(23) Audience Research Planning
Plan an Interview with People
When constructing any form of media product, it's important to consider what sort of people would want to consume it. What dictates your audience depends heavily on the style, genre, function/purpose and content of the film. I paired up with Noah to conduct a series of interviews with people from the local area to find out what they thought constituted a good film, as well as their opinion on our personal ideas for our coursework.
Reliability
Choosing to base our research outside of the school environment and in the local high street carries both advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, the sixth form and high school is a professional/academic environment and therefore only really contains teachers and students. This limits the range of interviewees drastically as it restricts it to working/school age people, as well as people who come from the same workplace. Furthermore, sixth forms are often attended by academically gifted students which don't necessarily provide a range of academic profiles. This is why centring the research to the town is good, as it doesn't just provide people who are used to an academic environment. It will contain a range of people from ranges of work backgrounds. It will also have more varied ages, from small children to elderly people who wouldn't be found in the school premises.
However, as we're conducting the interviews during conventional work hours (between 9am and 5pm, this limits our demographic greatly, as the people we will encounter will likely be unemployed. This means that the people that will be interviewed will mostly be elderly, as this is the age in which people are retired and therefore limits our age range. Furthermore, the choice to base it in one market town is restricting as it only provides interviewees from one region - the type of people encountered will be similar. Furthermore, Wymondham is quite an affluent area; the population is made up of mostly white-British, middle-class people. This limits the variation between our subjects and therefore will potentially limit the type of responses. Not only this, however, but because there is less of a community on the high street than in the sixth form (i.e fewer people know and are comfortable with each other), the people we ask will be less likely to say yes to being interviewed, as we would be strangers. Furthermore, the fact that we are strangers may deter them from answering truthfully, as they don't want to come off weird or controversial.
What Do You Want to Find Out?
What I want to find out from this task is how popular short films are with the smallscale public - are they a normal thing to watch or are their audience limited to film buffs? This will give me an idea as to how large the audience of a short film is. I would also like to know how often people consume short films and what platform, as well as why they watch them.
Another thing I would like to find out is people's views on topical issues, particularly terrorism and xenophobia. I wanted to know how many people blamed minorities for atrocities such as terrorism. One of the main things I wanted to know was how people felt about film being used for political expression rather than just entertainment as, from my observations, many people have a problem with actors/directors expressing political views.
What Will You Ask?
As Noah and I are following separate briefs, we had to invent questions that were broad enough to suit both our needs. To do this, we decided to invent an opening question that, depending on the response, would mark the interviewee as appropriate for only one of our topics (short film or music video). This would dictate what questions we would later ask them.
This was the question:
After we covered the general questions surrounding the consumption of short films, we constructed some questions that would cover topics surrounding our own project. I decided to focus my questions on the themes of the film as opposed to the film idea itself. These were the questions I wrote down:
I tried my best to keep the questions open and unbias, I didn't want to deter people from expressing their truthful views, even if they are controversial or offensive.
What Age Bracket Will You Focus On?
Short films are broad; they don't have an age. What often binds the short film audience is love for film or filmmaking and this is especially true for live-action short films (animated short films have a wider audience, often). This being said, my film, in particular, may require a more specific audience than film junkies. This is because of the themes: the sensitive subjects may not appeal to all. Furthermore, because it carries a message, it needs to reach the people who the message is appropriate for. Its political undertones will be best suited to adults as opposed to young teens or children. Furthermore, the anti-xenophobic tone will be aimed at xenophobic people, as hopefully they can identify with the film's message and understand their own errors. This is most likely adults (especially middle aged people), as these people were raised in an era where hate, racism and xenophobia were normalised: they're a product of a hateful time.
When conducting this interview, I will definitely include people from all age demographics as it will allow me to pinpoint which groups hold what views and will also allow me to work out my own target audience. Furthermore, the more varied my participants are the more representative my results her, meaning I can draw an accurate conclusion and work out my own target audience.
When constructing any form of media product, it's important to consider what sort of people would want to consume it. What dictates your audience depends heavily on the style, genre, function/purpose and content of the film. I paired up with Noah to conduct a series of interviews with people from the local area to find out what they thought constituted a good film, as well as their opinion on our personal ideas for our coursework.
Reliability
Choosing to base our research outside of the school environment and in the local high street carries both advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, the sixth form and high school is a professional/academic environment and therefore only really contains teachers and students. This limits the range of interviewees drastically as it restricts it to working/school age people, as well as people who come from the same workplace. Furthermore, sixth forms are often attended by academically gifted students which don't necessarily provide a range of academic profiles. This is why centring the research to the town is good, as it doesn't just provide people who are used to an academic environment. It will contain a range of people from ranges of work backgrounds. It will also have more varied ages, from small children to elderly people who wouldn't be found in the school premises.
However, as we're conducting the interviews during conventional work hours (between 9am and 5pm, this limits our demographic greatly, as the people we will encounter will likely be unemployed. This means that the people that will be interviewed will mostly be elderly, as this is the age in which people are retired and therefore limits our age range. Furthermore, the choice to base it in one market town is restricting as it only provides interviewees from one region - the type of people encountered will be similar. Furthermore, Wymondham is quite an affluent area; the population is made up of mostly white-British, middle-class people. This limits the variation between our subjects and therefore will potentially limit the type of responses. Not only this, however, but because there is less of a community on the high street than in the sixth form (i.e fewer people know and are comfortable with each other), the people we ask will be less likely to say yes to being interviewed, as we would be strangers. Furthermore, the fact that we are strangers may deter them from answering truthfully, as they don't want to come off weird or controversial.
What Do You Want to Find Out?
What I want to find out from this task is how popular short films are with the smallscale public - are they a normal thing to watch or are their audience limited to film buffs? This will give me an idea as to how large the audience of a short film is. I would also like to know how often people consume short films and what platform, as well as why they watch them.
Another thing I would like to find out is people's views on topical issues, particularly terrorism and xenophobia. I wanted to know how many people blamed minorities for atrocities such as terrorism. One of the main things I wanted to know was how people felt about film being used for political expression rather than just entertainment as, from my observations, many people have a problem with actors/directors expressing political views.
What Will You Ask?
As Noah and I are following separate briefs, we had to invent questions that were broad enough to suit both our needs. To do this, we decided to invent an opening question that, depending on the response, would mark the interviewee as appropriate for only one of our topics (short film or music video). This would dictate what questions we would later ask them.
This was the question:
- Which do you prefer to watch: short film or music video?
If they answered short film, then that means we would ask them questions regarding short films and vice versa.
Once we had found out what medium they preferred, we would ask them questions regarding their general consumption of the videos. These are the short film ones suited to me:
- Do you remember the last short film you watched?
- How often do you watch short films?
- Do you watch short films as a group or on your own?
- Which platforms do you use to watch short films?
- What prompts you to watch a particular short film?
After we covered the general questions surrounding the consumption of short films, we constructed some questions that would cover topics surrounding our own project. I decided to focus my questions on the themes of the film as opposed to the film idea itself. These were the questions I wrote down:
- What do you think is the best way to tackle terrorism?
- What's your opinion on immigration: do you think there is a correlation between immigration and terrorism and why?
- Do you think xenophobia is a large issue that needs to be addressed in the UK?
- If you saw a xenophobic act occurring, how would you respond?
- Do you think films should be used to address topical issues or do you think politics/film should remain separate and film should be strictly entertainment?
- Do you think terrorism is something that needs to be addressed more in films?
I tried my best to keep the questions open and unbias, I didn't want to deter people from expressing their truthful views, even if they are controversial or offensive.
What Age Bracket Will You Focus On?
Short films are broad; they don't have an age. What often binds the short film audience is love for film or filmmaking and this is especially true for live-action short films (animated short films have a wider audience, often). This being said, my film, in particular, may require a more specific audience than film junkies. This is because of the themes: the sensitive subjects may not appeal to all. Furthermore, because it carries a message, it needs to reach the people who the message is appropriate for. Its political undertones will be best suited to adults as opposed to young teens or children. Furthermore, the anti-xenophobic tone will be aimed at xenophobic people, as hopefully they can identify with the film's message and understand their own errors. This is most likely adults (especially middle aged people), as these people were raised in an era where hate, racism and xenophobia were normalised: they're a product of a hateful time.
When conducting this interview, I will definitely include people from all age demographics as it will allow me to pinpoint which groups hold what views and will also allow me to work out my own target audience. Furthermore, the more varied my participants are the more representative my results her, meaning I can draw an accurate conclusion and work out my own target audience.
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