OTS and Survey

It would be much help if you would watch my short production and fill out my short survey as part of my evaluation for media studies at sixth form. Thank you for watching!



PROHIBITION from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.



And the survey.

The Target Audience

I believe that the production that I am creating would be a 12 certificate as there will be use of mild weaponry, sexual scenes and smoking/drinking. It is said that film noir is mostly aimed at the male character due to the crime scenes and therefore I believe this too would however, there is a rise of females that enjoy black and white films recently.

The screenshot below is from YouGov to determine what the audience type is for the film noir: Double Indemnity. As you can see it is mostly males aged from 55 that prefer the film. I agree this would be correct as the film is from 1944 and therefore I did not assume that it would interest younger customers due to the release date, although those that take media or photography may be more interested in watching this noir. I agree similarly that males would be interested in my noir production due to it being about crime and completely black and white. The records also show that my assumptions are correct, it also shows that the two biggest professions that people watch this are in is law and media and publishing. 

The next screenshot below is from the same website on YouGov, however this is showing the typical audiences for the film Gone Girl. Now this film is much more recent from 2014 and as you can see from the statistics below does not appeal at all to those that are interested in Double Indemnity. The film below appeals more to females from the ages of 25-39. This film however is not a film noir or a black and white film, this production is a thriller based on a young couple that have many secrets. I have chosen to contrast these films because even though Double Indemnity is a film noir I do not feel the audiences with mine would be the same because it is a lot more recent. Due to the storyline of Gone Girl with the main character seeming like a victim yet turning out to be the villain in the story is why I had chosen this film to contrast audiences with mine. In my production the femme fatale will seem to be the victim at the start when she is miserable and heavily drinking, however when the voice-over comes in then the realisation that actually she has some dark secrets that have been exposed and that she is the villain not the anti-hero. 

I found the below Slide-share very interesting and helpful when it came to looking at who my target audience will be. This made me think about some factors I need to look into as to who will be interested in my production. I felt it made me think more about gender, age, occupation, sexuality and the importance of education. As the above website did YouGov. The very last part of the Slide-share is very important and interesting as it talks about different types of audiences as opposed to mainstream, the succeeders and reformers. 

How media producers define their target audience from mattwako

National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories

Social Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	upper middle class	higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	middle class	intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	lower middle class	supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	skilled manual workers
D	working class	semi and unskilled manual workers
E	those at lowest level of subsistence	state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

The Demographic classifications in the UK and the ABC1 grades refers to the social grade definitions, which are used to describe, measure and classify people of different social grade and income and earnings levels, for market research, social commentary, lifestyle antics, statistical research and analysis. The national Readership Survey is a non-profit but commercial British survey concerned with monitoring, analysing and providing estimates on the number and nature of people who read Britain's newspapers and consumer magazines. The social grade definitions by the NRS are widely used as a generic reference series classifying and describing social classes, especially for consumer targeting and consumer market research by the advertising UK media and publishing sectors. 

The Pete Buckinghams Audience Types research is extremely useful when thinking about audience types for a production. All this research has made me really think about who i believe would be interested in my film due to the storyline and how recent it is. 

Conclusion

I believe that from looking at all this research I have found out who my target audience would be I feel it would interest females more than males due to the little crime and the thriller between the character of the femme fatale. I also feel the 'impulsive materialists' will enjoy the production due to enjoying more of a mature nature in the sense of film-dinner-drinks. 

Research for OTS

For this OTS production to be as effective as possible I will need to research many aspects of the time era such as male and female costume, furniture and props and fashion/makeup. I would like to set it in the 20’s but have the film noir aspect of a femme fatale introduced with heavy makeup and similar dress including head piece and cigarette holder.

Below is my slideshare of the research I have found and produced. This will help me to choose a style of dress and understand what kind of make up they wore.

Research for OTS - 1920's from CharlotteLouiseB

1920s fashion from Hailey Wheeler

OTS Planning Ideas

As I am now working alone on the OTS production I have decided to steer away from my original idea of a Great Gatsby party leading with a murder and have decided to take an different route for the filming aspect and have more complex camera and composition effects. I am going to stay with the style of Great Gatsby and have all the props based around the 1920's. 

The story

I am going to have a femme fatal character throughout as the central protagonist because I like the idea of having the femme fatal from the start to draw attention to her mistakes instead of the everyman. I would like her heavily made-up and taking away her foundations to become a girl next door character by realising her mistakes but being unable to change them. I would like to have just the femme fatal and voice over of her mistakes because it adds enigma to the story, ending on a cliffhanger. 

Adding to the conventions of film noir

Film noir was around in the 1940's however I have decided to set the OTS in the 1920's, the Gatsby era. The idea of film noir was to show men that women are being included in more male role responsibilities and many men did not enjoy this. The film producers wanted to show men that women need to return to their original gender roles. Therefore I am going to turn my femme fatal into a wreckage of disaster and go with the moral convention. 

The femme fatal will be drinking whiskey and sobbing about the past acting as the anti-hero broken down as in the conventions of classic film noir. This shows that the OTS will begin at the end. The production will be filmed in my bedroom as I have white washed old-fashioned wardrobes and a dressing table with a mirror, making it more realistic for the time period. I also believe along with heavily drinking there should be an element of smoking and soft smoke going past the lens as femme fatal were shown as danger including smoking, drinking and trouble. As the film production will be captured in my bedroom only, i will not be able to add elements of darkness and alleyways as many film noir films include, however I would like to include deep contrasts between shadows. I will try this with use of different lighting to show emotion for the femme fatal. I would also like the whole frame to be in black and white as all original film noir films are.

Little Red Riding Hood Comic Strip

 

I have created this comic strip using the app: Comic Life. This app allowed me to transform my pictures from the first photo shoot into a comic strip/storyboard of what is going to happen in our short film. This app was brilliant because it was extremely simple to use including adding own photographs, text and changing borders and colours. There are many ways to create it so that it looks like your own, and very unique.

 

 

Reflective comment:



I believe that the app itself was exceptional to use and had many simplistic and easy features that you can use. However, I found it highly difficult to save it as a jpeg. or just a simple picture. I had to play around with different ideas on my laptop to save it rather than it just opening on the app, and discovered that if I were to save it onto a word document as a print screen and then crop it I could then save it as a picture. I think I would use this software again as it was interesting to be able to create your own comic strip absolutely free and because it was just so simple.

Identifying an Audience for our Fairytale Neo-Noir

Making sure a film has the correct film rating is very important especially to parents that want to protect their children from sexual scenes, violence and disturbing images. Film ratings provide parents with advance information about the content of films to help them to determine what movies are appropriate for their children. In the case of films shown in the cinema, local authorities have the final legal authorisation over who can view a particular film. The majority of the time the local authorities have accepted the Board's recommendation for a certificate of film. However there have been some notable exceptions such as Last Tango in paris and The Exorcist in the 1970's that were classed as an X certificate, but the local authorities chose to ban the films. 

These classifications above are the regular British Board of Film Classification that were changed in 2003 compared to the ones that were in tradition since the 1980's. I believe that our film so far with planned it would come under a PG as there are no sexual scenes, just small talk and flirting. There is not much violence neither just a gun shot. However, some may say it will be a 12A or 12 because the storyline is about kidnapping.