Our Audience research

Like last year, we decided to use questionnaires again to identify who our target audience are because we realise it really helped us summarise what our target audience expect and want from the genre and why they go to watch romantic comedy films. This then helps us to identify what we need to include in our trailer, poster and magazine cover. Our questionnaire consisted of ten questions and we gave it out to fifteen people to fill out and these were the results:

age was one of the most important part in our research because we wanted to identify what age group romantic comedies most appealed to, although we didn't broaden our research by giving it to older members, but we wanted to identify the percentage of people in our peers that go to cinema to watch a romantic comedy film. And as the result shows the highest percentage of our participant were those of 16-24

The next question was about finding out how many of this percentage was regular cinema attenders and with this we can identify what they go to watch when they do go to the cinema.What we found was that about 70% of our participants regular cinema attenders we realised that there was a high percentage of people that attended regularly.

The next question was mainly for us to identify what social networking site we should advertise our end product and where we are more likely to receive audience feedback, this results shows that Face book and YouTube are the most popular amongst our participants and this is useful for us because we know where we can target our audience.

In the past, as cinema goers ourselves we have noticed that certain music relates to certain genre, for example Pop and R&B music usually are heard in romcoms so we decided it would be appropriate for us to ask our participant what their favourite music genre was. We found that 45% of our participants enjoyed Pop music and this will help us decide what our background sound track we could use.

This was another one of the most important part of our research, because we wanted to know what our target audience expect to see on our poster. We found that the least important information for our audience is the date and the most important was the image and the actors/actresses. this is very useful to us because we now know how to capture the interest of our audience.

We now wanted to know whether, our audience were committed cinema goers or went to the cinema for the sake of it. Also whether they watch certain movies out of personal choice or did it because they were pressured into doing so. What we found was that no one felt pressured to go and watch a movie and movie choice were of own decision.

We still wanted to find out more about who were influential on our participants when it came to film choice. We found that 85% of our participants were influence by their friends and this gave us our secondary target audience.We found that parents and children had no input as to what movie our participants watched therefore gave us no reason to target them.

8) We asked them to rank these film genres in order of their favourite to least favourite..

this was the most important part of our research, and out of the ranking 12 people chose romcom as their favourite genre so this suggested that the information that we found above about our participants is relevant to our research because they are our target audience and they like romantic comedy films.

Initially our group was split between the decision of giving our actors/actress a star's names so we decided to ask our audience whether this was important or not and clearly, our target audience would be more eager to see a film if there was a well known actors/actresses so we chose to give our characters well known stars.

Although we are aware that we have to do all three advertising format, but we wanted to know which was most important to our target audience, as the result shows, the most important type of advertising was teaser trailers, this attracted them the most.

Over all our research has really helped a lot, we are now aware of the type of music our target audience would like to hear as a background sound in our trailer, we know that the most important thing our target audience look for in a poster is the image and the stars and we also know the age range of our target audience. However we are aware that our research method may not be reliable because we didn't include a wider range of ages in our participants and our research was very much focused on cinema, some people may have other ways of watching films. Also due to the number of participants in our research it would be difficult to suggest that this is a true reflection of what people want. This would however give as an idea of what our target audience expect from us and what we need to be prioritising in our research.

Evaluation on our Planning so far

Planning so far has been very disorganised, we focused all our attention on deciding what to include in our trailer that we haven't really invested time on our magazine and our poster. However in terms of research i think we have covered pretty much every area including audience research, magazine research, trailer and poster, all that's left to do in our planning is to redraft our story board, film our trialer and edit it. We have given our self a target of the end of this week to complete this and hopefully by the start of next term we will start our teaser trailer.

Initial Poster idea

Researching on film posters has really helped us to get an idea of what we wanted to include in ours. As a convention, we wanted out audience to spot straight away that is a romcom.

From our research we knew it was absolutely vital for our audience to be familiar with the main character, and understand their roles as being important. As we can see on the image the two character have a gap between them on the bench, we did this because we wanted to suggest conflict and an idea of a 'love/hate relationship' and this is a typical convention of romcoms. Also another convention that we stuck to is leaving the billing block and the date at the bottom although we have seen some romantic comedy film poster's challenge this convention. We decided the title of our film should be next to the two characters on the bench because we wanted to emphasis on the idea that their relationship its imperfect for us as audience however perfect for them. As a group we decided to put the tag line "love makes the imperfect perfect" because it really explains our story about a girl finding perfection in the most imperfect guy. Unlike our thriller movie last year, we knew putting the tag line at the top would give people an idea of what the movie is about and audience of romcoms expect see some conventions kept, they want to be able to identify the movie as a romcom.

later on we decided that separating the two character on the bench would contradict the title, instead we decided that we will show the males character's imperfection in the poster through his dressing. We decided to date the release of our film in summer 2011 because most film poster do not give the exact date of release. We also gave our character star names so that our audience will be able to identify them and this is what we found in our audience research, that some people will go to watch a romantic comedy film if they like and know the stars in it.

Research on Film magazines

This year we have three different sections of our course work; creating a teaser trailer, making a poster for it and designing a magazine front cover for it. So like the other two projects we have decided to research on film magazines. The major film magazine companies around are Empire Magazine and Total Film, so it only made sense to look at how the professionals do it and try and go along does lines.

         

The first thing that stands out is obviously the title of the magazine 'Total films' although the actor's head is blocking the letter 'M' it isn't a big deal because the name of the company is a recognised one and customers recognise it straight away. The title of the movie is in bold letters and is the second biggest font after the title of the magazine. Audience that are familiar with Sex and the city instantly recognise that this the magazine cover Sex and The City because of Sara Jessica Parker and her major lead role in the film. The layout of the poster is very simple, all the subtitles and titles are in capital letters and different fonts and in green allowing the red title 'sex and the city' to stand out. The bar code of the magazine is at the bottom which prevents it from interrupting the layout of the front cover. Obviously we are aware that there are other topics within the magazine that has to make the headlines. However they are put in a way that it doesn't disrupt the obvious main story, for example the picture of the woman at the corner of the page.

                                               

Again this also follows the same principles, the actress in the middle of the page, her head blocking one of the letters in the title and the bar code is at the bottom. However the title of the movie isn't as clear as the last one. And there is more information about other films taking the concentration away from this particular film. Also the 'PLUS' towards the bottom of the page shows the magazine has a lot of content and features. The only real bold colour is the masthead title of the magazine which enhances brand recognition. Personally I think this front cover is more about the magazine its self than the movie.

This is a very interesting one because the title of the movie is almost as big as the magazine's name; the whole page is pretty much about 'SHERLOCK HOLMES' unlike the previous magazine cover of Megan Fox's movie. This is also emphasised by the fact that the title is in the middle of the bottom half of the page. Although there are other features on the cover but they are written in blue and black which almost blends into the background giving the movie its spotlight. I think this may be because the movie is such a well known novel as well as movie and this will bring in more sells to the brand therefore enhancing brand recognition. Again the main character in the film takes the middle stage and audience instantly recognise him and the movie. 

Another recognised film magazine is EMPIRE and just like Total Film the title of the magazine always stays bold and at the top. The title of the magazine is brought to the front and the picture of harry potter at the background; this avoids the letter being covered. The title of the film is very small and although written in capital letters can easily be missed. The obvious headline of the magazine is the 'Massive Preview Special!' which takes away the attention from the film. However Harry Porter is such a huge blockbuster that the target audience would instantly recognise his face and read on. Again the bar code is at the bottom allowing less distraction. The colours are not bold on this cover. The only bold colour is the red of the master title.

Looking at most of the covers of 'Total Film', it is very much theme based and we get this from the colours of the background. for example the Sherlock Holmes’s one had a very wintering, frosty effect with the blue and white and this one is very much spring/summer  time based with the light green and yellow. Although the title of the movie is in a small font but it is right in the middle which still attract attention. The whole theme of summer is proven by 'Ultimate Summer Preview' underneath the title of the film. The name of the star in the film is bigger than the title and this attracts his fans to watch his movie.

Cases whereby there are several important characters in a film, to gain more sells and appeal to all audiences film magazines will do the same issue but with different character on the cover. Sometimes this can be done to introduce new characters to the audience. For example Empire have did a 3 cover special to advertise Tron:Legacy, this allows a varied audience to buy this issue of the magazine.

As a group we have chosen to use the brand name 'Total Film' as the name of our Magazine cover and adapt the same style and technique into our own. Also as a recognised brand we will be able to attract the eyes of our target audience.

Research on romantic comedy long length teaser trailers

In order to make our teaser trailer we needed to understand the principles of romantic comedies teaser trailers and what to include in it. To do this we decided to research on teaser trailers, what I found that was similar in all the teaser trailers was that each one had bits that revealed the plot in the film. So far in lesson we have learnt that teaser trailers are short sometimes less than 60seconds, they are released months before the actually production comes out and in some cases even before the actually film is made.

LOVE ACTUALLY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aiCRe602so
The first Teaser trailer I found was Love Actually; this teaser trailer was very interesting because it was more about the director than the actual film. This is because the trailer starts with shots from different romcoms that had been been by Richard Curtis such as Four weddings and a funeral Notting hill and Bridget Jones Dairy I think this is interesting because these two movies are huge hits so in away they are telling their target audience that 'if you think that was good watch this!'. Usually teaser trailers use their big stars to attract their target audience but in this case this trailer is using the director and his film to attract their 'feel good wanting' audience. The actual teaser trailer starts with a different background sound, the whole idea Christmas and love theme is very much emphasised on, with the sound of bells and snow. We also recognise it as a romcom because of the humour and of course we recognise Hugh Grant who we know in many romcoms. At the end we are only told it is 'coming soon' no actual date is given.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mS4VPs5OCI
This movie being the number romantic comedy of all time it only made sense for me to watch the teaser trailer and how it is done. I have notice that all the trailers start with the production company first. The meeting of the two main characters is shown next which gives us the whole romantic aspect of the movie, since is about a 'wedding' the trailer then goes to the process of the guy meting the Greek family and then the preparation for the wedding. We also recognise the humour in this trailer 'you don't eat meet....OK I will cook lamb’. Again the voice over that is trying to sell the movie and this is a convention of trailers. As usual we have the names of the main characters in the movie towards the end of the trailer.

She Is Out Of My League
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWG1I7lwac0
I think the narrative structure of this movie is very similar to ours. This film is about Curk finding love with some one completely out of his 'league' in the sense that she is 'little miss beauty queen' and he is a lonely nerd. The structure of this trailer is very similar to all the others, the voice over, the first meeting of the two romantic characters, the text, and the humour. However with this trailer we actually get a date of release.

The Back-Up Plan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FZuNElrx7A&feature=related
This teaser trailer is very interesting in the sense that it uses voice over of the main character and this is unusual because we usually here a male voice over as we go through the trailer, the only time we get that mail voice over is when the title is said. We still have the text telling us what the film is about and as usual we have the first meeting of the two romantic characters. We also have the season of release (spring time) which is similar to love actually, we also get the names of the actors towards the end.
 
looking at the trailers I have researched I have noticed that its very common to have a male voice over,  the audience are always aware of the first meeting between the two main characters and the production company is the first thing we see. Also I have noticed that is not always dates of release are shown.

Movie Poster Research- Layout of Poster

In order to understand layer Romantic Comedies Posters we had to understand the generally layout of any film posters. We found a trend with older Poster, some of these trend was :

1. The title is usually towards the bottom
2. The actors name at the top
3. Dates and Billing blog is always at the bottom

some of these posters are :

 

with newer poster  its all about being creative and catching the eye of the target audience these can be seen in our research of romcom posters. colours are usually relevant to the genre bright bold colours  such as purple and pink usually relate to romcoms and action movies can be dark and mysterious colours such as silver and black. Fonts are also specific to genres and also to the plot of the movie. colours of film posters are part of advertising the genre so its important for colours and font to reflects the movie this gives an idea to the audience what it's going to be like.

Relating Media Theories to Our AS coursework

Reflecting back on our media studies course work, the most appropriate theory that would suite it is the reception theory by Stuart Halls. Although our aim was for our audience to feel empathy for the young girl but other viewers may watch it and think 'why was she walking at night on her own in the first place?', this could also be looked in many other different ways because although what happened to her was terrible but it was down to her carelessness that led to her misfortune. These are usually the conmcepts behind these storylines; something has to go wrong for the action to take place, this is part of the narrative and any narrative of a film.

When it comes to the type of audience that would watch this movie, could be both passive and active audience, for example the active audience might feel that people in real life are not that careless anyway and passive audience may feel emotional especially if they have been in a similar situation.

our movie being a thriller we intentionally kept many of the conventions of a thriller to make it more recognisable to our audience and by braking and challenging some of the conventions enables our audience to become more active in the story line as they try to work out what is going, by doing this we added more enigma to our movie making it more thrilling.

Companies that may produce and distribute our film

 We Decided to research companies that are likely to distribute and produce our trailer. We chose big company that is likely to produced and distribute our film.We finally decided on Paramount Pictures but looked at two other companies.


Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures is a production and distribution that is owned by Viacom, according to wilkipedia it is the oldest existing film studio. Paramount was founded on 1912 and it has a reputation of being ranked one of the top-grossing movie studios. By 2006 Paramount pictures became a parent company of Dream work. Famous romantic movies distributed and produced by Paramount pictures include Titanic, Pretty in Pink, What Women want and Falling in love.  I think this company could possibly distribute our film because not only does it distribute a broad range of genres including, thriller, horror, action and most importantly romcoms. Also famous top grossing movies such as Titanic, and what women want makes it a good company to use.

Sony pictures entertainment

The next company i researched was Sony Picture Entertainment is the film production/distribution unit of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony. Their group sale in 2010 has been reported to be of $7.2 billion. The company was founded in 1987 as Columbia pictures entertainment but was renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment. Like i did for AS I went on to IMDB typed in romcoms and most of them Had Sony Pictures Entertainment as their distribution company. This included 'My Best Friend's Wedding and ’My 50 First Date'. 

WARNER BROS. PICTURES
People that know the company Warner Bros would reference it the cartoons such as Bugs Bunny. However Warner Bros Picture is a producing/distributing company that distributed Two Weeks Notice. Although this is not a popular genre that this company usual deals with, however is relevant to our research because it shows the company's diversity in genre. Warner Bros Picture is a branch of Time Warner. It was founded in 1918 as Time Warner  but as the years progressed there were other branches launched under the same belt and one of these was Warner Bros Picture.

Research on Romantic Comedy Posters

We decided to research on posters on romcoms in other to get inspiration for our own. We looked mainly at American Romcoms and how it is layered out, in all the posters we realised that there seem to be a story telling in the image of the poster that links to the film. some of this are:

 

I really like this film poster because of how simple and basic it is. I think is really clever how all the information about the movie is put in the dress, something we are used to seeing in the billing block.

The one thing this poster does have in common with other romcoms is the pink colour in the writing. This reminds the audience what it is about after all. The whole implication of the plot in the movie having something to do with dresses is obvious through the title and what the character on the poster is wearing. We are reminded that it has comical aspects to it because of the way the character is presented to use. There is no seriousness in her pose or face, she looks very feminine.

 

I really like this poster in the sense of how it cleverly tells the whole story in one picture. The idea of the girls at the background blurred and the two man character in the foreground in focus suggest the whole idea of looking round for the perfect guy or girl and this directly links into our own film and story line. Again although the writing is mostly in black but there is still that little pink that sends it right back to the whole idea of love and romance. Although there is less pink in the writing but we still get enough from the lipstick on the girl’s lips and also the flowers.
Again strangely the title is at the top and the billing block is not hugely apparent because of the little information provided. However the date is slightly bigger because it is one of the most important information.

This is a very typical romcom poster. The elements of genre is clearly high lighted through the use of colours such as pink and purple, this is very common of romcoms and can be found on many romcom posters. This obviously attracts certain type of audience, not necessarily females but more feminine viewers. I think the use of bright colours illustrates the whole idea of a happy ending and this adds more to the attraction of target audience who are interested in love fantasies.
The three main characters are right at the front and this is very important for every movie not just romcoms especially if the actors are stars it is a must have for marketing the film because people who love the stars would want to see it.
After looking at several posters of romcom and other films i found that it is very unusual to see the billing block and title at that top and i think this poster definitely challenging conventions of film poster. However the movie being recreated from a famous novel and including big actors and actresses, breaking conventions can only enhance not damage.

Again this poster follows the same convention in the sense of colours, the whole idea of attracting more feminine audience. The pose of the character relates very much to the title; she is in a sort conserved, shy position which suggest why she may have 'never been kissed'. However if compared to the Bridget Jones poster it is clear that the certification of this ovie is more of a much younger age, this is shown through the character herself and the sense of immatureness she portrays.
The target audience of 14 to 25 year olds, this movie sticks to conventions such as keeping the title mid down and the billing block at the bottom. However the actors’ names are horizontally placed which is unusual.

Although 'Love happens' doesn't use the colour format that we are use to seeing, this poster uses more formal colours such as black and dark blue scheme however we still recognise the romantic elements in the poster through the two characters poses, smiles and postures, which gives the impression of happiness and love. The brightness and contrast of the image also helps send this message across. Also the title of the movie gives away the genre, the whole idea of 'love' suggest romance. However the way the poster is set out; it’s very formal which makes it look more like a romance movie rather than a romcom, and this may be due to the lack of colour. However with Jennifer Aniston's role attached to romcoms target audience are immediately aware that there will be some element of romcom in the movie. There is no date on this poster which is very unusual.

This poster is very simple, however unlike 27 Dresses, the information on the T-shirt is based on picture information about what actually things that happens in the 500 days of summer where as 27 Dresses is more about the production information. The whole poster is very simple. I don’t think is very obvious that it’s a romcom.
By using the T-shirt, they are able to show scenes and names of character.

Similar to Bridget John's Dairy, the whole idea of a love triangle is portrayed, and this idea is shown through the title like many films. Without using pink and purple, this poster still shows that same brightness that we are use to seeing on romcom poster. The female is seem more closer to the male in the black shirt rather than the other and the look on the other character suggest that is not the female character who is caught between the two male characters but rather the other male character who is stuck between his 'best friend' and his girl and this impression is confirmed by the title. Again the title is at the top which is becoming a more popular thing according to our research.

Research on Romantic Comedy Posters

Ideas For Our Romantic Comedies

After disagree on different ideas we have finally decided to do production based on a Rom Com. So far we have decided on the title; Imperfect Mr Perfect. We really struggled on ideas for the teaser trailer but after getting the basic story line we are so far coming up with rough ideas.

Our story is about a girl named Maria, she is a single girl looking for her perfect guy. As an independent girl she understands she doesn't have to settle for anything less than perfect. After seeing her parents inspiring relationship, their never ending love, she is desperate to get a taste of happy ending. She searched in all the wrong places and starts to wonder if there is such thing as Mr perfect. Her encouraging friends manage to persuade to go on one final date. It goes unbelievably wrong and it doesn't stop there. Her car breaks down on her way home and she is forced to take a bus, on the way to the bus stop while on the phone to her friend. A reckless bike rider ignores the road and focuses all his attention on Maria and unsurprisingly he falls over. Shockingly, completely out of character, Maria is impress by this maniac and gives him a hand up. We could say love is blind! the chemistry is instant and their love is apparent, She shocks her friends including her parents with her new found love. Their bizarre relationship is annoyingly romantic and Maria starts to pick up his crazy hobbies. Love might be blind but Maria had found her Imperfect Mr Perfect!