Question Five

Joshua Liam Whincup

Evaluation - Question Five

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Unfortunately we didn’t design posters for our project however if we did her is a list of places where they may have been placed:

Cinema

Bus Stops

Buses

Train Stations

Trains

Cabs

Magazines – Certain magazines such as magazines relating to films, such as Empire and Total Film and magazines relating to youth and students.

Newspapers

Internet – Blogs, FaceBook, MySpace.

Shopping Stores

High Streets

Our film is set to a rang of audiences and so due to this the film, ‘Fragmental’ could be promoted everywhere and anywhere. However preferable in London due to the huge amount of people up London every day, this allows the huge variety of different people seeing our posters, this will allow us to promote our film to the majority of target and secondary audience we intended our film to be aimed at.

As soon as we was put into our groups for the AS Final Product, we sat down and began immediately deciding what genre we was going to presents and began pitching narratives. We decided to create a opening sequence with the youth drama genre so w could relate to the majority of audiences and we new we had first hand seen some crimes linked to youth due to the area we live in. Focusing on the drama genre we decided to follow the codes and conventions however challenge them in such things as casting. We decided to keep the majority of codes and conventions so our audience would automatically link the film, ‘Fragmental’ to the youth crime drama genre. We did this by involving knife crime and gang crime and the use of a ‘hoodie’ which is linked to teenagers committing crimes. However we decided to challenge the codes and conventions so the film we created would be recognised for being a youth crime drama however would be in some ways different from the rest which use typical story lines and sometimes can be quite predictable and cliché. We did this by casting a female as the main role, by doing this we are challenging the codes and conventions of this genre.

Having a female leading role we decided to research many other films within this genre and look at the females within these films and use them to inspire our own character, ‘Nikki’. We looked at the film Kidulthood which had a female character name ‘Katie’ who was affected by knife and gang crime instead of being involved in it and due to her bullying issues at school by gang members and trouble makers she decided to commit suicide. The way the character ‘Katie’ was portrayed was quite frankly fantastic and we wanted certain aspects of ‘Katie’s’ character to be similar to our character ‘Nikki’. While analysing our own opening sequence we used the majority of themes and codes and conventions of a typical youth crime drama. We did this firstly by involving camera angles seen within typical youth crime drama and other crime films. Such camera angles where used as close ups and extreme close ups of the main character ‘Nikki’, we did this so the identity of the main character is not revealed, we did this because it gave the atmosphere of a typical crime youth drama that character involved in gangs and crime try to hide their identity so they are not seen by other rival gang members or the police. However we also involved these shots because ‘Nikki’ believed she did not have a identity because of what has happened to her. These shots we used I believe was effective and w have received nothing but good feedback relating to the camera work. We used these so the audience would be left thinking who is this character, what are they doing and why are they doing these things. We researched the audience’s reactions from films of the same genre to our own film and what they want and expected from these films. We found that the majority of the audience members wanted to see a change within films of this genre because it can become cliché so we decided to challenge the codes and conventions of the genre. The panning shots of the house where so the audience could see the area and the setting of the film and get a feel for what sort of environment these characters live in. Also the zooming shots, such as the shot where was zoomed into the wine bottles as ‘Nikki’ walked in the shot and then walked off screen. By doing this the audience can tell someone within the film has a serious drinking problem and then allows the audience to get a feel for what may happen within the up and coming scenes. 

However the majority of shots we used are close ups which allowed us to portray our character in such a way. By doing these shots we received good feedback from several teachers in early post production due to them feeling very anxious to find out who ‘Nikki’ was and several other questions relating to the camera work. Shots used within our opening sequence are similar to the shots used in such films as Shank, Adulthood, Kidulthood and Bullet Boy. The colours within the film are very dark to express the emotions of our main character ‘Nikki. By doing this we didn’t have to reveal her facial expressions and much of her body language, by using these colours it allowed us to create that mysterious atmosphere.

The soundtrack and the use of sound effectives are incredible vital within our genre because the majority of films within the crime youth drama genre the music carries the narrative. For example the film ‘1Day’ Is seen as a musical due to the amount of rap used within the film, certain films inspired us to create music similar to theres. Such movies as:

• Bullet Boy
• Kidulthood
• Adulthood
• Shank
• Freedom Writers
• 1Day
• Stomp the Yard
• Friday

Props used within our project were effective and help the narrative from becoming cliché however we wanted to involve certain props that would follow the codes and conventions of a typical crime youth drama film. Certain props support this such as the hoodie, knife and use of alcoholic empty bottles. By involving such props it allowed the audience to instinctively recognise that the film, ‘Fragmental’ was of that genre. Using these props it would attract the audience that enjoy films of the crime youth drama genre and would also attract other audiences through involving aspects that challenge the codes and conventions. When we arrived at the location where we would begin shooting, ‘Nikki’s’ room, we scattered girls clothing all over the room and made the room more girly because originally it was a boy’s bedroom. By doing this we believed it would allow the audience to believe it was everyday life, for a girl to wake up, get dressed, brush her teeth, prepare to leave and eventually leave her house however by involving the knife within this daily routine it showed that gang and knife crime was a huge problem where our main character was living and it was some what normal and expectable to carry a knife. 

In conclusion overall our film successfully attracted the target audience it was aimed at and several other secondary audiences. It portrayed the typical codes and conventions of the youth crime drama genre very well and also challenged it successfully and effectively.