Analysis how I used my research in my film

Audience research

After conducting my primary and secondary research about the potential target audience for our film, I had to summaries their preferences as this would allow me to choose the right conventions and add them in my film to attract them.

My main findings from my primary audience research were:

Q1) 73% people chose a city as the main location for an action-comedy film.

Q2) 73% people chose that the film should be funny. Q3) 67% people chose that the main characters should be stupid. Q4) 73% of the people said that rap/hip hop music is likely to be

used. Q5) 67% of the people said that the font of the titles is Cooper

Black. Q6) 87% of the people said that action-comedy is aimed at 12-18

years old. Q7) 93% of the people chose a police uniform for the main

character(s).

The majority of our audience are male in the age bracket (16-17 years), who watch action-comedies more than two times a month. Whereas our female audience around the same age but watch action-comedies every two months. This means that we should aim our film mainly at males as they make up the majority of our audience.

During the interviews we asked our audience why they enjoy watching comedy or action-comedy movies, most responded by stating that they enjoy it because of the stupidity of the main characters as this makes them feel good about themselves. But also because the films is not complicated therefore doesn’t challenges them as an audience, the scenes and quotes of the characters are memorisable as some quotes are catchy.

Film conventions

After my audience research I went and analysed the main conventions that are present in general films but also specifically in action-comedy movies. My main findings from this research were:

Introduction of the main character(s) Opening credits and titles are linked to the narrative Establishment of the narrative & genre Set the atmosphere/mood

1) I used the convention of ‘introducing the main character’ in the opening minutes of my film, because we needed the audience to understand the personality and characteristics of the character(s) in the opening minutes. I used my primary research to choose a police uniform for the characters, the effect this has on the audience is that police uniform is recognised by the audience in many action-comedy movies e.g. ’21 Jump Street’. We also added titles to describe each of the characters to the audience e.g. ‘Bad Cop’ this basically helps the audience understand the character better and what that they can expect from him for example using the word ‘Bad’ and showing the characters athleticism connotes that he’s the physical character. Having done these things means that we introduced the main characters to the audience.

2) I used the opening credit and titles to establish the narrative of our film to the audience, the font of the titles and opening credits was uppercase Cooper Black this is because when analysing action-comedy I found that this was a common font that has been used in different films. Therefore I relied on our audience knowledge about action-comedies to connote this. The narrative and genre were also established through the use of our film ident and music. We added up-beat music at the beginning when introducing the main characters, but then when the title appeared it was a Rap/Hip-Hop tune. This was because our audience expects a Rap/Hip-Hop song to be present and it is common hear this music genre in an action-comedy film as it is part of the conventions. The song used was ‘Sound of da police’ by KRs One, we used it because the lyrics link to our narrative and characters.

We established the atmosphere by my music choice, fast-paced action scenes and the characters dialogue. The effect the music has on the audience is that it is energetic and connotes an atmosphere of action which was synced with all the action going on in a scene e.g. the

chase. While the characters dialogue created a light hearted mood full of laughter.

These things have all been included because that’s what our audience would like to see in an action-comedy film, I know this because my audience research and looking at the main film conventions which came from real media products that I analysed.