Media Essay: Q3

After writing our synopsis for our film, before any filming, we went out into Barnsley Town centre to interview a variety of people from different ages, genders and occupations. We asked them their age, occupation, favourite genre, would they recommend our film and would they either pay to watch it, watch it for free or not watch it at all. Here were the results:

1. 17 year old male student. Favourite genre: Action. Would watch the film for free but would not recommend it.

2. 17 year old male student. Favourite genre: Tarantino. Would watch the film for free and would recommend it.

3. 19 year old female sales assistant. Favourite genre: Comedy. Would pay to watch it and would recommend it.

4. 40 year old male police officer. Favourite genre: Urban drama, such as "Brasses off". Would watch it for free but would not recommend it.

After looking at this brief, preliminary study, we found out that roughly, teenaged, females who like comedy would like our film the best. However after finishing the film, we found out males liked it the most and could identify its genre and could relate it to existing films. Having said that, their favourite genres were mostly comedy.

The audience we had in mind at first when creating our film was the people who you see normally at cinemas; teenagers. Therefore we studied genres and other films that appeal to teenagers. In one of our surveys, 5 out of 9 replies said their favourite genre was comedy and one said action. This is why we thought it would be ideal to include some Tarantino traits within our film; he can use comedy but still make a film serious and realistic.

The main moral of our film is to be yourself and the people who accept you for who you are, are your truest friends and to not be someone you’re not by doing things you wouldn’t normally do. This does not become apparent until the very end. The shock of this is designed to be memorable, hence why it is only obvious when Ella is killed. Throughout the film, it is a similar storyline to that of Cinderella; the audience are already expecting a typical ending and a typical moral. However life never goes according to fairytales, and with the official genre of our film being an urban thriller in the style of Tarantino, we wanted it to be as realistic as possible to help teenagers accept themselves for who they are and realise that it’s not all about being socially accepted.

When reading the feedback of our questionnaire, we discovered that a higher percentage of younger viewers knew the genre and morals of the story than those over the age of 35. This is probably due to social changes throughout society over the decades; although some teenage traits are timeless, culture and fads are constantly changing, therefore our film would be easily understand more by people around a relative age to the characters in the film.