Primary Research: Questionnaire & Charts

To gain ideas on what our target audience expects from a trailer, we handed out questionnaires (pictured below) to 30 participants with age reflecting our target audience- 16-25 years of age. This gave us first hand knowledge about what we may consider to include in our trailer with this additional information from our target audience.Through this we analysed the data and converted it to a number of charts to further iniatialise our ideas on the basis of this information. The first chart (pictured below) diplays the question: 'How do you prefer the background music to be?' The majority vote finalised as parelel. The music we are using is parelel to the story that the trailer prevails, it is a urban/grime track which is the type of music this sub culture stereotypically listens too. With this, the target audience will be familiar with this type of music and may be more enticed to watching it due to this factor.

The second chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'Where do you view most trailers?' The most popular answer was the cinemas, this is understandable for this target audience as they are at a young and very socialable age.

The third chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'What is your favourite genre?' The feedback from this question suggest that the this target audience's favourite genre is comedy; however a close second would be social realism. With my trailer I will aim to convert the target audience to that they favour social realism more. In addition, I have taken this information on board as i hope to include comical diologue into my script to satisfy my target audience.

The final chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'Do you prefer trailers to be fast paced or slow paced?' The results show that the majority preferred fast paced trailers. This is something to considered as the themes within my genre are extreme and deviant having a fast paced edit will add to the excitement. My partner and I have concluded that the editing will begin slow while location shots are shown; however the development of pace will increase as the themes are portrays making it dramatic for the audience.

Target Audience

In order to promote your film you must discover who your target audience is- what type of audience your film is aimed- this will help the popularity of the film as you can use codes and coventions that would satisfy them. The target audience for our Social Realism film would be teenagers or young adults, because the themes within the trailer will be those they may have experienced or may know someone who has experienced them; this means they would relate to trailer and would be interested in watching it. Knowing this, I have to make sure my trailer would please this target audience in everyway to increase the chance of them wanting to watch the film.

However, Frank McConnells theory is based around the idea that instead of basing genres around visual clues, it is more meaningful to split texts according their themes, plots and leading characters. He came up with five genres which specifically refer to typical events in the history of any society and the characters who play parts in them. He believes that since films reflect society, they will always involve these kinds of typical events:

• The King- establising the state- epic


• The Knight- consolidating the state- ad venturous romance


• The Pawn- trapped in the institutional state- melodrama


• The Fool- responding to the madness of the state- the satire


• Apocalypse- the collapse of the state which leads to a new begining- no single hero.

Considering this perspective our genre would fall under 'The Pawn'. This would mean that we would have to satisfy the audience using themes, plots and leading characters to show that they are trapped in their state. We have tried to create this by creating a gang of females who have suberted stereotypes (boisterious, strong, rebellious), who are trapped by a controlling ideology to rebel against society through deviant behaviour, such as, drug taking, alcohol consumption, crime and anti-social behaviour. Using these themes would thrill the target audience as they would understand that this behaviour is wrong and would be intrigued to discover the outcome of their actions.

Planning: Location

To establish the idea of our film we need to plan the basic location. After deliberation we decided to set in a local place in Birmingham called Bromford. The majority of this area is a council estate which highlights the stereotyped presumptions people carry about these types of estates i.e. high crime rate, gang culture and intimitating residants.

These are photographs I acquired through 'Google Maps' this function allowed me to access a 'street view' whereby I could view possible places around the area that would be suitable to shoot. I gained these images as to left is the house we will film outside. A character will walk past these houses using a tracking shot. Also a scene will be filmed outside the house where the gang of characters terrorise a resident of the house.

This image portrays another area we will film; this important shot will exercise the message on the sign, 'Remove your valuables before the thieves do!' This reinforces the deviant behaviour displayed by the characters within the trailer.

This is another potential area we may use in our footage. Either, a location shot or one that consist of the character.

Planning: Film Trailer Ideas

To initiate and gather ideas about our film trailer we produced a mindmap of ideas. Using different sub titles we were able to suggest certain elements and coventions we wanted to include within a film.

Previously, we conducted research into existing film trailer featuring the social realism genre. This research helped develop our ideas and made it easier to actually put pen to paper.

For example, through watching Adulthood and anaylsing the behaviour they use we able to learn that they often use a restricted code with bad language, we thought this would be a good covention to use within our own film trailer as it shows the type of socialisation and culture that our characters come from, making it easier for the audience to be able to identify with them.

We are also considering not to portray at storyline so obviously; however represent themes often found in the social realism genre, such as, gang culture, violence, promiscuity and drugs. This would also not give too much of the storyline away as this can often spoil it for the audience.