The document discusses the target audience, representation, editing techniques, genre, themes, ideology, and narrative of a short film created by the author. The target audience was 16+ due to topics covered and included portraying modern youth culture. Characters were portrayed as working class, white teenagers to allow for natural performances and audience relatability. Editing techniques from shows like Skins were utilized to engage audiences. The film aimed to raise awareness about disabilities through its themes while also portraying contemporary British culture like drinking at pubs. The narrative was non-linear with flashbacks to challenge conventions and maintain audience attention.

1. TARGET AUDIENCEWe found out the target audience by creating a questionnaire. It was of people aged 16+ purely because of the topics that come up and the way we represent the youth culture. Also the violence used in our short film. Our genre was mainly an education and informative.REPRESENTATIONBecause of our target audience we decided we had to represent our teenagers so that our audience could relate well to them. Therefore costume was a very important aspect of representation, we had to make sure they were wearing clothes that people of our audiences age would wear. E.g, heels, dresses etc. We also had them at a pub, relating to the older generation of our target audience, due to the fact the characters in our short film were actually teenagers, they could be themselves and we were able to get a more natural short film.Everyone in our short film was of a white ethnic background, who come from a working class background, aged 16-18. We chose this because we felt we could all relate to this due to the fact everyone in our group was white. We also felt this was easier to control therefore dismissed other ethnic groups.By looking at Halls theory- 1980, of three different types of reading, it is clear to us that our short film was of the “preferred reading” topic, which is the interpreted understanding of the film itself which we got from our audience feedback, having uploaded it onto ‘youtube’ a niche market distribution the audience feedback we received suggested that we were in fact successful at positioning our characters with the representations that we wanted our audiences to understand. We controlled our audience by targeting people that are of our own ethnicity which automatically dismisses any readings from other ethnic groups that could potentially be negotiated or oppositional (because these aren’t the audiences that we are targeting). <br />EDITING TECHNIQUESWe challenged the conventions of the usual editing techniques because we went against the stereotypical way of editing a documentary film which would be elements such as straight cuts etc. We did this because we felt it would engage our audience to a higher level if we edited it in a way that is more interesting, to complete this we looked at programmes like skins to see what editing techniques they used and looked at how we could relate to this, for example slow motion, fast pace etc. We used a verisimilitude approach so that it would be very realistic and the audience would believe in the characters and narrative.<br />GENRE<br />THEMES AND IDEOLOGYThe themes and ideology of our short film was disabilities, it was to create awareness. We touch upon the theme of British culture as well- drinking in a pub, we also use very stereotypical men, wanting more than they can have, this was shown to be quite a negative way, although we balanced out the stereotypes by including a non-stereotypical girl which challenges conventions by the way she is responding, which is shown to be a positive thing the fact she is not allowing what happened to her to have a negative impact on her life, Despite her disability, she wanted to succeed therefore she overcomes her issue. She is also seeing that seeking help is a positive theme which gives a refreshing approach to the genre. We made sure that we made this theme obvious that it could happen to anyone; therefore we set it out in a bar, with teenagers, reflecting contemporary culture. We created a structure for the audience, although we deviated from the generic educational media texts which reflects Neal’s pattern of variation because we were able to push the boundaries and create more interest for the audience which in turn challenges the audience and makes them think more than they would usually have to. <br /> <br />MEDIA LANGUAGEMise-en-scene is a big part of our genre which we had to consider. In mise-en-scene we had to think of costume which was appropriate that people in schools could watch it and not be shocked etc, but also appropriate that our characters were comfortable wearing it and could reflect our target audience well, for example we made sure there wasn’t much skin on show so it would be sensibly and controlled, therefore we put them in tights to make sure we didn’t give of a negative representation of females at this age range. We did this to keep in touch with the fact our short film is an education film so it was more about reflecting on the issues and not on the fashion of today’s youth culture, although we obviously had to take it into consideration. <br />NARRATIVEWe used a very closed narrative with a non-linear approach because of the flashbacks we used, in this sense we challenged Todorov’s narrative theory. We didn’t follow genre conventions, we decided to challenge them within narrative purely because our film wasn’t the stereotypical education film in the way it didn’t follow a strict linear narrative. We went against this in order to engage a young audience with a short attention span. <br />