Media Evaluation Group TaskQ-4 & 5

Yaser Hamid, Laurence Brown and Ed Wright

Q 4 and 5. Who would be the audience for your media product? And how did you attract/address your audience?

The target audience for our media product is going to be the traditional mainstream horror audience i.e. 15-24 year olds. We conducted ample audience research in order to ensure that the film we make appeals and attracts the present audiences toward our product. The first audience research we carried out was to see which genres attract audiences most these days.

The research made it evident that a high majority of audiences were interested in comedy films. However, Thriller is shown to be the 2nd highest genre in demand by the audiences. These results made it easy for us to narrow down on one genre and focus on that.

This pie chart represents the response we got for our title choice. It is evident that 50% of the participants thought that Dream State was a fitting title for our opening as it represented our idea in a very conventional form.

Though we took that in to consideration we decided to modify the effect a bit to add enigma to the opening. We also took the second best convention selected by the audiences, i.e. High Contrast, and used it in our opening so that it would appeal to the audiences.

This pie chart represents the conventions audiences suggested for us to use in our piece. 31% of the audiences were in favour of us using a black and white effect.

Throughout the course of us making the opening there were multiple occasions where we tested our opening on audiences in different stages of production. The first time we tested our piece was with a rough cut which was a montage of the specific shots that were going to be used. The rough cut received a considerably positive response from the audiences which allowed us to further make sure that it meets their criteria of a good horror/thriller.

We also carried out an audience research for our treatment. The still above is a sample of some of the responses that we got from the audiences and they were generally positive.

The final testing we carried out was after the completion of our final cut in which we gathered audiences in a room and showed them our movie opening and after the screening gave out questionnaires, which helped see whether they understood our plot, they were able to identify the antagonist and protagonist and what they thought were the weak and strong points of our opening.

Where as others thought that the special effects that we used to differentiate the dream from the real world, was our strong point. Many questionnaires said that the story line could be made clearer as it appeared to be vague in the view of some of the audiences. We also got a positive response for character exposition, many of the people stated that it was easy for them to differentiate the antagonist and protagonist.

Audience feedback is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the film making. Since the audience is the one who is going to pay to watch your product film makers should ensure that the product they make is to the audience’s liking. Otherwise a lot of effort goes to waste.

What gender do you belong?

67%

33%

Male

Female

Most of the audience belong to the male gender

What age are you?17%

17%

17%

32%

17%0%

15

16

17

18

19

20+

How well was the sequence conveyed?

20%

80%

0%

0%

0%

Very Easily

Easily

Dont know

Poorly

Very Poorly

The majority age group falls within our target audience of the teen horror who range from 15-24 year olds.

According to the pie chart the majority of the audience understood the narrative of the sequence.