Evaluation Q4 + Q5

1. Evaluation
- Who would be the audience for your
media product?
- How did you attract/address your niche
audience?
By Harry Pennington

2. Focus Groups
- Our audience was identified through our use of focus groups
and surveys, through this we have a reliable outlook on the
audience that will be most attracted to our production.
- The audience that we identified to be our largest base is male
young to middle aged (19-60) and we would also gain around
just under half of females in the same bracket according to our
focus group activities. The class of our audience is working to
middle class, and we have we have no ethnicity that we have
tailored our production for.
- We decided that in order to get a better
picture of what people were looking for from
our film, the best idea was to create a group on
Facebook to use as our main “Focus group”. We
asked questions about British Crime films in
order to collect data which could then be
transferred into expanding our audience, and
making our current audience more satisfied. The
images show some features of our Focus Group,
and we even carried out a Survey: The results of
which can be seen on this print screen of Excel.

3. Getting an Audience
- We’ve attracted our audience by appealing to all that they look for in this kind of film.
- We have ensured that the mix of humour, violence, language and style have all been mixed in the
correct way that entices the audience we made this for.
- Our research into Codes and Conventions has helped us provide a better insight into what kinds of
things people are looking for in a British Crime film, and have ensured that these things are present,
to the best of our abilities.
- Based on how the surveys and research panned out, it can be clearly seen that there are
significant requirements on different aspects of the film that should be fulfilled. I believe that we
have indeed fulfilled these and that this has helped us obtain a section of the film-viewing
population.

4. Mise-en-scène
- In terms of mise-en-scène we made sure the props and scenery were
typical of British crime films, so quite run down areas with common
cars that you’d see everyday, the clothing was also very ‘normal’ of a
British crime film so the mise-en-scène was familiar to people who
regularly indulge in such films.
In keeping with the context of British
Crime films, we have strictly adhered
to the general rules of costumes and
the characters that they represent:
Ordinary clothes for the brawny and
stupid, Smart attire for the brains of
the operation. It is plain to see which
character fits into which category, and
the images quite clearly show the
obvious differences between Irish
Tommy (left) and The Suit (right) who
are two of the main characters in our
film.

5. Readings
- In terms of preferred reading, everything adds up. The whole set up has been
tailored to show exactly what’s going on with as little chance of the audience
seeing something different to what’s meant. This means that the whole story
itself isn’t too complicated, the characters are relatively straight forward and so
is the narration.
- This means that the chance of misinterpretation is lowered and our preferred
meaning will be met whilst also keeping the audience enticed.
- The way our characters are perceived are also well presented, again tailored so
how we want them to be seen can’t be misconstrued into something different.
For example, The ‘boss’ is in a dark room and the build and look of him show
exactly what he is. Then this is immediately backed up by his speech, his speech
gives him the power complex you expect him to have. When he calls Irish Tommy
an ‘idiot’ etc. he shows how much higher and more knowledgeable he is than him.

6. Characters
- For example Irish Tommy doesn’t have enough
time on screen to properly get across the image
that he’s stupid. You only get that impression
when he is on the phone to the boss and by then
the audience should already know what he
means.
- There is also no prior explanation to what the
starting scene is about, so it could be
interpreted as either a hit, punishment, or a
robbery. If we had any prior scenes we could
have used them to build up the present situation.
- However, our portrayal of the characters was rather brief. We could have
put in more detail into the characters as a whole rather than a quick
introduction. This means that there is a chance of our preferred reading to
be misconstrued by the audience.

7. Codes and Conventions
- The product also conforms well to the
codes and conventions on the genre of
the film.
- Because of this we will gain more
viewers as the film will conform to
exactly what they would be expecting of
a film of that genre.
- The character of The Suit in particular
seems to go against the normal codes of
such a film as this: We hardly know
anything about him apart from the fact
he “makes sure everything goes to plan”
and could attract a different kind of
audience who like to see things that go
against the hegemonic norm for a British
Crime film.

8. How to Improve
- Our characters are also quite simple,
offering little in depth showing, again in
order to more captivate the audience we
could have made each character that little
bit more detailed and explained to offer
more context and complexity.
- With our audience range that we got a
good idea from using our focus group we saw
that we weren’t picking up a large viewing
from the female audience.
- This may have been increased by the
introduction of a female character which we
have failed to do, had we done this then we
may have increased the amount of people in
our audience as we’d have taken a larger
share of female viewers. But we’ve lost then
due to the lack of a female character.