Target Audience

Determining the target audience was an important part of the research and planning development; films determine a target audience through context and plot.

I began my research by analysing ways in which films define and attract their target audiences.

This film is an animation about a princess and so is mainly directed at a target audience of girls aged 3-10, however the adventurous elements of the film may also appeal to young boys aged 3-10.

This film is an urban British Drama and therefore will have mature themes, so the age range of the target audience will be >15, however since the main protagonist is a teenager, the age range of the target audience will be altered to 15-19 year old. The film will also appeal more to female viewers as the main protagonist is female, providing a pathway for connection from the audience.

This film is a slasher horror and hence is obviously too graphic for younger viewers, so the target age range would be 18-25. It is mostly aimed at men as it plays on ideas of violence and protective instincts.

The next step of determining a target audience was researching film certificate guidelines. Using my research I found that the typical target audience of an urban British drama is 15-19 year olds and so film posters usually have the film certificate 15.

According to the official BBFC Guidelines, our film opening would be given a 15 age rating as Drug taking may be shown but the film does not promote drug use, there is no strong language and although rape is a main part of the storyline, it is only inferred and not shown.

Overall, I came to the conclusion that our target audience should be women (as the main protagonist is a woman, females with be more able to connect and emotionally interact with the protagonist), aged 15-19 as urban British dramas are mainly popular with teenagers.

Chosen Production Company

Revolver Entertainment was our final decision, and we chose to use this in our film opening. We chose this as it is the best company due to the fact that it operates in both London and Los Angeles as well as having distributed many UK Dramas in a similar style to our own. These include ‘Shank’, ‘Kidulthood’, ‘Exit through the Gift Shop’ and ‘Sket’.  'Kidulthood' is a very well known for its gritty uk stylistic features adding to the overall effect of the drama, therefore making this company more well known for this type of film, sharing conventions that are included in our own.

We added the 'Revolver Entertainment' credits to the beginning of our film opening using a clip from the beginning of the trailer for ‘Shank’. To do this, we used media converted to download the clip, then added the selected section of footage for the ‘Revolver Entertainment’ logo.

Editing Drum Beat

When planning our storyboards we decided we didn't want a song playing throughout the establishing shots, but instead a simple drum beat as we thought it was effective without be overly distracting. We also thought it linked in well with our film genre (British Drama) as it had an urban feel.

We used GarageBand to find the drum beat and after listening to many different tracks we found what we were looking for, however, it was too short - so in GarageBand we copied the track several times to make it longer.

We saved the track in GarageBand and then imported it into iMovie by selecting the musical note on the taskbar and then in the saved folder, finding and selecting the track. Once it was imported, we were able to copy the track to fit the duration of the establishing shot; however, we also decided to prolong the track throughout the opening toilet scenes with the main protagonist as well, as we thought the silence in those scenes in comparison with the beat didn't seem right. We were then concerned that the simple drum beat for a duration of roughly 30 seconds would seem repetetive and boring, however after watching it through we decided it flowed well and did not seem monotonous.

Editing Dubstep Tracks

When inputting music onto our film we had to make sure any tracks were not copyrighted. through sound cloud we found three appropriate Dubstep tracks. We made sure the track was saved in the appropriate format and imported onto iMovie via iTunes. When imported we could then move the track to the appropriate position, split the clip and cut parts so that only bits were played. We also wanted to add another track to make the party scene more intense. We imported another track in the same way and overlapped the track by dragging underneath the first one.

Some parts of the film needed music however there were diegetic sounds on screen that were also important. To solve this we lowered the volume of the track so we could hear what was happening on screen. eg. When the main protagonist is sick we lowered the volume.