1. Grading Criterion 4: Audience
When I started this project I was very clear that the target audience was 16-18 year
old girls because I wanted to raise the issue of inequality in the industry for them. I
wanted the artefact to be used as a starting point for a unit on media and collective
identity. In the past I have found students don’t realise there are any issues with how
gender are represented or they discuss the differences in a very superficial way. By
starting the unit with a film that highlights the gender gap within the industry, I hope
students will realise that gender, and how gender roles are perceived in society is a
very real issue that will affect them in their future careers.
Very importantly when writing the script for this film, I had to keep reminding myself
that I was communicating with my students, not my tutors. I wanted to introduce them
to auteur theory but I didn’t want them to switch off so I had to make the decision to
keep an explanation of the theory out while making it clear the theory excluded
women. I was worried about this element of the film because it would be so easy to
miss the whole point. I also was very conscious that a film about the history of
women in the industry wouldn’t hold their attention for very long without variety.
I always knew that the film would be a mix of video clips, images and interviews but
until I actually started writing the script I was still unsure as to how all of this would
come together. Thinking about how to engage the students from the start of the film
and make them think I was addressing them as individuals I decided to use a direct
mode of address and asked them to reflect on how they thought about themselves and
their chances of success. The questions, “Are you a young, smart and ambitious
female? Do you think you have what it takes to make it in the film industry?” are used
to make the audience feel they are part of the debate. To be told you’re very unlikely
to make it ‘because you’re a girl’ at a time when young people believe they have
equality is quite a powerful thing. I hoped the film would impact my audience in two
ways: 1. To shock them with the facts and highlight the issue 2. Make them realise
that there have been and there are successful female directors who they can look to as
role models

2. In my media classes I have 7 female students and 10 male students and as I had
planned to get them to watch the film and respond during class time I didn’t separate
the males and females to view the film nor did I tell them the main target audience
was the females. I told them I needed to do a vox pop for my course in the lesson
before the screening and as they were doing production work I was able to call them
away from the others one at a time. The difficulty of the vox pop approach was that I
didn’t want the other students to know the question ‘Can you name any female
directors?’ because they would search on Google to have an answer for me and
therefore the research would be compromised. In fact one student in the group did
manage to overhear and couldn’t help himself from doing a quick search before he
was called over. You can hear the others trying not to laugh in the background when
he replies ‘Barbara Streisand’. It was even funnier for me of course because he has no
idea who she is. I edited the responses into different films because I wanted to have
the flexibility later to comment on them separately if I needed to. The responses to the
vox-pop justified the need for the film because all students, male and female, were
generally unable to name a female director with the exception of Hannah who realised
that she knew Kathyrn Bigelow and Maddie thought the first Twilight film might
have been directed by a woman.
All students, male and female genuinely seemed to find the film interesting. I had
hoped the girls would find it interesting but I was surprised at the level of engagement
from some of the male students. I think Cameron made a very good point in his
feedback when he recommended I show that young women are just as able. He
suggested I use Ciara again in the film or a female group from his class to
demonstrate that their work is as good as the work of the boys. (02:00) While I didn’t
have time to show that within this film I thought it was a very interesting point to
consider if I was to develop the project further.
Of the girls, there were some interesting responses. Sian made an interesting point in
her feedback that it’s not something you think about a lot so you wouldn’t notice the
major problem that there aren’t a lot of women in the industry. (00:52) As a woman
who wants to go into the industry she said the statistics make her worried but she
picked up on the fact that Bigelow works in the male genres and that’s why she’s so
famous. She says she would have to consider that when creating something. Her

3. response is exactly what I had hoped for so much so that I was really surprised it had
worked so well. When asked what the main thing she would take away from the film
was she said, “Maybe women in certain industries aren’t treated as fairly as we all
think and that there is an underlying problem that wasn’t as noticeable as before but
now I’m quite aware of the fact and it makes me want to do something about it.”
My second female respondent Hannah, also surprised me with her response but in a
different way. She seemed put off by the fact that it would be so hard to succeed in an
industry dominated by men. (03:00) When I asked her if that wouldn’t male her more
determined she replied, “I’m not sure. It’s quite a tricky decision to make. You’d be
basing your whole life on something that was extremely hard to get into. So it would
make me reconsider.” This is definitely not what I wanted to hear and I didn’t expect
to hear it from Hannah because if I had to pick one female out of all the females I’ve
taught in the last 5 years at this school as ‘most likely to succeed in the industry’ it’s
her. She is an A* student with all the qualities you would imagine a successful
director to have – she is a leader, she has vision and she delivers. This set me back a
little bit and of course I had to follow up with a conversation with Hannah later that
day because she was in the middle of completing her UCAS application and I didn’t
want her to change her mind! Two very different reactions from two very close
friends who are both high performing and who both want to go into the industry really
does the highlight the individuality of our students. It also highlights the confidence
issue even further because if females like Hannah are being put off then it shows a
lack of confidence in their ability to change the order of things in the society in which
they live. I think that’s very sad.