Audience research focus groups

The focus group involved Muna and myself discussing the narrative and ideas for our three minute extract. 

For our narrative, the idea would be focused on a near-future where there is an outbreak of a sexually-transmitted disease among people. This has led to a mass pandemic and to the separation of genders, this is too keep the number of people from contracting it. This leads to the banning on any type of sex. The government will be useless. Our protagonist is a female who will part from the antagonist role to the protagonist, who will be trying to find a way to minimise the spread by experimenting on others. The beginning will have a shot of someone foaming from the mouth, so we can convey the actual ideas and main objective of the story and for the end of the overall 30 minutes the protagonist doesn't find anything and the diseases gets worse.
Our audience was to specify to teenagers to give more awareness about taboo topics such as this. The genre will be Thriller/Horror, a hybrid genre, it is a genre which would appeal to the demographic of 16-25 year old. We stated that we will use succeeders as a main market of people we will be directing the movie
There will be a focusing on the cinematography of more dark London, with use of low-key lighting and setting it in more secluded areas. The piece will be fast and pacy and use many shots of landscape, news feeds and extreme close-ups to portray the mass chaos. 
We used groups such as 'The Walking Dead', 'The 100; as examples of dystopian films and for cinematography be using the arthouse film of ____, but also using 'It Follows' as they personified the disease and also have a good use of sound affects and cinematography in their film which we will take on board to make ours more arthouse. 
W stated that our BBFC rating of 15 does allow sex/ violence but on an illicit level and so we will use this when portraying scenes of this kind.

There were key discussion that were stated between the focus group: 

• "I think your one is open to be a lot more cinematography...stylistically...using visual effects"
• "How will you show the dystopian place"

Upon this thought, we decided to use a 'near-future', rather than a dystopian world as that would be quite hard for us to show. Also, I stated that "a dystopian world won't be filled with fly-cars and won't be blockbuster for us we will do it according to our own setting". Our movie will be based on quick pased shots and b/c of comments said will be more cinematography based.

• "Now with the examples of the movies you used....I don't know why you didn't use the obvious one the Hunger Games...in terms with the dystopian future....I would look into that as a basis for your outcome"
• "Diversion is also a good one"

With this we will be taken aboard the focus groups member point about using the notable 'Hunger Games' in terms with our main idea of a government which is useless to the people, and the average person taking it onto their own hands. Also for our fast-paced editing we should consider looking at the arthouse film 'Diversion' as a focus to portray our shots for this piece. 

• " I don't think succeeders would be advisable...I think explorers or reformers would be better ...in terms of the energy and the freedom but also to make it more personal "

• "When showing the disease making it more identifiable...maybe have it be only contracted by teenagers....to help with the audience you are directing this at"
• "To show what the disease is use like posters or someone handing things out"
• "For exposition...titles on the screen... maybe use a voice over...social media will be of great use as it will be for the youth and be a way to make it more realistic
• "use news outlets...edit in real rallies...VICE news as they are a more youth based news"

With this our team decided to have the disease only be between youths of a certain age, this will help with the demographic we are aiming for, but also, as it is more notorious among the youth things such as STDs. For the audience to be more aware of what our piece will be about we will use posters and the youth based news of VICE to make it more realistic and identifiable for the audience. 

• "With this may we see a rise in Homosexuality... such as this is prominent in prisons...I think your idea is open to many topics"

I think with this, we can see an actual outcome of what out movie will entail, as topics such as Homosexuality will be more ademeant or normalised and so will lead to good content and raise questions about how normal it would be because of the gender-gap.