Evaluation So Far - Final Film

Hello!

We have completed the evaluation of our progress and planning so far. To do this we split it down in to three questions that we asked ourselves. 1. "What did you learn?" 2. "What surprised you?" 3. "How will you use this in your production". Here is our response:

Part 1 - What we learnt: 

The first thing we learnt was that females are more likely to watch a tragedy drama, therefore we only listened to what the females were saying which changed our plans and ideas dramatically.

We learnt that most people we interviewed would prefer a female main character. However, two people said male, therefore we will include a few male characters in the main story line, and base it around the female. Also, out of the people we surveyed, 70% said they wanted a teenager to be a main character. Therefore we will definitely make the main character a teenager. We will also include a victim and a prisoner as they had 10% votes each and we are able to include these characters.

Also, we learnt that the people we interviewed all wanted the film to be set in a small town that’s a real life experience. We think that this would be a good setting because a tragedy drama has to build sympathy for the viewers. Therefore, we are happy with the setting that the audience want.

When we surveyed people, we included the question “What would you prefer the storyline to focus on in a drama film?” The responses were quite equal apart from one, crime solving. 40% chose suicide, 30% said prison and 25% said murder. Therefore, we will include all of these aspects in our storyline, making suicide the main aspect that the story is based around.

We learnt that most of the people we interviewed and spoke to only go to the cinema once of twice a month. This is mostly because of the expense and the other options that there now are such as free streaming. To get around this we will not put our film through the cinema. Instead, we will release it on DVD as a limited edition for a month to get our viewers hooked and make them go out and buy it. Then, after another month we will release it on to free streaming companies.

The last things we learnt is that drama is a very popular genre with our audience. And in drama, tragedy is the favourite subgenre, which is a massive relief.

Part 2 - What surprised us:

The biggest surprise to us is our audience’s cinema habits. We all enjoy going to the cinema and think that once or twice a month was surprising.

The other surprise we had was again, the target audience. We were set on males and had written up a ‘Target Audience Profile’ that we thought was perfect for our movie. However, it just shows how important research is because we were totally wrong! It seems that females would prefer our film much more! Now we look back over our film ideas, this makes sense. In our interviews and questionnaire we found that females wanted it set in a real life situation with a female main character their age. This is because females are much more effected with emotions and therefore would be much more interested in a dramatic, saddening tragic film where they can place themselves as the character and be moved by the film. It is understandable that females and much more likely to want to be moved by a film than males.

Part 3 - How we will use this in our production:

The first thing we changed is our target market, originally we thought males would be more likely to watch a tragedy drama because although they don’t get involved in every day drama as much as females, they prefer eery films that involve a big blow. However, we found out that females would be more likely to watch them as they prefer sad films and it would affect them more.

The second change is our male character. We had planned from the start to have a female character. However, when it came to surveying our audience, although females got the most votes, a male main character was also popular among a particular group of people. As film producers, we want to ensure we suit as much as the female gender as possible. Therefore, we decided to keep our main character as a female, however we have made the male character more of a big character who plays more alongside the main female character and is featured a lot in the film and is a huge part of the story line.

The final main change we have made is the plot line. We originally wanted the plot to be about a prison break. However, when surveying and interviewing our audience, we could that many of them would prefer things like murder and suicide and much deeper things. Therefore, we decided that we would keep a prison break as a part of the story line, however focus it around suicide and incorporate murder. This has dramatically changed our plot line. 

Our next step is create a new Target Audience Profile for our new and improved target audience: females!

See you soon!