Post 14: Audience Positioning

techniques
point of view shots
camera adopts the position of a character within the film
this can 'over-the-shoulder' looking at whatever the character is looking at or a shot from the point-of-view character

useful?
puts viewer in position of character. when they experience strong emotions the viewer is more likely ti feel it when taking that person's point of view

reactions shot
camera moves to an extreme close-up of a characters face to show their reaction to something that's happened.

insert shots
gives the viewer extra or priviledge info that one or more characters may not know
like a split screen, with two characters into two different places

shot reverse shot
camera alternates between two characters to show their building relationship
normally when they're talking face to face
very common in drama where the relationship between characters is very important
camera acts as a third 'character'

Post 13: BBFC - Film Rating

The BBFC watch through films and award a age classification based on what they feel would be acceptable. The BBFC look at if the film and classify them in a way that protects the public from harm, a film that is staying within the law and that they’re allowing artistic freedom. They look at issues such as discrimination, drugs, horror, dangerous and easily imitable behaviour, language, nudity, sex, and violence when making decisions. Therefore when deciding on a rating for my film I will make sure I follow the guidelines of the BBFC.

Taking into account the BBFC’s guidelines I would argue that our film we are producing would be a 12A which would allow children under the age of 12 to view the film as long as they’re with a parent or guardian over the age of 18. I decided this due to the use of weapons and violence that may not be appropriate for all to view. Also the use of gangs and rebelling in school could bring in the effects theory as children may start to copy some of the actions that the characters take. Although it may seem that the film shouldn’t be seen by anyone under that age of twelve due to some scenes. However, the use of violence is not brutal and is only implied the audience don’t actually see any violence that may harm them or their child watching but the advanced warning would allow the parents to decide whether or not to take their child to see this film.

Moreover, the film doesn’t glamorise the theme of violence and anti-social behaviour but however creates a moral to participating in them and establishes the consequences of these actions. If the film was immoral and causing harm to the audience then the BBFC would rate it higher for example a 15 or just a 12. That would be if the violence was shown more brutally and possibly due to explicit language that could be used by the characters.  

Post 12: Audiences

Audience

What is an audience?

·         A collective group of people who consume media text such as by watching films.

·         The most important question when writing a script is ‘does it have an audience?’

Types of audiences 

·         Mass audience – ‘broadcast audience’ who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps. Target a large group of peoples

·         Niche – much smaller but influential – small select group of people with a unique interest

Why are audiences important?

·         Without them there would be no media. They create media to make profit and without them there would be no profit.

·         The mass media is becoming more competitive and are increasingly fighting over audiences

Katz and Blumler 

·         1. Information – finding out about events, satisfying curiosity and giving a sense of security through knowledge

·         Personal identity – reinforcement for personal values, finding model behaviour. Insight into oneself

·         Integration and social interaction – insight into circumstances of others, identifying with others and giving a sense of belonging. 

Impact of new technology on Audiences

·         Old media – (TV, print, radio) use to have high audience viewers, now has to work hard to gain

·         Digital technology – led to uncertainty over how to define ‘audience’ although they are agree to be ‘fragmented’

Fragmented audiences

·         Audience into smaller groups due to variety of different media

·         Newspapers are struggling – online copies

·         DVD sales have dropped – pirated copies, online, downloads

·         Large institutions are losing profit

How do institutions still make money?

·         Free apps always have ads

·         Websites and search engines always have adverts targeting users especially when they’re free websites

·         Newspapers are printing less copies and are switching to online distribution – can lower distribution costs

Audience categories

·         Can be divided into categories based on social class/grade

Audience research

·         Major part of any media company.

·         Questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screening and spending time and money finding out who would be interested in their product.

Demographics

·         Media products interested in

·         Income/status

·         Age

·         Gender

·         Race

·         Location of potential audience. When they know this they can start to shape their media text to a group with known viewing habits

Psychographics

·         Create a text that targets a particular audience – interests, hobbies, tastes, etc.

·         Their product has to appeal to a certain audience so the advertisers pay to promote their product

·         Most can define their typical audience member often with a psychographic profile

Audience categories

Group A

·         Lawyers

·         Doctors

·         Scientists

·         Well paid professionals

Group B

·         Teachers

·         Middle management

·         Fairly well paid pros

Group C1

·         Junior management

·         Bank clerks

·         Nurses

·         ‘white collar’ pros

Group C2

·         Electricians

·         Plumbers

·         Carpenters

·         ‘blue collar’ pros

Group D

·         Manual workers such as

·         Drivers

·         Post sorters

Group E

·         Students

·         Unemployed

·         Pensioner

Stuart Hall – theorist

·         Views audiences as both the producers and consumers of texts. Analysing the initial meaning of the text. His approach is that the consumer actively negotiates the meaning.

New Media

·         New tool to get instant access to people

·         Facebook and other social network sites – ‘likes’

·         Online forums

·         Twitter trends

·         Views on YouTube & Google +1

Research

·         Quantitative research

·         E.g. questionnaires

·         Number based

·         Closed questions to generate exact answers

·         Very factual

·         Qualitative research

·         E.g. interviews and focus groups

·         Analysis of existing products

·         Open questions to generate answers open to interpretation

·         Individual preferences

Audience engagement

·         Describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways

Audience expectations

·         The ideas the audience have in advance of seeing the media text. Particularly applies to genre.  Producers continually play with audiences expectations

Audience foreknowledge

·         Definitive information that audiences bring to a media product

Audience identification

·         The way an audience feel themselves connected to a particular media text – they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle.

Audience placement

·         Range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel the text is ‘particularly for them’ 

Audience research

·         Measuring an audience is important to all media institutions research is done at all stages and once produced audience will be continually monitored

Post 11: Script Draft

Here is the first draft for our script. It is a rough outline/idea of where our script is going to go. We gave the script to teachers and to students in the class and they gave us feed back which we will apply in our further drafts

here is a copy of the script with comments and feedback on that we will take into account when writing our final drafts 

Post 10: Treatment

Our film starts with a troubled teenager, who keeps getting himself into difficult dilemma’s, we find out that reason is due to his father recently passing away.  Josh is a sixteen year old secondary student, who in the past has been an example student with top grades in all subjects of which went all down hill after the tragic death of his father. Throughout the film we follow the story of the grieving process the boy Josh is going through and how his way of coping is by getting himself into rebellious situations. Such as under-age drinking and smoking. As a result of his rebellious behavior, Josh sees his grades go dramatically downhill and starts to be threatened to be kicked out of school, which therefore, creates problems at home with his mother who is also grieving from the loss of Josh’s father.

Towards the end of the film we see Josh meet a girl, Sandra who helps him to overcome the issues surrounding his fathers death and his grieving process. We see Josh stop being friends with the group of rebellious teenagers who he kept getting into trouble with and makes a new group of friends who assist  him to overcome his problems. Josh then visits his fathers grave and confides to his father about his heart break and how he has met this wonderful girl who has helped him overcome the situation and progress further in his life.

Throughout our short film, we watch the life of the young character Josh as his life slowly falls apart in front of his eyes. Josh struggles to cope with the tragic situation and finds being rebellious a way to block out his emotions, as does not know how to confront them nor has anyone he can discuss them with. This is why meeting Sandra helps him overcome his issues because she encourages him to talk about his feelings towards the death of his father and visit his grave. 

Feed Back on Treatment

- Could be more specific, adding more information and depth about   what's going to happen   
- Might not be enough time to portray this idea in a five minute
  short film, may need to cut out some elements and make it 
  slightly shorter.   
- it is a very conventional idea, seems like it has happened in 
  many films,although it does have a good core potential  to 
  succeed as a short film.