Audience research focus groups: blog write-up

My production team: Hussein, Hitik & Abdullah

The focus group has helped the team get a greater understanding of what is needed for the film to be an exceptional arthouse movie. Quite evidently, the focus group listened to our with the perception that the overview about the theory of arthuse movies was not being met. The storyline contained a modern-noir detective feel in which there is a typical storyline of good vs evil; the storyline consists of two detectives; one who is intellectually smart and one who is blessed with supernatural powers.

The summary of the key points that was given to improve our film-idea concept:

Play with the narrative structure to entice the audience's minds with enigma codes.

A non-linear narrative will make more intellectual demands on the audience which enhances attenction and creates diversion.

Binary opposition between the two narrative forces to demonstrate clear opposition and to help u the audience to understand who are the antagonists and the protagonists.

Look at Sin City, it has an arthouse element.

Don’t use too many Hollywood key elements as it would lose the uniqueness of the movie.

Research the special effects as it will be an important element to the success of the movie and the professionalism of the quality.

Forget about the franchise because arthouse as a genre is mostly one offs.

He finds out he has a superpower last and the fight seen happens first.

Reset time so you know what happens.

Time is the centre of the whole thing, the narrative will revolve around time.

I believe having discussions would allow a significant improvement in terms of the quality. The discussions that are brought forward will allow information like this to be very useful, as they will bring forward issues and new ideas that were no thought of before. My team initally presented the idea to our classmates, believing honestly that our idea would not require improvements. However we were proved wrong. Firstly, our team explained our concept and the general narrative. linking the subject theme, which is arthouse, and also adding a supernatural effect to the production idea.

There were many elements that were brought up in the discussion that helped the overall understanding of the creation of the movie. One element of the idea that was that one of the characters contains powers that could play around with time and one suggestion was to make the concept of time as the main proposal from the extract. The way our group explained the powers of time is that it would only be used in conflict with the antagonists especially in fight scenes which contained the most danger. What’s also strange is that only one of the protagonists has a supernatural power and his partner is the intelligent role of the two. This gives an opportunity for different audiences of different personalities to relate to either on of the heroes due to the opposite personalities. The role for the superpower character is seen as dominant and powerful in the narrative on the other hand the other role for the detective is seen as wise and as a leader. 

Another key concept is by playing with the narrative structure of the film to reinforce the key concept of time and break the convention rules for continuity; this will be constructed in the postproduction aspect of the project. The ability to break the common conventions is the beauty of the Art house genre, the extract will start will start with the disequilibrium from Todorv’s theory to grab the viewers attention. The overall result of the focus group I believe was very positive as it refined the overall concept as well as brought forward problems taht needs correcting.

Target Audience

The target audience that my group is aiming at is going to be targeting the 15-26 age bracket. In the brief, it states that this film should appeal to the younger audience in terms of young adults. Also, this film will be certified at a 15 rating due to our group trying to reach the largest audience possible. As this is an arthouse movie, there will likely be a secondary audience of 38-55 year olds. We believe there will be a 70/30 split of males to females as the storyline and actors are predominately male and there isn’t currently a plan to include a romance in the clip. We will be targeting the ABC1 class bracket as it is all encompassing however, as it is an arthouse piece, we will likely be getting viewers that typically are in the higher class brackets. They will likely have university degrees and will likely have a job in Central London where they are earning a good salary.