Focus group (Video)

We gathered up a focus group in order to understand what our target audience is interested in and make a more educated decision on what direction we will take our short film in.

Research : Questionnaire

In order to collect further data, we've created a questionnaire which we've distributed to many people. Questionnaire

Synergy in film

Story planning

The group appears to have hit a dead end when it comes to choosing a narrative to follow. While a member of the group wants to address a more broad topic such as addiction to technology, I would prefer to do a story focusing one the positive effects of video gaming. This would cover several well proven positive-effects such as:

- Video games can be used to deal with pain as they are able to distract the brain from it.
- Video games have been proven to help with dyslexia.
- Video games have been used as an escape by several people, children and teenagers use this to escape from real life situations such as bullying, conflict or social anxiety. It helps people to relieve stress during these very stressful situations.

The group argues though, although covering the rarely mentioned positives of video games would be more original. Covering the negatives of video games and technology would be much easier as originality is quite challenging.

Indie game - website

Most conventions of websites are followed here, with the genre well displayed through the pixels backgrounds which hints at the gaming aspect of the website. Furthermore, the website contains all the usual contents of a documentary website, including ways to purchase the movie and merchandise related to it. The website also contains further information about the movie such as background information about the movie and the screenings it has had. The website also shows the nominations and film festival awards that the movie has won, this helps to show the kind of reception the movie has received and especially highlights the positive reviews of it, further persuading people to want to watch it.

There are many interactive features of this website, such as multiple embedded videos such as a trailer for the movie which you can watch, as well as a trailer for the special edition which highlights the difference between the regular and special edition. Such as deleted scenes and epilogues elaborating what happened after the documentary. Another clever interactive feature of this website is having a live feed to the social networking site 'Twitter' which is constantly being updated with the documentary development team's twitter account's posts. The helps to involve the developers with the community and make them appear more relatable as they constantly address their viewers. 

The website's colour scheme mainly includes light colours such as white, and blue. This may have been done to mislead the audience into thinking it is a light hearted documentary then perhaps surprising them as the documentary is unexpectedly serious and contains a dark tone. Furthermore, all the merchandise sold along with the product also follows this colour scheme which helps to relate them together, creating synergy which allows them to help sell each other. 

Film postcard analysis - Sausage

The postcard below is very successful at standing out, due to the variety of colours used and peculiar characters shown. This strangeness of the postcard could be used to persuade audiences to want to find out more about it as it doesn't reveal much about the plot. The title 'Sausage' is shown at the top with not much context except for the character to the left holding a sausage.

This postcard follows the convention of having the nomination and winnings shown clearly. With the winnings at the top and middle to stand out more. This one again helps to paint the short film in a good way in the eyes of the public who have heard nothing about it. 

Minor things are revealed through connotations. Such as whether the motivations of the characters are good or evil. All the characters have a smile on their face and are stood in front of brightly coloured backgrounds, except the character in the middle. He appears to wear a mischievous look on his face with a toothy grin and a dark blue coloured background. The colour and the non-verbal communication all point to the possibility that this character is the antagonist of the story.

This postcard hints at a very light-hearted mood of the short film. People would not go into this expecting hard-hitting drama, or eye-popping action. This kind of tone is presented through the light colours and the smiling characters, and helps to attract the creator's preferred demographic. Finally, the postcard contains information about the movie such as who it is made by and what it is, 'An animated short.' With the film's website in the bottom of the postcard. Although the postcard does have a strange style mainly due to it's animated style. This convention of having the information is followed.

Film festival postcard analysis - Mulberry Child

Above is the postcard for 'Mulberry Child' in the Heartland Film Festival of 2011. Firstly, Although the postcard focuses mainly on the main image to influence the reader, it does contain the main information such as the movie's website, and it's nomination for the festival. Having this helps to influence the audience to watch it. Furthermore, the typography in the postcard is red and directly contrasts against the dull background. This could have been done on purpose to perhaps stand out and  cause the name to remain memorable to the audience. The movie's tagline is also clearly visible and this helps to give the audience an idea of what the movie will be about. This could have also been done to intrigue the audience into thinking about what the movie would be about, and just to have the movie on their mind in general. Seeing as the movie's tagline is a question, this may hint that the movie may contain a mystery or may cause the audience to think about it for a while, further engaging them with the movie.

The image in the postcard seems to focus mainly on the two characters shown. This may imply that this movie is heavy in character development rather than the visual aspects such as explosions like in modern action movies. The fact that the background's colour is a little dulled out may help to focus the audience on the characters. Furthermore,  the colour may imply a 'reminiscing' element in the movie, as flashbacks are normally shown in black and white. This saturation of the background's colour may also hint at a more serious or sad tone to the movie.

There is a contrast in ages presented between the woman and the child who appear to be bonding. The child seems to look up to the woman in admiration or interest. This is a form of non-verbal communications are the characters are both showing they are friendly with each other mainly through their facial expressions.

film festival postcard analysis - The offering

The most dominant part of the following postcard is clearly the nominations list that is on the left of the card. Audiences are quickly able to identify that this is short film received good reviews overall, and this persuades more audiences to want to watch it. The postcard provides a very 'mysterious' tone to this postcard, from the dark colours and unclear imagery used to the purposely vague synopsis. These all connote to a very enigmatic tone to the movie, once again this is done to intrigue audiences and make them want to find out more. 

The biggest most obvious part of the postcard is the film's title, 'The offering' is written quite clearly. In this case, the title helps to add to the mysterious plot as it does not seem to have much relation to the plot of the movie. For example, if the title read 'The Woods' people would be able to relate it to the background. Though this helps to further intrigue audiences about what this offering actually is and to what it is being offered to. 

The choice to use a mid-shot for the postcard may have been done in order to be able to show the setting that the man seems to be kneeling in, but at the same time, keep certain things like what he is looking at hidden. In terms of mise on scene the character appears to be wearing a winter coat, which connotes to the cold temperature of the setting. Which is presented as creepy due to many factors such as the low-key lighting, provided only by the headlights. and the non-verbal communication provided by the character as he appears to be staring at something off-screen. 

 

For our postcard we would not like to follow this enigmatic style. We intend on having the audiences know exactly what the movie is about from the postcard. We believe it's important that people interested in the topic we are discussing should be our main demographic, this is because we hope to deliver a social message, and somebody who has no opinion on our topic would not be effected by such message, that is why it's important that audiences know what they are going to watch.