Media Coursework :Research


For my coursework I had to come up with a film idea and chose how I would ‘make’ the idea come to life. I decided to create a script for my pre-production and a teaser poster and a DVD cover for my production tasks. I chose this option because I found through my practice task I was quicker at creating the script, and I enjoyed playing around with the dialogue, which means I can be more imaginative.

 My film genre is going to be true story, as a friend of mine had a bad childhood and I wanted to show how not everyone has the perfect childhood and how they deal with these imperfections.  To ensure anonymity, I altered the characters names and the situations so more people could relate to the idea. I did some secondary research on the genre by looking at different true films such as 'The Blind Side, 'Titanic', and 'The Lovely Bones'.  I analysed film posters to get a better understanding of what my poster should convey, such as images/ typography to give the audience the correct image. Creating a mood board of true movie film posters/ DVD covers helped me to compare and contrast the types of colours/ layouts/ fonts used. 

 For script assistance I studied different types of scripts (websites mentioned below) and used Google’s search engine to look at different types of script layouts. Relating back to my practice task also gave me inspiration.


These are the questionnaires that my focus group  filled in.
I undertook primary research through a focus group by asking them questions about my idea. I took note of their answers and adapted my work towards their responses. From this I decided to target my film towards the female population aged 12A and above.  

When I knew who my target audience was, I started looking at audience theories. The one that applies to my work is the uses and gratification theory because it reflects my text and the theory shows how an audience can relate to what they see, which is the way want my target audience to react to my film.
My focus group also came up with more true movies: 
  • Anne Frank 
  • Boy in the striped pyjamas' 
  • Call the midwife ( TV Drama Series) 
  • Life of Pi 
  • Music of the heart
For more research I looked at the marketing campaigns and DVD releases for these titles for inspiration. As the Life of Pi has recently been released, I compared all the film posters and made notes on what made the poster eye-catching and the composition of the whole text.

Using the BARB website I found that call the midwife had a rating of 10.18 million viewers on 30th December 2012 and 10.85 million viewers on the 3rd February 2013. This hints that there is a huge audience out there that enjoy watching films/TV series based on real life. This research helps with my marketing campaign as it shows that I would have to persuade a wide audience range to see my film. 
Next I found different true story books for film title ideas. To help me decide, I wrote out a list of different titles that I came up with and narrowed it down to a top 3:
  • Losing reality
  • The reality of being me 
  • Life is calling 
I added these titles to my questionnaire and the focus group helped me to decide on LOSING REALITY as the title. Once I decided on the title it was time to write my script! 

Here are some of the websites that I used to gather the research :
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1 comment:

  1. Mrs C McCarthy27 February 2013 at 13:15

    As we discussed in your feedback interview you need explain and justify your target audience. Great start Katy-ann.

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