Audience Research
Before we could really make a film, we had to know roughly what our target audience would be and what they want to see within our film. We had to think about what certain features we'd want in our film and what types of characters; thus we had to make sure we had audience feedback to ensure we'd not miss out anything that could improve our film for who it was aimed at. Not only that but it would help shape what our final film would look like in terms of plot and conventions. We also had to take a look at the BBFC audience ratings so we could get a hold of what sort of things would be allowed in our film depending on what age rating we planned on going with.
Audience Questionnaire:
Last year, in order to gather audience feedback, we created a questionnaire but selected who would end up responding to it by asking specific people to do it which (as you can imagine) clouded the results slightly. This year we decided it would be far better to just upload the questionnaire onto our Facebook profiles in order to garner a bigger but also more anonymous response pool. This would make it more true to our actual target audience and take away any potential bias. Below is a link to our questionnaire so you can see the questions in their entirety:
So, from this, we got a set of results from 25 different people. Below are the results and what we drew from them and how we will shape our film based off of this.
With our first question, we just wanted to get a general feel of what age our audience would appear to be (this would affect our BBFC age rating too - more on that later). The results we gained were much to be expected although you could argue perhaps it's slightly biased because it's using the Facebook friends list of an 18 year old.
Our next two questions are linked in a way because we wanted to get just a very broad and general view of the types of character people would expect to see in our film. We anticipated people wanting just a few characters (especially with this being a short film as there isn't much of a chance to expand on too much backstory) but we were somewhat surprised at the majority of people expecting the main characters to be male. In many ways we thought our audience would want a mixture of both but most people ended up wanting either male or not particularly caring about gender. Realistically it makes our job easier though because it will be far easier for us to get an all male cast being at an all-boys school!
Question 4 was to get a good idea of how much dialogue we should involve in our film. We've seen from other projects in class that Action films didn't seem to utilise a great deal of dialogue but we wanted to make sure we knew what our audience thought because public/mass opinions can change over time. As expected, though, the opinion hadn't really changed at all and most people want solid action sequences.
With this question, we hoped to gain a focus for our film as well as an idea of how complex the story should be. Surprisingly to us (but also thankfully), most people wanted a simple storyline as opposed to a twist or a complicated one. We expected that most people would want atmosphere and tension to be a big part of our film so that didn't come as a surprise but the ambitious set pieces choice shocked us a little. It means that we'll probably try to come up with something that most other student projects haven't attempted before (or rarely). Besides all of that we had a low amount of people caring for settings and character development but, again, we expected this of an audience seeking to watch a short film because the focus is usually placed on an event or events not specific people or overly scenic backgrounds.
With our last two questions, we hoped to find out exactly how to start our film and how roughly the film should end. Quite a few people seemed to be fans of making usage of flashbacks to open the film but, in all honesty, we find that technique to be very cliché and overused so probably won't go forwards with that idea (especially because we refused to do one of our initial film ideas on the grounds of it being an unoriginal flashback film). Fortunately more people wanted the film to open with action straight away anyway which is secretly what we wanted to do anyway so it relieved us when we saw the results! From the film opening question, this common factor appeared again of people not wanting dialogue-heavy action films so we're thinking we'll stray from having much dialogue at all.
In terms of how to end our film, we knew we wanted it to go one of two ways really: to be open ended and leave the audience with some questions or to be fully conclusive. We didn't particularly want to plan on making a sequel outside of lesson time but enough people had asked for that, we may well have considered it! It seemed most people wanted the film to have a mysterious ending which is quite unconventional for a short film but, because we're doing an Action film and Action films tend to be quite generic, we're thinking it might be a good idea to break convention in this case. We as a group agreed we also like films that leave you with questions so we believe it won't be a bad thing for the audience to be left with perhaps a question or two because then they can build their own conclusions as to what they think might have happened; this strategy feels a lot more inclusive toward the audience too.
BBFC Age Rating:
Just like last year, we've revised the content on the BBFC website in order to find out what sort of age range we'd like our film to be. With this being an Action film and the audience feedback showing that we'll clearly be aiming for 14-19 year olds so we'll be looking at roughly a 15 rating or maybe an 18 at a push. There will certainly be violence and I have no doubt there will be a certain amount of explicit language and so it definitely can't be below a 15. Not only this but we could potentially have smokers or drinkers in the film which would mean there is a reference to drug use, instantly crossing off anything below a 15 age rating.
If we break it down properly then, our film looks like it'll be featuring a set piece of some kind and a conflict between two characters meaning that there's definitely going to be mild to moderate levels of violence and definitely high levels of threat which puts our film straight into the 15 area. We don't plan on there being really explicit language but perhaps an expletive here and there at times so that consolidates our 15 rating. Finally, we do want to have some kind of criminal drug or drinking behaviour but not hardcore drug usage like class-A's so that really does point us in the direction of the 15 age gate. Overall, I'm definitely of the belief that we will be going with a 15 rating for our film this year.
