle when you look at
the poster the first place you look is the top left
corner and you can see the title of the movie and
the actresses name which shows the audience
that, that detail is more important than anything
else on the poster. You then start to look around
the poster and see everything else as well as the
other two actors who are seen looking at the
main character in the centre.

8. This leads onto colours in the poster and you can see that there is a balance between light
and dark colours which is noticeable, the first colour you see is the background which is
white which is associated with light, goodness and purity it’s a colour which is considered to
be perfect and the colour helps give meaning to the poster and to what the film is going to
be about the colour can also represent a successful beginning. The next colour which stands
out is the in the title they use pink in two of the words, the colour has a really strong
meaning like, sweet, nice, playful, charming and can mean feminine as well as babies which
from the title you can tell it’s going to be about a baby or its going to feature a child in the
movie so it has a very persuading meaning to the audience. The colour purple is used in one
word in the title. The colour can mean wealth, creativity, wisdom and dignity which has a
very powerful meaning to the movie, the colours just in the title are telling a story about
what’s going to happen with the idea of wealth which can means that the people involved
have a lot of money and the colour purple leads into the pink which then tells its own story
of babies and being a feminine colour. At the top of the poster you will see that there is a
tagline used which says “relationship status: beyond complicated” which can be obvious as
there is a women and two men on the front of the poster who are looking towards the
women which signifies an awkward relationship between the three. The poster doesn’t
need to grab too much attention as the films before this one are very popular so people are
probably very interested in seeing the movie if they’ve seen the previous films and have
enjoyed them so when it comes to pulling the audience in, the films already have a large
following and people are probably very interested in it especially when they announced
they were making another Bridget Jones movie.
Poster Analysis – Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The poster has a red on it which in Star Wars
terms means the dark side and blue which means
the light side, the black and white helps signify
space and anything dark which is featured in the
movie. The black and yellow in the title is very
noticeable and is very recognisable. The poster
features a lot of the main characters as well as
recognisable spaceships and weapons which fans
of the franchise will recognise from older movies
or from the trailers. The poster shows a lot of
nostalgia to the old films and just from looking at
the poster it is very persuasive at trying to pull an
audience in because of how popular the franchise
is. The layout of the poster and the split between
dark and light is influencing what people would
want to see from a Star Wars movie and from
seeing it on the poster. It refers heavily to a Sci-fi
audience with the use of a space background for
the poster as well as space ships but once again
the franchise has a very big following so it’s very

9. understandable what it’s about. The poster has a lot of different stars on it but in the
Primary Optical area it has the main villain in the movie which is Kylo Ren, I believe this
character will be unique selling point because people will want to see what this villain is like
compared to previous villains for example Darth Vader, it then goes onto showing Rey and
Finn, two of the main characters in the movie has its heavily influenced around those two
but a star which will help bring old fans back and the nostalgia from the old movies will be
Han Solo who is a very popular Star Wars character a long with Princess Leia who are from
the old movies. The three main characters are made to look bigger than everyone else as
they are more important and are being used as a unique selling point to bring people in this
gives the audience a chance to focus on the new characters and to learn more about them
as the film progresses. The poster doesn’t have any quotes on but it doesn’t really need it,
Star Wars is so popular that the poster sells itself with just the iconic characters, new
characters as well as space ships and everything else on it. You wouldn’t be disappointed
with a poster if it didn’t feature it as the poster speaks for itself especially with how the
characters are positioned and facial expressions. Like with quotes the poster doesn’t have
any tagline on it either, it doesn’t need it to help sell itself more than it already does it
features so much about the movie already it doesn’t really matter that it doesn’t have a
tagline as people won’t be looking for things to read with the amount of nostalgia on the
poster especially since it’s been a while since a new Star Wars film. From the explosions
featured on the poster there is going to be a battle which will lead to devastation to either
the dark side or the light and from the look on the characters faces as well as being able to
see they have the lightsabers out and some of the characters look like they are ready to
fight that there is going to be a big war, but with any Star Wars film this is definitely
expected to happen and this is something that definitely pulls the audience in.
Trailer Analysis
Bridget Jones’s Baby. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJsvmscPY9w)
From the first 10 seconds you can already tell it’s going to be a rom-com film from the
humor and the whole concept of the movie, you can already tell who the main characters is
from the way the trailer is shown in their point of view, also the use of voice over from the
main character it makes it obvious. Apart from the comedy structure some parts of the
trailer seem really serious and this adds to the feel and how the movie is going to turn out
especially if you’ve seen the previous movies you’ll have an understanding on the structure
of the trailer and some of the characters.