Target Audience Results

We collected the data from our questionnaire and produced bar charts on PowerPoint to see our results clearly. We decided to use a bar chart because we felt that this type of graph would be best to show the difference between the male and female view.
Here is the result for the first question:

This result tells us that we are targeting the right audience because there is a large amount of students that we questioned that enjoy watching thrillers. This has helped us feel more confident in our chosen genre.  The graph does tell us that girls seem to want to watch thrillers more than boys who had a more mixed response. 

Question two had a unexpected result as both genders voted for the hero of the film to be male. The results were equal for the amount of votes against a female hero too and I thought this was quite interesting that both genders had the same opinion on the matter. This means that our target audience would like to see a male hero in our film however our main character is a female but she isn't the hero, she seems more of a victim. After thinking about our characters we have noticed that we don't really have a hero which contradicts Propp's theory of the having certain characters within a film.

These results tell us that the girls who answered the questionnaire much prefer the characters to be around their age and when we asked why the feedback was that they felt they could relate to the characters situations more. The boys result was more varied however most still preferred to have the characters their age. This has definitely helped us with our thoughts about the type of characters in our film.

The feedback from this question was that most of the people we asked liked the ending of the film to be unpredictable. This could be because they feel that it makes it more intense when watching the film and surprises them. This result from our target audience supports our idea of our film having an unexpected ending as this will appeal to them.

Target Audience Research

As a group we had an idea of what our storyline of our thriller was going to be and we understood the type of representation we needed to give from looking at different examples. We also knew that we would use people of our age to act in the film as we will ask our friends to help us, with this in mind we decided on our target audience being around our age, 16-19. We all thought this was best as being in this age gap ourselves we knew the kind of the films people enjoy watching and how they feel abou them. To help us completely develop our plot and know that we would apeal to our target audience we produced a questionnaire.

                                     

We gave out twenty questionnaires to people in our year which is 17-18 year olds. This helped us come to a conclusion of our target audience and our represenatations through characters and our advertisement in the poster.

Plan of Our Poster

With the title of our film decided we felt that we could do a first draft of our poster. We each had done research on thriller posters so we knew what type of style is needed to represent our genre so we tried to use these conventions as well as new ideas of our own to make it different. We created the plan using Powerpoint and used images from the internet to help us visulise what the poster will look like, obviously we will take our own photographs for our final poster. This is what we created as a group and howour plan looks at the moment:

                                       

As you can see we have use the common colour balck and white and have carried through this idea of chess fro the title by including the chess piece. Our idea is to cast a shadow on one side of the actresses face which gives a sense of danger and the chaacter being scared and alomst as if she is hiding. When we take our photogrpahs we are planning on have our actress looking upset but smudging make up to look as if she has been crying to show her distress. We think it will also make the audience sympathise with her and maybe shock them to see the character looking so upset. We are going to include a billing block at the bottom of the poster as we noticed this a typical convention of film posters. We also are going to add the name of our actress maybe along the top of he poster but we didnt add this yet as we still havent chosen from our friends who we think will fit best into our genre.

We also tested out different fonts for our title using the website 'Dafont'. We had five different styles and from these we decided on the one we have out in our plan.

We felt that some of the others were slightly to complex with too much deatil to them as we fond from our research that they are usually kept quite simple. However even though we have decided that we would like to use a font like this it might change slightly as this is from the website and for our plan we did a print screen and its very good quality. This is change that we might have to do to our poster.

Choosing a title

As a group we began thinking of the title of our film by doing a brainstorm of ideas. We wanted it to be quite short so it grabbed peoples attention quickly and was easy to remember. Some of the ideas we came up with were to obvious or some we felt didn't quite fit with our genre so we came to a decision of the title CheckMate. From this title we had some ideas of how we can incorporate chess in the film trailer so there was some connection between them. We also thought it could be a play on words as the film is about two friends and there relationship. CheckMate is what is said at the end of the game which suggests that something is going to happen in the end and probably a bad ending from our chosen genre. Another point that we thought could link to chess with our film poster and magazine cover is the use of the colours black and white as from previous research this is a common colour seen in thriller film posters and it will fit the conventions.

Thriller Poster Analysis

After discussions during class, as a group we came to the decision of our genre being thriller. This took us quite a long time to come to this decision because we each had different ideas about plots and the type of representations we wanted to give. When we had finally made our decision we all felt that we needed to do some extra research on this type of this genre, this is why I have explored different conventions of thriller film posters. Here are some examples:

This poster has a very dark background which is a contrast to the earlier film poster I analysed which was a Rom com, this is because thrillers are seen as dark and dangerous and black is the most popular colour to show this style and representation. In contrast to the black there is white text and the characters face is in high contrast to make him stand out and helps the audience understand that he is the main character of the film. The houses that are lined along the bottom part are almost like shadows as they are again black and white to fit in with colour scheme. The only text that isn't in white is the release date of the film as this is what the producers want the audience to notice to try and gain as many viewers as possible. The lens of the binoculars is a bright orange and by having the repeated photo in each lens emphasises the fear on the girls face. The boys face is the main focus of the poster and the title of the poster is quite small so it doesn't overpower the poster. The tagline along the top gives the audience an idea of what the film is going to be about but doesn't give too much away which is what engages the audience.

In comparison to the 'Disturbia' poster there isn't much use of the colour black, i think this could be because the character is young girl which is usually labelled as innocent but in this case we know that she isn't going to a 'normal' little girl and this shows how they are using the character to confuse the audience. This is like the Strauss theory of that opposites work to create this mystery and suspense. Like 'Disturbia' the character is in the centre of the poster and there is the use of white font. There is also a tagline along the top again to make the audience want to know what's going to happen. There is a use of vignetting on the poster which helps draw the audience's attention to the focus of the poster which is the girls face.

This poster again has the main use of black and like 'Disturbia' there is the use of the colour orange. The orange illuminates the characters face and also creates a shadow in the background. The light is in the shape of a six which links to the name of the film. Again like the other two posters the font is in white, i think this is because they seem to use dark colours for the background and this is how they will get the biggest contrast. The name of the well known actor is along the top of the poster, this is to show that the Hollywood star is involved in the film and the audience may want to see it more knowing that it has awardwinning stars in it. The poster seem s to be split in half with Bruce Willis' face in the left hand side and the mysterious shadow on the right. Maybe this is to show how the two are connected in some way, with this suggestion it makes the audience want to watch the film.

From looking at all three posters I have learnt that the most common conventions of thriller film posters is the colours used, black and white, and the positioning of the characters on the poster. There is also the common use of a tagline to engage the audience and I feel that we should use some of these in our work to make our representation of thriller genre as clear as possible.

V for Vendetta Presentation

In class we watched the film 'V for Vendetta' then in a group of three we had to discuss media language through a presentation.

Poster Analysis

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is romantic comedy and this is suggested from the colour scheme in the poster. There is a great deal of the colour white in the poster which is associated with Rom-Com’s as from previous research I have noticed that this is a prominent colour when advertising this genre as some connotations of the colour are happiness, purity, marriage and innocence. The colour blue is also a big part of this poster which is maybe linked to the Greek flag as the colours are white and blue.

The sky behind the characters is very typically suggested when representing a film that has a happy ending as the sky seems perfect. The skyline shows that there is a comparison in the two characters as they are from different backgrounds and also tells the audience where the film is set. By the characters being high up and looking across the skyline could also represent that the couple feel that ‘the world is their oyster’ because they are starting this new life together. In connection with the comparison of the two different characters and their cultural backgrounds the title has incorporated Greek style writing as well as basic font which suggests that the two different characters have become one with their marriage. It also is another way of representing to the audience the difference between them and maybe implies that the cultural differences are sometimes going to be a problem but they overcome them. The words gradually get longer and slightly bigger as they go on which gives the image of a wedding cake with different tiers to it. This links in with the theme of the film and tiers could be a reference to the different layers of their relationship which has come together at the marriage.

The white strip on the left hand side of the poster is filled with members of the woman’s family. We know that it is her side of the family as she is the one that seems to be pushing them out of the poster from her positioning. She is closest to the family members whereas the man is closest to the skyline in the poster which again shows the different culture between them both. All the family members look very happy and enthusiastic which suggests that the family are quite over the top and loud which is a stereotypical view of Greek families. They are all leaning in with no order of how they are placed which implies this idea of the family trying to be involved in their relationship and that they are all very close. The family are from the top to the bottom of the strip which tells the audience that they are a big family and that there is no way of getting away from them for privacy. There is confetti at the top of the strip which is typically suggested with weddings and ties in with the dress of all the characters as well as the title of the film.

All of the characters are presented in dresses and suits which is what is expected from the title of the film. We can see that one of her members of family is wearing blue which links back to the colour scheme I mentioned before. The elderly character is wearing head piece which shows the religious side to the family and that it is important to them. With the clue in the title ‘Big Fat Greek wedding’ we see the woman dressed in a big white dress that is to the floor. It is very fairytale like which implies that there is going to be a happy ending. The man is dressed in a suit like the family members but he’s bow tie is undone which gives a sense of him being very relaxed and calm compared to her hectic family. It also helps with branding him as the good looking gentlemen who saved her from her family.

The family members are all looking at the couple which shows they are happy for them whereas the woman is looking towards us with a smile on her face. The man is gazing as the woman which tells us that he is totally in love with her and gives this idea of him not being able to take his eyes off of her. The woman’s smile tells us that she is happy but maybe suggests that she is overwhelmed to find her true love and from the man’s quite seductive positioning that she finds him incredibly attractive. The positioning of the couple tells us that they are comfortable with each other however from her trying to push her family out shows she is embarrassed by them. From the woman looking directly at us and none of the other characters also suggests that we are going to hear the story form her perspective as she appears to be the main character as all the attention is drawn to her.

The text on the poster ‘Love is here to stay…so is her family’ supports this idea of however hard the woman tries to block out her family they will always be there. At the top of the poster there are the names of the actors and actresses who have a main part in the film. The font is very basic and it is all capitalised to make it very clear. There is again the use of the colour blue but darker so it stands out against the background. It is evenly placed above the title which is in the centre of the image of the skyline. I think it is interesting that they decided to place the title in the middle of the skyline image instead of the poster as a whole. I think this could be to show that it is the story between the couple and the couple are the ones in front of the skyline.

From analysing this poster I believe that the target audience for this poster is women aged from around 20-35 years old as this is where the majority of people in their lives get married and would be able to relate to the film in their own way. However I think most women would enjoy the film as it has humour as well as romance and probably at some point in their lives they will be able to relate to some of the characters situations and emotions.