Hello, my wonderful examiner people!
Our primary focus for the hour was gathering interviews from our target audience on camera so we can make into a small film, which we can use for research and identify aspects and tastes of our viewers. It will come-off as me being arrogant, but twas my idea and I was very proud of it (any other groups using it, well, you know where it began ;).
We took a camera into the common room and assembled a bunch of rowdy teens into the hallway, where we'd already written and numbered our questions for Sam to read. We then prepared the camera to shoot a medium-close-up at eye level and sat each of our interviewees down to record their answers. We then edited the footage and analysed their answers.
Introduction over and done with, we began the interviews:
1) What's your favourite genre?
The general consensus was that although some people like romantic-comedies, not many people preferred them overall. Comedies seemed to be the most popular genre from our filmed interviewees, and the fact that we have that element included suggests that our film will hopefully appeal to most viewers. Most of the female interviewees admitted, if reluctantly, that they liked romantic-comedies or would watch one if they were in a group etc. The male interviewees weren't as keen, all preferring adventure or comedy, implying our film's target audience will be teenage girls mostly.
2) Where do you usually watch these films?
Most of the interviewees prefer watching their films at home, on DVDs or TV. Some worryingly admitted to illegally downloading films off of the internet (Solarmovie.com most likely - not that I would know ;) On top of that, there's a lack of people saying they watch most of their films at the cinema, perhaps suggesting going out to watch films is outdated, or too expensive for people nowadays.
3) Are you a fan of romantic-comedies?
Again, a fairly mixed response with some females saying that they were fans of romantic-comedy as a genre and all the males and a couple of females seemingly disliking of the genre.
4) What films do you associate with this genre?
Dear John, She's the man, Friends with Benefits, Wild Child, Pitch Perfect and The Notebook were some of the responses we got from the questions. All of the films mentioned are either American or British-American films, suggesting romantic-comedies isn't a genre explored by many British companies unless in synergy with another bigger American company. This could be because they aren't as popular with British audiences or that because there aren't many big British production companies (aside from Working Title) which'll make films that aren't overly expensive or high-concept pieces.
The male interviewees didn't know any films, only giving insults, again, re-establishing our target audience as mainly teenage FEMALES.
5) What do you expect to see in a romantic-comedy?
Aside from the frankly silly responses of 'sex' and obvious 'love', interviewees suggested simplistic, traditional story lines which don't differentiate much from film to film, cliches and love as the central theme or goal in the plot. 'Sex' is a common aspect of romantic-comdies and we do include that sense of the characters being sexually active and an undercurrent of promiscuity about Naomi's character is present.
This survey has been very useful and will be followed by a paper-questionnaire with a couple more responses, which are hopefully more varied. However, these interviews helped give use an idea of what are target audience is and what kind of things people expect from our film through generic conventions of our romantic-comedy genre.
Pheebs OUT!!! ;)
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