2. First Brief
To begin with, each person in our group was tasked with contributing
an idea for a film. Each member was told to think of at least one idea
which we would then narrow down into one film and go from there.
We, as a whole, came up with 5 ideas, which were all extremely good.
We decided on Jade’s idea to create a film about two girls going on a
night out as it was relatable to us due to our age. As we were all just
turning 18 we thought we would have good judgement on the effects
of drinking and the dangers of it.
3. Our Film and Audience
Our short film ‘Saving Grace’ takes you through the night out of two young teenage girls. One of the
girls, Grace, has her drinker spiked and is separated from her fired Becky - leading to unfortunate
events. The film follows the two young girls and tells a story of how a normal night out can take a
turn for the worse if proper precautions aren’t taken. The film was purposely created with the
intention of informing young adults that getting your drink spiked is a real issue and, when drinking,
you need to be fully aware of what is happening at all times to make sure you and your friends are
safe. Due to this, we decided the our target audience should be around the same age as the two girls,
which is 18 - also the legal drinking age in the UK, which makes the film relatable for the viewers.
However, due to us chasing a certificate rating of a 12A allowed for us to spread a message to a wider
demographic and could prepare a wider audience for when they are at an appropriate age to go out
drinking. Our target audience was taken deeply into consideration when writing the storyline for the
film as we conducted research into the audience right at the start of the planning stage, meaning we
would be fully prepared for when we started filming. We decided that we would not be aiming the
film towards a specific gender however it would be for young adults due to the nature of the product,
however, after asking a wide range of people ranging from ages 17-40+ we decided that the film
would be enjoyable and would spread the message to a much wider demographic than originally
intended.
4. Audience Research
We, as individuals, conducted research into our target audiences by using Google and the
BBFC official website as this would tell us all of the information we needed to know
regarding film certificates. We then uploaded our research onto Blogger to keep track of
our progress and used it as a way to store our work and present it in a neat manor. After
completing this individual task, we came together as a group and agreed that the age
rating should be a 12A as the content is not suitable for younger children due to the
consumption of alcohol, which would not be appropriate for children under that age.
However, we decided that by it being a 12A, we were a bit more limited in what we could
include compared to a 15 but we thought that having a wider demographic would be
worth it in the long run. Despite our age rating being a 12A, our target audience is for
ages 15-25. Our target audience isn’t gender specific and doesn’t change depending on
their occupation, however the genre of our film, along with the storyline, tends to be
more relatable to students due to the age of the characters and the overall nature of the
film as well as the ‘intellectual Puzzle’ as referred to by Rick Altman’s 2nd theory.
5. Understanding the storyline
In order to see if our film made any sense we created a questionnaire on Microsoft
Word, which we printed out and handed to participants once they had read the
synopsis. When asking the audience these questions we filmed their responses
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pGDZx22vKg) for evidence and uploaded it onto
YouTube. This allowed for us to complete a questionnaire whilst simultaneously
refreshing our brains on how to film and edit footage. We then shared this footage
onto our Facebook page in which our audience could then watch it - this creates a
connection between us and the viewer and hopefully gets them intrigued for what is to
come. The questionnaire itself included personal questions, which again made us
connect with them and allowed for us, asa group, to understand the target audience
we were working with and what different ages and genders thought of the storyline.
We asked questions such as “What genre do you believe this film is?” as well as “What
type of settings would you expect to see in this film?” - these questions allowed for us
to understand if we were making the right decision is where and what we were filming.
Luckily, after doing this questionnaire we changed up a few things proving for this task
to be very valuable to us.
6. Rough Cut
During the production stage of our film, we decided that a rough cut
was necessary in order to receive valuable feedback from our
audience as we could then improve on our film before it was finally
released. We asked our audience what they particularly liked with
63% saying editing and 27% saying lighting. With this in mind, we
planned to edit our final film in the same sort of way, taking
continuity into consideration. Another question we asked was “What
do you think we could change?” with a lot of people saying ‘music’.
This lead us to change the music behind the club scene as we wanted
the audience to like our final film. We think that audience feedback is
vital in creating the best possible production that we can and this is a
perfect way to apply that.
7. Audience Feedback for our Final Film
Once our film Saving Grace was completely finished and uploaded onto YouTube our
group decided that we would conduct a questionnaire to ask our target audience
questions as to what they thought of our final film after watching it. We then analysed the
results and created evidence via the use of charts. In the questionnaire we included typical
questions such as their age, gender and occupation to see if they fit into our target
audience. Pleasingly, the majority of the questionnaire audience were in our target age of
15-25 and the majority of our audience were students - this supported our target
audience research we conducted towards the beginning of the year. The questionnaire
also included more detailed questions such as “How likely are you to recommend this film
to someone else?” and “overall, did you enjoy the film?” - these questions allowed for us
to gain detailed feedback from the audience. If any member of the audience believed that
we could do something different, this would help us when creating another film in the
future.
8. What is Your Age?
The first question in our questionnaire asked our audience what their age was. We
set a survey up and published it over Facebook meaning we had varied results due to
multiple age groups having social media. We realised that we would encounter this
but we realised it wouldn’t be too much of an issue. The ages started from 12 due to
that being our certificate, ages were categorised into ages 12-24, 25-36,37-48 and
49+. The majority of participants were within our target audience as 40% of
participants fit into the 12-24 category.
9. What is Your Occupation?
This was the second question that we asked the audience as this would tell us if they
generally have the time to watch films in their spare time. Luckily, it was found that
the majority of the audience were students, which is our target audience. Due to the
many possibilities of different occupations we categorised the results into three,
although they are quite vague, they still are reliable and give us enough information
to work with.
10. Do you watch films often? if so, what is
your favourite genre?
We asked the participants if they regularly watched films in their
spare time. This would give us an idea of the people who were
watching our film. It would also allow us to gain different opinions
and take criticism from different members of the audience,
overall, many members of the survey do in fact watch films on a
regular basis - meaning that they are likely to be more critical. In
addition to this question, we also asked what their favourite film
genre was. With our film being a thriller/ drama, having people
who like the thriller genre would be useful to include as it would
give us a clear indication as to what our target audience would
feel about the film. The results showed us that our audience was
pretty split between what genres they like. However, the majority
of the participants enjoyed both thrillers and comedies.
11. What Genre do you Believe our Film Was?
After the audience had viewed our film, they were asked as to what they believe our
film genre to be. We didn’t give the audience any options as it could potentially
persuade them to choose something which they usually wouldn’t have and we
wanted accurate results. The results showed what type of genre the film was. The
results showed that the audience had mixed beliefs but had 50% of participants
concluded that it was a thriller. Another 40% of viewers believed it was a drama,
meaning that we overall got the genre right but we then realised that our film
probably lacked characteristics of a thriller film, helping us decide what to include in
any of our future films. These results also told us that some viewers believe our film
was an action film. We asked these people who thought this and they explained that
they gave this opinion due to the fast paced editing of the film. All of this information
allowed for us to note that we needed to include more codes and conventions that
made the thriller / drama genre more obvious.
12. Overall, did you enjoy the film?
After watching the film, i asked the audience if they enjoyed the film. Although this
question is relatively vague it gives us a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer about the content
we had produced. The results pleasingly showed us that everyone who answered the
questionnaire enjoyed the film. This implied to us that the film had a good storyline
and was portrayed in the right manor via the shots and editing. We received one
comment which stated “it really captured my attention, the editing was amazing.”
This told us that our film had a positive effect and hopefully got our message across.
Furthermore, i do not believe that these results are bias in any way due to the fact
that we didn’t ask for the participants names meaning the entire questionnaire was
anonymous so anybody could say what ever they wanted about the film.
13. What Rating would you give our Film out
of 5?
The audience was asked what rating they would give the film out of five, five
being the highest. This would be biased on the story, plot, editing and shots.
The reason we asked this question was due to the fact that a lot of films are
given 5 stars by critics and we wanted to know what people our age (target
audience) thought about the film. This would give us a taste of what it
would be like to be given a rating by a critic, although it isn’t as professional
of an opinion. The results showed that none of the audience believed our
film to be lower than a 3 and the majority of our audience believed our film
to be around a 4, which is suggested that our film was very successful in
regards to pleasing and entertaining our audience. This also inspired me to
get my mind working on creating another short film in the future to trying
and get a 5/5 rating from the majority of the audience.
14. Is There Anything Specific that you Would
Improve in our Film?
This question was asked to the audience after they had individually watched the
film with no other influences. It required for the audience to take into consideration
what they would specifically improve upon and why. We gave participants options
for three basic answers. ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘unsure’. Participants would select a box which
they felt was necessary. If they selected ‘yes’ then they were given a drop down box
which allowed for them to fill in their thoughts. One person from the survey said
yes whilst the others either said no or unsure, implying we creating the film in a
correct manor. We followed up further and questioned those who answered ‘yes’.
They said “There should’ve been more detail on how Grace was taken away.” This
was something we considered when filming so we felt like it was a relevant
comment, however, as a group, we decided that this may have been too detailed
for a younger audience to understand - meaning we would have to higher the age
rating and in turn, lowering our demographic reach, which could have possibly
hindered our film from getting as many views.
15. What Was Your Favourite Part of the Film?
We realised that this question would to have many various and detailed answers,
some of which included: ‘The nightclub scene’, ‘When Grace was being taken away’
and ‘The girls getting ready’. This was interesting to us as these films took the most
time to edit and shoot - implying that our audience in particular likes a more
complex style of film, probably due to it being more exiting to watch as it has a lot of
past paced editing and has a range of different music - provoking different emotions.
Also, the majority of our audience believed that the nightclub scene was the best,
which was due to the editing and how relatable (information gathered from previous
questions) the scene was to our target audience. For example, in this shot, we can see
lots of alcohol as well as purple lighting and high contrast - something which is what
is usually seen in a nightclub, making the film more realistic and believable.
16. Would You Recommend this Film to
Anyone Else?
The audience were asked a very general question but only required a simple answer.
The question basically tells us whether the person watching ti enjoyed the film
enough to tell someone they know. If the answer was yes then it presumably means
that the viewer enjoyed the film a lot as they went to the extent as to go and tell
somebody else. This is also a way of advertising and marketing our film as it is from
word of mouth. You are much more likely to trust what your friend says over an
online review so this is a perfect way to promote our film. Luckily, we had 100%
positive results which led us to believe that the film was a success amongst those
who were asked.
17. Overall, did you understand the film?
The question was one of the most important, in my opinion, as i
wanted the audience to not only understand the story but also the
message behind it as well. This question would also tell us whether we
got our point across about the dangers that can possibly occur when
drinking alcohol. t would also tell us whether the audience generally
understand that our main character, Grace was in danger due to the
acts of others and not the alcohol itself. Most of our audience seemed
to understand the film due to their answers, however one participant
said they were unsure of what exactly happened the Grace at the end
of the film. This could be because we didn’t want to directly tell the
audience what happened to her as it is all down to the person who is
watching and their opinion although it is heavily implied of her fait.
