Tuesday 8 May 2012

Evaluation - "Who would be the audience for your media product?"/"How did you attract/address your audience?"

Our final film piece, "The Lads" appears to have a fairly distinct appeal to younger people - and this is something we've played on whilst putting the piece together, due to the success of the likes of The Inbetweeners.

We can see that our film has had a positive appeal to younger people (of the age 0-20 bracket) from the results of our audience feedback, from the presentation evening. Whilst statistics certainly don't prove everything (and it's open to debate about just how accurate this interpretation is) we can see that a great deal of the people who provided feedback were 20 or under, and the feedback was positive, which could suggest that our film may have a certain appeal to people of this group (though that being said, just because there's a trend doesn't mean there's a correlation. Some may have just thought it was a well produced film).

There are a number of different things which we have done to attract this audience. The first thing to note is that because our main cast are males, we have expected young males to appreciate the film more as they can relate to these characters. Because of this initial point, we've consistantly tried to appeal to young males with the humour used as well as other attributes.

Character
As mentioned before, they're three young lads. We've focused heavily on their "laddish" behaviour (Oliver getting kicked out of his lesson, them seen drinking in public), which is generally believed to appeal to males.

Setting
They're in a school; teenage kids can relate to this. They know the school culture inside out, therefore they can identify the characters' position within said school (in that they're the rebellious, out of place types). Pretty pictures of our filming location here!

Costume
We can see the characters in school uniforms, with the kind of modifications (Luke's hooded jacket, Samir's hat) that one would expect from these kinds of rebellious school students.



As young people are typically in school a lot they can identify these kinds of people, thus the context of the film will make more sense to them than other social groups.

Dialogue
The characters are heard speaking in very casual means ("just got kicked out", "it stinks!" etc.), which is typically how teenage kids speak to one another. Again, this allows them to relate to the characters even more.

Background Music
During the opening of our piece our non-diegetic sound consists of a fairly heavy bass riff - the kind heard in hip-hop and occasionally rock music, which is typically fairly popular amongst teenage males. We play on this further once the full song kicks in during the title sequence as we start hearing rap/rock vocals coming in (with plenty of over-the-top vocal effects) which is reminiscient of those heard in the kinds of music popular with youngsters (though I like to believe our song isn't quite that bad...).

We've also deliberately subverted this exact point during the scene in the opening where Oliver picks up the bottle, and the non-diegetic sound consists of a really out of place piano motif for humorous effect (thus supporting Bakhtin's Carnivalesque concept which revolves around subverting tropes/expectations for humour/chaos); whilst this completely goes against the conventions of laddish films, the viewer is likely to realise this and see the funny side of it, given what is being shown on screen.

Title Sequence
Yes, we show youngsters drinking, and yes, Common Sense Media would go ballistic about it. But as I looked at previously, showing things which irritate adults generally gains the appeal of the youth. This kind of rebellious behaviour isn't the kind of thing which a parent would want their younger kids watching, thus ruling them out, but it does raise the overall interest of older teenagers. The filter we've used overaggerates this surreal rebellious behaviour further, thus making this more of an impact.

(Responsible behaviour time!) 


Written Titles
For the sake of keeping the appeal of this to older teenagers we've used a sensible serif font for the credits, as this will do the job without looking too over-the-top or childish (which would more than likely put off our intended audience).

(The font isn't over-the-top ridiculous, but it doesn't seem too 'serious' either)

Our title card (which just reads "'The Lads'") is in a slightly more stylised font, though again we've taken care to ensure it has been used in context and doesn't look out of place for a film aimed at older teenage males.


-HM.

(Updated! Now I am home to have taken new screenshots and recycle one!)

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