Quantitative Audience Research: Analysis

Although the questionnaire has only been live for 4 days, the results are already revealing enough for me to begin considering them and applying them to our products. 

Poster
In order to know what size and shape of poster we should create, we first need to know where the poster will be displayed, so we asked people where they thought film posters were most effective. As the graph below shows, there were three options that stood out:

1. Outside/within a cineama.
2. In a magazine.
3. On the internet.

This indicates that, if Tom and I want to advertise our film in what is deemed to be the most effective area, we should produce a poster for display in and around cinemas and multiplexes. What the reasonable spread of data across all choices suggests, though, is that film posters are always somewhat effective, no matter where they are displayed. It may well be worth producing three different versions of the same poster for the three most-selected options. 

The next question was concerning the features of a film poster. The summary graph shows that there were two main features people wanted to see: an eye-catching image, and images of the characters or actors. Although our current plan for the poster is certainly 'eye-catching', with lots of faces staring out at viewers, the entire point of it is that the protagonist is not seen, so that a sense of mystery is created. According to the results, however, a sense of mystery is not so important. Tom and I will certainly have to consider either changing our poster design, or producing a number of posters which will appeal to different tastes. 

Review
The first question of this section asked people what they look for in a good film review, and the answers were pretty much as expected, with images from the actual film, the film release date and a clearly defined rating of the film all ranking in the top answers. Interestingly, two other popular selections were comparisons to other films and an unbiased perspective. The former three factors I mentioned were already going to be included in our review, but the latter two are both aspects we will have to consider including. The unbiased perspective will be the most challenging, because it necessitates an impartial writing style, which may be difficult to acheive considering we are the ones making the film.

The other two questions in this section were asked so that we could determine the placement of our review page; in what magazine, and in what section. The pie-charts below are very useful in summarising the results.

What they tell us is that large, in-depth reviews are favoured slightly over small, concise reviews, and that, overall, people would like to see short-film reviews as a new feature in an existing magazine such as Empire or Total Film. We are currently aiming to have two reviews of short films on our review page, with one being a review for our own film, and i think our plans will stay this way. There is not enough of a difference in the first pie-chart to push us into writing one large review of our own film, because this would not be read by those looking for shorter reviews. At the same time, however, a review filling half a magazine page is not as short as reviews go, so we are striking a compromise to try and satisfy both types of reader. Moreover, these reviews are going to have to look as if they belong in a real, new section in an existing film magazine, and, realistically, such magazines would only be likely to dedicate half a page at most to the review of a short film.

General
The general questions we asked relating to film were included simply so that Tom and I could confirm we were on the right tracks. 

Out of thriller, mystery and drama - the three genres that our Short Film aims to combine - thriller is clearly the most popular; perhaps more popular than mystery and drama than we expected. Although we're not going to turn around and re-write our film to cater more for thriller-lovers, we can alter our poster (or one of our posters, if we produce more than one) to make the film appeal to these people on first impressions. 

The question about how people discuss film was included solely to confirm the legitimacy of the two-step flow audience model, and this is exactly what it has done. What it also shows, quite interestingly, is that, despite the popularity of social networking, people are still more likely to talk to one-another about film in face-to-face conversation rather than via the internet. All the more reason, then, for Tom and I to produce a poster and review that are interesting and engaging enough to provoke discussion.

Genre & Short Films

Dictionary.com defines the noun 'genre' as follows: 

1. A class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like: the genre of epic poetry; the genre of symphonic music. 
2. Fine Arts A) paintings in which scenes of everyday life form the subject matter. B) a realistic style of painting using such subject matter.
3. Genus; kind; sort; style.

When we refer to a genre of film, then, we refer to a particular kind of film. When we say that a film is a particular 'kind' of film, we are asserting that it must belong to a certain category, and for such a category to exist, all the films within it must share some amount of common material.

The genres regularly used to categorise feature-length films are as follows, along with some of the associated characteristics:

• Horror - Scary, shocking, unnerving, dark, absurd.
• Thriller - Tense, complex, mysterious.
• Sci-fi - Futuristic, visually stunning, obscure.
• Comedy - Funny, simple, feel-good.
• Drama - Thought provoking, emotional, meaningful.
• Documentary - Factual, relevant, contemporary, witty.

Other genres such as Action, Mystery, Adventure and Crime can all be seen as subsidiary genres to those above.

An image from The Exorcist (1973), an iconic film of the horror genre.

Although people tend to relate genre just to the tone and effect of the film, the aspects that tie a film to a particular genre actually go much deeper. As I see it, genres are defined by narrative tropes and the intended effect on the audience. I use 'tropes' in the way it is defined by Meriam-webster.com: 

b : a common or overused theme or device : cliché 

Taking the 'Thriller' genre for example, a defining trope could be: an ambiguous event occurs and a character attempts to uncover and/or rectify the situation, and a defining effect could be: the audience are made to feel tense, and eager to follow the complex plot.

If you browse the internet looking for short films, you will find that the vast majority fall into the categories of comedy or drama, with only the occasional thriller, and perhaps even a rare horror short. This, I believe, is no coincidence, or even an artistic trend, but an inevitable result of the method of categorisation we apply when we talk of 'genre'. As I explained above, genres are defined by narrative tropes and the intended effect on the audience. Short films are restricted in terms of genre, because they cannot facilitate tropes that are suited to feature-length running times. In other words, there aren't a great amount of 5-minute thrillers, because filmmakers would be hard-pressed to convey a quintessential thriller trope in that short period of time.

It follows that, the longer a film's running time is, and the greaters its budget is, opening more avenues for creativity, the greater the film's capacity for tropes becomes. Because it is unfair, and less sensible, to judge a short film's genre on the tropes it contains, people generally rely on the other side of the coin: the film's effect on the audience. Personally, I beleive that short films mainly fall into the genres of either comedy or drama, because this is the greatest distinction anyone can make based on the effect on the audience alone. A comedy clearly makes people laugh, and a drama obviously draws out emotion, but a thriller could do either or both of these things, and still be called a thriller, as could a horror, documentary, or a sci-fi. In summary, short films have less scope in terms of genre, because they are less capable of facilitating the tropes that define a genre, and are judged solely on their effect on the audience, which will always be to either draw out emotion (like a drama) or make people laugh (like a comedy); otherwise the short film wouldn't be worthwhile.

Basing judgement on our ideas so far, I would categorise our short film as a drama. I think it is incredibly important, however, that we do not let this categorisation influence our piece; Tom and I take our inspiration from a great variety of sources, and it would most certainly be detrimental to restrict our creative input in order to comply with a particular genre. Nevertheless, I think it is worthwhile to clarrify and summarise ideas from time to time, to help ensure the planning and production is specific and achievable; the last thing we want is to begin drawing up a storyboard with no certain narrative, only a vague ordering of events. Therefore, I will state that, 'currently, we are aiming to produce a cerebral drama with a tint of mystery and noir.'

Considering this, my next step will be to research the work of directors whose films combine the elements Tom and I hope to combine in ours. After this, I will clarify our ideas for the films narrative in a synopsis or treatment, which will illustrate the chronology of the key scenes, their relevance, and the intended message of the film.

Directorial Techniques to Consider

Now that we have our initial ideas pinned down, it is important to begin considering the practical techniques we can actually use to convey those ideas. After listening to our pitch, our teacher provided us with some films that may be of interest to us. Among these were the films Apocalypto, for its ability to tell a story in a foreign language, even if watched without subtitles, and Dead Man's Shoes, for its distinctly British style in both a visual and narrative sense. 

Apocalypto
Apocalypto is an action epic made by Mel Gibson in 2006, which focuses on the story of one Mayan villager during the civilisation's demise. Although our aims in making a short film are pretty much polar-opposite to those of Gibson in his high-budget feature, Gibson does utilise techniques that we could also find useful. In our pitch, I explained that an important feature of our film would be an internal monologue of the protagonist. Because this monologue will dominate the film, we won't be including a great amount of diegetic dialogue. However, one of the main messages we want our film to carry is that 'selflessness often goes unrecognised,' and the lucidity of this message obviously depends upon the minor characters' reactions to the protagonist. If we are to keep the amount of dialogue to a minimum, and also illustrate the minor characters' ignorance of the protagonist's actions, then we must be efficient in visual storytelling.

This is where Apocalypto is relevant. All of the speech is in the Yucatec Maya language, and without subtitles, viewers such as Tom and I, who are far from fluent in the language, have to watch the film more closely to understand it. Viewing a film in this way makes the role of visuals in the storytelling much more apparent.

The excerpt below illustrates this well; even if it is muted, and the subtitles are ignored, the scene still makes sense. A story is told through the physical actions of the actors, the type of shot that captures them, and the way these shots are edited together. 



After watching the film with visual storytelling in mind, one thing that stood out to me was the abundance of eyeline matches. These are a staple in visual storytelling, because they exhibit the world of the film from a character's perspective, and provide justification for the way that character may act. Even if they are very short and subtle, they can convey important pieces of information. One example of a very subtle but important eyeline match can be seen at 2:54 in the video above; if it were not shown that the offering had been presented, then a factor of the negotiation between the two tribes would be lost, and the tribe of Jaguar Paw would seem much more easily persuaded. The fact that so much of the meaning of the scene would be changed by the omission of one shot illustrates the potency and importance of visual storytelling, and shows why it will be an important factor for Tom and I to consider during the production of our film.

Dead Man's Shoes
Dead Man's Shoes is a gritty independent thriller about a disaffected soldier who returns to his home town in the British midlands to take revenge on those who caused the death of his brother. As a film directed by Shane Meadows working with Warp Films, it works to most of the conventions of the vigilante/revenge thriller genre, but is set in a small town in the British midlands. Whilst the location initially seems incongruous, the beauty of Meadows' directing is in the way he can ground even the weirdest and wildest of events in reality through his use of characterisation and dialogue, so that they don't seem incongruous at all.

This aspect of Meadow's films can be seen in the below excerpt of Dead Man's Shoes. From 0:50 onwards, we see Meadows' interpretation of a conventional 'character stand-off'. Although we have many of the conventions of such a scene from a an old Western movie; namely two enemies sizing one-another up in quite a lengthy sequence to create a great amount of tension, Meadows manages to depict something that is quintessentially British. The characters are made to fit into both their location and the situation at hand; they look moderately intimidating as a gang, appear realistically unprosperous in the car they use and the way they dress, and seem quite uneducated in the way they ineloquently converse. At the same time, the protagonist, with whom the leader of the gang talks, is very unnerving in his arrogance, but without breaking the bounds of what is credible for such a person in his position. (This is all very much related to the concept of semiotics, which I introduced here on my AS blog)



Essentially, Meadows keeps his films sharp and interesting by providing the audience with a certain amount of social realism. Realism helps to captivate people, because they feel more willing to empathise and associate themselves with characters who could believably exist in this world. Realism will be a very important aspect of our short film, because whilst we are including surreal and ambiguous elements, we want the film to comment on the real world, and how real people interact. We will not be able to convey such a message unless the audience can conceivably relate the film to their own lives.

Another aspect that stood out to me on first viewing was that of the humour in the film. Despite its overly dark tone and tense atmosphere, Dead Man's Shoes contains some very funny moments, which help to break up the intensity of the plot in order to keep the audience just comfortable enough to continue watching. Many such moments contribute to the social realism of the piece, as real life is very rarely serious for extended periods of time. I feel that this kind of humour has almost become a trademark of British cinema, and a good example of it can be seen at 2:10 in the above clip, where we cut to a shot of the gang, squashed into the back of the car, debating what their leader is and should be doing.

Another illustration of this kind of humour can be found in the following clip from Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smocking Barrels from 1:00 onwards, where Vinnie Jones' character tells his son off for swearing, despite bringing him along in his day-to-day work as a loan shark. In this context, comedy is created because, whilst the sentiment of the father in not wanting his son to swear is realistic, the situation they are in at the time is not. 



Whilst I personally like this kind of 'socially realistic' humour very much, I do not think it would work particularly well in our short film. The humour works well in Dead Man's Shoes because, as I mentioned earlier, it eases the intensity of the plot and balances with the dark tone. Our film, however, must be short. Therefore, if we were to include a similar comedy moment, it would form a much bigger portion of the overall piece, and would definitely interfere with our surreal, cerebral tone. If we are to include any such humour, it won't be anything significant enough to be described as a 'moment' as such, and could be something as simple as one character insulting another.  

In summary, the directorial techniques which we will now consider are:

• Visual storytelling - use of eyeline matches and other such shots to convey information with minimum dialogue.
• Social realism - use of mise-en-scene, costume, location and characterisation to add a sense of realism and captivate the audience.

Music Video Research Presentation

As our first task for A2 Media Studies, we have been asked to choose a favourite music video, research it, and present our findings to the class. My immediate choice was the video for Fallen Angel by the British alternative rock band Elbow. The video is excellent, and despite watching it over and over, I still enjoy it, because new subtleties reveal themselves each time. 



Although I was familiar with the video even before the research task, I didn't know much at all about the actual production of the video, or how this linked to the meaning of the song and the promotion of the band and their album. 

The research itself actually proved to be rather difficult, because the video isn't particularly popular or well-known, and the band were only enjoying quiet success at this time. At a point when I was almost ready to give up, a trawl through some 10-or-so pages of meaningless Google search results presented me with this: http://www.mvdbase.com/, a resource which proved very useful, at least for crediting on the production of the video. For more detailed information, such as the production budget and location of first exhibition, I tried contacting Flynn Productions, but to no avail. As a result, I had to rely on what little information I had.

Below is a slidecast of the presentation I gave to the class, including both the slides I used and an audio file of my speech.Music Video Research Presentation Slides