Evaluation: Question 3

How did you attract/ address your audience ?

One way that I attracted and addressed my target audience was by doing research and creating a questionnaire on Survey Monkey. Our production group chose to do a questionnaire as we thought this would be the most effective way to get results appropriate to our target audience, with answers that could help improve our research and the level of professionalism of our opening sequence. Firstly we had to decide on what questions to ask, which had to be worded effectively so that we didn't get yes or no answers, and that the answers that were given were detailed to actually help us analyse our opening sequence. In total we asked 6 questions, some simple for example 'what is your age group?' to some that required more detail such as 'Do you prefer to see the crime happen or piece it together yourself?’ Each questions result helped toward being analytical toward our opening sequence, as well as helping to find our target audience, and be able to address them.

For our questionnaire to firstly find our target audience, before addressing them, we had to ask the viewer what gender they were, male or female, and the results showed that predominantly females were interested in the genre. This was very helpful as now we could represent the crime of domestic violence in a sensitive but forward way, using Blumler and Kats theory to target them in a personal way, or for females to see how this crime actually happens if they haven't been victim.

Now that we knew that mainly females would watch our opening sequence, finding out their age was appropriate to narrow down what rating our film would be when looking at the BBFC guidelines. The majority of the viewers that answered were between 16 and 20. This meant that now the character for our opening sequence was appropriate, and that a young teenage girl would be effective to show as she could relate to specific audience members.

The third question that we asked was 'How often do you watch Crime Dramas?' This question helped us to understand how often the viewer would watch a film with a genre of crime drama/ psychological crime drama. The answer that was most frequently given was 'I watch them sometimes' This meant that as a group we needed to find out ways to make the opening sequence more appealing and interesting to hook the audience member and not bore them, especially with the genre being a psychological crime drama, targeting quite a niche audience that would expect specific conventions of this genre.

From previous research done I knew that some crime dramas unravel the plot quite quickly, with the characters solving the crime, and some drag out the plot so that it unravels slowly, which means that the audience could piece it together themselves. This meant that our opening sequence could unravel slowly, or show the crime straight away, which lead to our fourth question of 'Do you prefer to see the crime happen or piece it together yourself?' To which the majority of the viewers answered that they would like to piece it together themselves as the plot unravels as it would keep them hooked longer, making them want to watch more. This meant that we could create a lot of enigma codes within our opening sequence to keep the audience hooked and not bore them, relating to question three, as now we would be able to make the opening sequence more interesting, making the viewer want to watch psychological crime dramas more.

Now to keep the audience hooked, we had to find out what the audience liked about crime dramas, to see how we could make the opening sequence interesting and possibly deviate from the normal stereotype to create something different and more engaging, so our fitth question was 'What appeals to you about crime dramas?'. To which the most common answers were that "they're engaging" , "They offer diverse issues" and "twists". These answers now gave us a few things to include in our opening sequence, and made us realise that it needed to have an engaging crime and story line, and have a deviating plot line.

To deviate from the normal stereotypes of a psychological crime drama we firstly needed to know what sort of stereotypes the viewer liked to see, and expected to see in a film of this genre, so for question 6 we asked, 'What stereotypes do you expect to see in a crime drama?', to which we got a varied amount of answers to suit different crimes, such as "murders", "psychopaths" and "male detectives with a female sidekick". As a group we knew that we wanted to portray the crimes hands on through a character rather than through a detective scenario, And could see that the crime of murder was quite popular, to which we followed in our opening sequence, as the character of Sarah ends up killing her partner James, but as a more psychopathic character, conveying to the hybrid genre of a psychological crime drama.

Overall by creating a questionnaire it helped a lot to actually pin point a specific audience. By having this specific audience it meant that we could now adapt and represent our opening sequence in a different, engaging way.

From having questionnaire results, as a group we could now sit and plan how we would deviate from the normal stereotypes of a psychological crime drama, and firstly did this by looking at the characters. We knew that the crimes that we wanted to represent were predominantly domestic violence, with the use of knife crime, as knife crime was quite common crime to be shown, but with a twist as it would be linked with domestic violence, and from research done, domestic violence wasn't particularly a crime frequently shown, which meant that we had a crime that we could represent with our own interpretations, but keeping the violence subtle, as it had to fit in with the BBFC rating of 12.

Looking at questions 1 and 6 of our questionnaire, we could see that mainly females would be watching our opening sequence, so a conveying to the normal stereotypes of domestic violence, a young girl would be the victim. We deviated this by having a young black female instead of a female of white ethnicity, which was stereotypically shown. This also meant that we could now target a slightly wider audience of young black females that represent all women, instead of just having a white female with a predominant audience of that race. Question 6 in the questionnaire also suggested the roles of a male detective and a female sidekick. As a group we liked this idea, but conveyed it toward the more hands on characters and had a male and a female shown. The character of James being the more dominant one in the relationship, conveying to a typical matriarchal society role, until the end when Sarah stands up for herself, juxtaposing the role, making the relationship fit into a more patriarchal society showing the female to be the more dominant one in the relationship after all.

I think the content of sexual abuse in our opening sequence was also influenced from our questionnaire results. We couldn't show the crime of domestic violence very forwardly and openly, it had to be masked, or have subtle references according to the BBFC rating of 12 that we applied. I think by taking in feedback it helped us to represent the character of James more fairly, as in media today for example the coverage of the London riots, particularly males were targeted and stereotyped and as an opening sequence we didn't want to target males in that sort of way, so balanced it out by the character of Sarah also committing a crime, as females do commit just as much crime as men, but aren't shown as frequently on the news and in the media as men, so by showing the character if James as a shadowy figure we were able to represent both genders in the situation fairly.

Another way that we attracted/addressed our audience through the questionnaires was by the use of enigma codes. The questionnaires helped us to create a list of enigma that we wanted to include in our opening sequence to keep the audience members hooked, and want to watch the rest of the film instead of getting bored. A lot of the enigma codes convey more so toward the psychological side of the hybrid genre, some of them are...

- Why is she covered in blood?

- Has she killed somebody? If so who?

- What's happened for her to be crying hysterically?

- What happened in the relationship for him to want to hurt her?

- Why did she want to be in a relationship with a man 7 years older than her?

- Why aren't her parents involved in her life?

- What does she do with the body that she's killed?

- Why does she feel killing him is the only way out of the situation?

- Why does her partner actually use domestic violence upon her?

- What does the boyfriend look like? / Why can't we see what he looks like?

From looking at our final opening sequence, some enigma codes are shown quite overtly such as "Has she killed somebody? If so who?" and "Why is she covered in blood?” Both of these enigma codes were shown right at the beginning of the opening sequence through the montage of shots where Sarah is shown to have dripped blood into a bathroom, and is washing it off of her hands, In a series of close-ups and extreme close-ups, along with showing her crying into the mirror, showing a more subtle enigma code of "What's happened for her to be crying hysterically?" Other enigma codes aren't shown at all such as "Why aren't her parents involved in her life?" as the viewer is mainly thinking about the character Sarah throughout the opening sequence, these enigma codes could possibly asked later on in the film.

By having the questionnaire results and being able to create enigma codes to keep the audience hooked, we could now attract and address the audience by applying certain theorists to our opening sequence. One theory that our opening sequence has followed is John Bergers. His theory was that men see women as objects and are inferior to them, which is exactly what happens in our story line, the young girl portrays herself as quite flirty, heavily makes herself up to try and get her boyfriend to like her even more, when he sees her as this weak object and results to beating her. He knows that she won't run away or tell anybody, because she knows he'll just beat her more, and that this is what she wanted in the first place, for him to acknowledge her. We break this theory in the end by the young girl standing up for herself even if she does it in the wrong way, by killing him. By her doing this she's actually also portrayed as this strong independent woman who in the end realises she doesn't have to depend on this man, that she's better off without him.

Another theory that we follow is Claude Levi-Strauss', He came up with the theory of binary opposition, which again is exactly what our story follows, the sense of good and evil. The girl acts all good an innocent at first when she's with her boyfriend, she's happy and will put up with whatever to be with him, until she turns into this slightly evil psychopathic character by standing up for herself and killing him. The boyfriend is also seen as this evil character as he takes advantage of the girl because he knows he can get away with it, until he dies because of it. We also deviated from the normal stereotype of a white female, and used a young black female instead.

Some may argue and say that we also follow Aristotle's theory as well, he had the idea that every story has a beginning, middle, and end, which is sort of what happens in our story. The beginning is where the couple are all happy; he acts happy towards her so that she learns to trust him, thinking that nothing could go wrong. Then the middle happens, where actually things do go wrong, he starts abusing her, hitting her e.c.t keeping her enclosed in this tiny room/ apartment so she can't escape and tell anybody. And the end where she gets fed up, and everything's built up inside of her that she lashes out and kills him as her only form of escape, even though it's not the end to the whole story, the whole situation comes to a proper ending.

I was also able to attract and address my target audience through the use of Blumler and Katz theory. This meant that my audience could view my opening sequence for 4 different reasons, one being for Surveillance. This meant that they would be watching my opening sequence to find out information possibly about domestic violence or knife crime, and how they're portrayed in a psychological crime drama, or to find out information about specific types of people, i.e. males or females that commit crimes and why they do it. The second reason would be for personal identity. A viewer may want to watch my opening sequence to relate to it personally, possibly if they're going through a situation similar, i.e. if a girl if currently a victim of domestic abuse, or has committed knife crime or if a male is currently targeting a girl using domestic abuse, or if both wish to see how it can actually effect a person, possibly if parents are worried about their child in a similar situation. My opening sequence can also relate to the viewer through personal relationships. They could want to watch the film to feel a part of a social group, whether they feel left out or if their friends were going to see the film too. As well as maybe being in a relationship or have had a previous relationship that had a similar situation.