Target Audience

I have chosen to concentrate on targeting an audience of ages between 13-17 as I feel my overall story narrative will be very confusing for someone younger than 13years of age. Although the character is 9years old, it’s the story that is complex and makes the target audience older. My sister is 15 which is in the middle of my target audience so I will be using her and her friends to review and feedback to my finnished short film.

Target audience feedback

Finally I have finished by short film and got my target audience of 7 people to watch my short film ‘DEPARTED’. They sat in silence the whole way through and was quite fixed on the screen. Not one of them looked around or got bored so their attention must have been taken very quickly which I am very pleased about. After the film stopped they were surprisingly silent for a while and then started talking about it with a range of comments. One girl was reviewing the complex of the short film and I asked her what do you think happened in the film. She replied that she gathered it was a single mum who is very tired and stressed out with something not right with her. The little girl made it emotional as she was little and didnt know what was going on. She also said that it was obvious someone died but she doesnt know who or why they died. I also asked her about the dialogue of the rose scnene, where she replied, that ended the film well as it made me think about what was going on and it sort of summed up the situation for me but it was very cute when she said that touching sentence. Although, not knowing what was being said through most of the film was a good way to capture our attention as you then want to know what happens at the end and what was going on.

So from this feedback I have gained, I feel I have really achieved what I wanted to from my target audience. The aspect I wanted to cover like; not knowing what is going on in the short film, who died, whats wrong with the mum, what are the poeple saying, really covered it all well.

Film Poster

This is my final film poster! I am quite pleased with how it turned out. The rose in the background makes it look quite professional as it lets the image figure on the foreground stand out more than the original image I would have used. It makes it more subtle I feel compared to the grey dull background which would have spoilt the poster if the rose wasn’t added in. I got my sister and one of her friends to help me decide on the font colour and style. They came up with purple as it is still a darkish colour setting with the mood of the film but yet it can be uplifting at the same time. I was going to have font without the brackets on the letters and just plain and simple but I then re-evaluated the situation and realised it looked better if it looked a bit like Times New Roman. My audience feedback from ‘The Times’ is simple and suong words to describe the film to draw the audience into the ‘emotional’ impact. Like every other film poster, the lead role first names are usually smaller than the surname. But I thought in my case, I am going to make the first names better as I think the womans names are stronger than the last names. Going back to Laura Mulvey’s theory on a feminist outlook. I want to change how the usual rules are set on a film poster.My web adress and release date is below my billing line which contains the cast names and director and so on. My strap line contains the previopus film the director produced which I put instead of something snappy about the film as I dont want to reveal a lot through my film poster. I think I have produced the expectations I wanted to portray to my target auadience.

After gathering my sisters friends around the computer, they started discussing what is being showed through the poster and they all came to agreement that the title is really important and it is quite bold on my poster. Another thing discussed was the rose..they asked if it was something meaningful int the film where I told them to wait until they view the short film when completed. So I have acheived my aspects I wanted from my target audience questioning about the short film and especially the rose.

Finished Film Review

I havent selected a image yet to go onto my review but this is the final layout with everything complete. I didn’t enjoy writing my review and feel I havent met all the right terms. The use of vocabulary is not that great I feel but I was quite negative about he short film.

film review

At the start of my project I looked at the Cocaine Cowboys review in Empire magazine. I am going to create a similar layout to the Empire review to get an idea of where to position my text and review.

I reviewed another review of the film “Avatar” to see what the vocabulary is like. I can say it is quite complex. Theres arguments for and against in a review which doubts wether you would like the film or not. I found thay the review for Avatar was very good and a good use of vocabulary was used. Now I hate writing arguments for and against so this should be interesting. I also looked at the film review for ‘Marley and Me’ which was very negative!

last touches

I am now doing my final touches onto the short film. The editing was simple and luckily there wasn’t many problems for editing and adding transitions as I wanted to keep to my genre being Drama, I dont need a lot of technical adjustments. I asked my friend to watch the film and point out any scenes that are too long where she pointed out a few which I need to alter and fit everything together again. Now from my short film, I want my target audience to think about what is happening while watching it and be really drawn into the film to question it at the end. I dont want my short film to be obvious and easy understandable. I want the viewers to think about it and find it complex as that is what I have been trying to achieve. So we will see what my audiece says…

Feedback

I have had one person watching my short film as it is edited so far. They gave me feedback to cut some of the clips shorter and add more to the story which I will be doing tonight. My aim is to add more of the girl being upset about her dad who died. So what I was thinking is the girl running off to a park and sitting there crying and then go home really late and just fall into her mums arms then the next day will be the funeral. I think this will be better.

Poster Images

This is one of the possible images for my film poster. I like the composition and the rose being bold and bright. The only downfall is that the background is quite grey.

 

This is the second possible image I may use. I like the composition yet again but its not focused enough and the lighting is quite orange which Im not very fond of.

I think I am going for the first Image which was my first idea in my draft. I think the composition is good and there’s enough space for the titles and everything else.

Titles

I have started inserting titles into my short film where the company name is going first, then the title DEPARTED where this will lead into the start of my film. The ending has the cast names sliding in from the right and leaving to the left so it looks like they are sliding past one after the other. I have gone for this as I don’t want to follow the rules with the scrolling of the names and directors like every other film. So basically its slightlya bit of postmodernism.

Mock up/draft of film poster

I want to keep my poster simple as the film is quite complex I think this will be better. I have included all the aspects a film poster usually has like the billing card where I will include the release date which will be the 5th of march. The lead Image, Zia is looking down at the flower showing it is a sad short film, the title bold and seperate from the image of Zia to make it clear. An audience review from The Times but it wont say whats written on there at the moment. My strapline says from the editior of Running of Lies which is my previous task I produced and thought I would rather put that than write something about the film as I dont wwant to give too much away in words. I think I am going to add something in the background like a fade image as most film posters have something like that included.