Focus Group.

Today we did a focus group to see what some of our target audience though of a few clips that we showed them. This would help us to see their reaction and what they would think of the documentary we are producing.

continued...

Research for our documentary - Facebook

As part of our research for out documentary, we had to find out what our target audience are into as this will help our decisions on how we advertise and edit or documentary.

To do this I went on Facebook and asked a series of questions to some of my friends. Such as:

"1. What kind of magazines do you read and why do you like them? (layout, themes)
2. Do you listen to the radio? If so what station and how regularly? 
3. Do you watch documentaries? What types have you seen? Did you like them? Why?"

However, I received no responses *sigh* As most of my friends fit our mainstream criteria for our audience this meant that a response from these people was unable to be attained. This is some ways creates a difficult situation as to what this niche would want to see. We plan to do a focus group so hopefully we can gain more information from this.

As I did not receive any responses on my own account, my Mother kindly allowed me to post the same set of questions to her friends. I got a range of responses and ideas. What I found is that I only got responses from mostly women. They all range from different ages, ethnicity, class and jobs so this in some ways does help us to see how we can advertise and edit or film. As i did not get any responses from men, like or mainstream audience it will be hard to market to them, but hopefully we can resolve this in our focus group.

From my findings I have found:

• 1. Many of the women who commented listen to the radio on the way to work - This means that when marketing our documentary, is a morning slot the best time to advertise it?
• 2. These women mostly reas gossip magazines, fashion or anything educational - Can our documentary be advertised in these magazines?
• 3. These women also watch documentaries regularly and clearly go for a specific niche (mostly real life) - These different documentaries can help us to see how we can edit our own film to match our target audiences interests.

My research has given me a strong idea of what we can do to attract our audience and apply this to our film. From this research I have targeted a very specific audience which is the 25-40 age range which means that they are much higher than what are actual target audience is.This research links to the Uses and Gratifications Theory by Blumler and Katz. I think that is most thinks to the idea of Surveillance - using the media to find out what is going on around us. I believe that the audience who have been targeted would more likely be interested in our documentary as they would want to find out about the different things going on in the world. As some may have children they may also be concerned for the kids welfare. This again also links to Young & Rubicam. This audience may be more of a Reformer or an Explorer seeking enlightenment and discovery. As this is what we are appealing to many of the people who gave feedback fit our 2 types of people we are aiming at.

Researching voiceovers

As a voice is one of key and main things that we need in our documentary i began to research who we could use to present the opening of our film. We must consider who will it be; will it be male or a female, will our choice conform to our target audience? What pitch or tone of voice are we going for; again will this reflect our target audience?

I began researching different documentaries and looking at their voiceovers. One of them was Jewish Mum of the Year: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Whea7ScI8g&safe=active)

Jewish Mum of the Year has a female voiceover which is quite conversational and has a high pitch voice which is very inviting for the audience. From listening to her it makes me as a viewer want to continue watching. Also what she says (script) is written really well and is carefully thought out. This influences our thoughts on the documentary and again  makes us want to watch more.

Another documentary that I looked at was Planet Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ag2q094y8Y&safe=active) David Attenborough is an iconic voice in television especially documentaries mainly being Nature. What makes his voice so iconic is the way that he adapts it to the situations hat the animals are in. His voice is very deep and also inviting but it also allows us to put ourselves in the position that we are actually watching these animals up front in their surroundings. As he is such an iconic figure when it comes to voiceovers and documentaries, he appeals to the target audience of males more than females (same as Jewish Mum of the Year does with women)

In another documentary called Weight loss Ward (https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/weight-loss-ward), which followed various overweight people as they attempted to get help from hospitals. The voiceover in this documentary had a very mocking tone as well as sympathetic. The narrator is a male which I think was suitable for this kind of documentary. I think this tone of voice is more suited to our documentary as it creates the tone and response we would want from our audience.

From this research, I can conclude that our voiceover may have to be male just as our subject is male and the fact that a male voice can carry our message better than a woman.

Lighting

Just something I found on lighting. In some of our footage we had problems with our lighting as we didnt have good natural light. I thought that this would help us when we film some more over the holidays.

The Basics: Three-point Lighting If you’ve ever visited a movie set, you know how complicated lighting can get. But it all starts here with the basic fundamentals of the 3-point lighting set-up. KEY – The key light is your main and strongest source of light. This can be the sun or an electrical light source. FILL – This is your second light source, softer than your key light, which crosses the key light to “fill” the strong shadows created by your main light source. This can be a reflector or an electric light. BACK – The back light is used to separate the subject from background. It makes the scene look more three-dimensional. Sometimes you can use the “setting sun” as your back light or another light source. Using Available Light Using available light is key for the documentary filmmaker on a budget or short on time. Sunlight coming through a window literally becomes your KEY light. See diagram below. Using light from a window, position your subject about 30-degrees, not directly facing the window. A 30-degree angle creates a natural look and helps bring out some details in the facial features and creates a more natural look (shining a light directly on the face “flattens” the features).  http://www.desktop-documentaries.com/documentary-funding.html

Things to do.

There are still a few things left to get for our film so the following is a few plans of what we will do over the next few days:

Location: Library

Time: 9:50-11:10

Crew member: Dakota

Date: Wednesday 12th December 2012

Whats to be done: Observational shots; People typing, checking their phones, watching the amount of tabs they have open etc.

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Location: Art room

Time: 3:10-

Crew member(s): Victoria and Ali

Date: Thursday 13th December 2012

Whats to be done: The paper cut outs for the camera

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Location: 004

Time: 9:50-

Crew member(s): Ali and Victoria

Date: Tuesday 18th December 2012

Whats to be done: Focus Group (Planning and recording)

Focus Group questions and Audience profiling

We had to think of different questions which  we could ask to the different ages of our focus group. This would help us to get an idea of what they would want and expect from our film.

16-21 (Primary audience):

1. Would you watch this documentary? If so, why?
2. Do you think you are effected by this subject?
3. Were you interested within the first minute?
4. Have you learnt anything from this?
5. Do you understand what is going on?
6. Do you have anything that may help us to improve?

22-27:

1. How did you find the editing of the documentary?
2. Has your opinion changed, in terms of addiction?
3. Do you think it relates to you, in any way?
4. Can you see a possible change in yourself?
5. Are you still interested in technology?
6. Do you think we could improve our editing?

28-35 (Secondary audience):

1. Can you see this affecting your children? If you have any
2. After watching this, do you think it does indeed affect all of us?
3. Can you notice a possible change in yourself or perhaps in your children?
4. Do you use different types of technology?
5. How well do you cope with new technology?
6. Do you think we could improve anything

Target Audience

First Draft of Voiceover

This is our first basic draft of our film for the first 5 minutes.

Creating a Voiceover

Whilst editing we found that our documentary really lacked the form of a journey. As i have posted before, we watched over our current first edit of our documentary. We found that it didn't really flow without the voice over that we planned to add in later.

It occurred to us that the voice over would definitely help to establish the story and help the viewer to make sense of what is going on. At the moment, there is no sense of journey which is what we need to work on.

Today, we began to draft a few questions that we would ask whilst watching the documentary. This will help us to establish the basic script for the story line.

For our first minute here are a few questions we drafted:
These questions will help us establish the voice over and journey of our film.