Sunday, 25 September 2011

Ancillary Analysis (Film Posters)

1. Outcast: The poster of this film conveys the message that this film is going to be action/horror/suspense. The animal hand/claw tells the viewer that the villain resembles a wild animal and is chasing two people in a city. The Animal hunts at night since the lighting in the poster is dark and the atmosphere is gloomy. The type of font that is used for the title of the film suggests that the film has religious content too. The cross signs instead of 'T' and the pentagram in the 'O' of outcast further more gives the impression that it is related to Christianity. The blood stains on the font tell that the film contains bloodshed.


2. Who Killed Nancy: The poster of this film is a little confusing, its hard to judge whether the person who was killed was innocent or guilty of something. A female was killed (may be a young woman) the portrait gives this idea. The pictures of the men indicate they were gangsters/drug dealers and the murder might have taken place at a hotel or may be something important in the film happened in a hotel. The poster leaves the viewer puzzled, inadequate information is given in the poster for the viewer to understand anything except for the basic theme of the film i.e. murder.


 3. Atonement: The pictures in the poster convey that the film is about two young adults (male and female), the phrases "Joined by love. Separated by fear. Redeemed by hope." tell that the film is a romantic tragedy, the clothes of the hero are of the army so the audience may think that he went to army and Keira Knightley kept on waiting for him and eventually they never reunited. 

 4. Blitz: The poster says that this film is an action/adventure film through the gun the man is holding, the expression on the face of this man. There is only one main character. The main story revolves around a cop killer and a killer cop. This is a typical Hollywood adventure/crime/action film where the good guy goes after the bad guy and one of them or both of them end up being dead, with a tragic and heroic ending.
5. Chico & Rita: By only looking at the poster of this film a few things that come in mind are:
  • The film is about black people.
  • It is an animated film.
  • Its a love story.
The market that is shown in one of the pictures in the poster demonstrate that the film is set in Africa or a third world country like Cuba. The woman on the poster is dancing and there is a phrase "love is a song you never forget" so may be the film has some musical element in it as well.

6. Gnomeo & Juliet: The name of the film directs the audience mind direct to one thing that is the film is romantic. This film is also animated as shown in the poster and the main character of the film is standing upside down which means the film is also a comedy film. It is about strange looking little human like creatures and the film's basic plot is about a garden.
7. In the Loop: According to the poster this film is a comedy feature. It is a political film (may be) because the ties the two men are wearing are the flags of USA and United Kingdom. They are connected through a telephone line and the messed up wire suggests that they can not communicate with each other clearly and there is a lot of confusion and the situation is very serious as the sentence says "The fate of the world is on the line". 




What I learned from analysing a few of these posters is that the genre of the film is easily identified by the poster, the important cast is known, the main theme and story line is guessed by the audience and the publicity of the film is also done through posters in the cinemas etc. The catchy sentences that are written on the posters make the viewer want to watch the film, in the poster above almost every poster has its own line that speaks for the movie. 
The posters that I have chosen above are from British films and I have not seen most of them, I chose these posters so that I could analyse them without my personal opinions about the films, I wanted to analyse them from the eye of an audience so that I could understand the clear meaning of the poster and by analysing them I think posters' main aim is to make its audience curious and confused about the movie. Every human being wants answers to clear their head from any confusion.

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Survey 2

Keeping Pakistani society and the results of the research on internet in mind we made another questionnaire and gave it to people to fill we tried to keep the questions as simple as possible.
Here are a few example survey pages that we distributed:



The results were:





Problems faced by young people today.

My group members and I have decided that we are going to work on a film who's target audience is of our age group i..e 15 - 25 years old people. I did some research over the internet about the problems that are faced by the young people these days with the thought that it might help us construct the story of our film and according to a blog 41 problems with young people are:

Audience And Genre Research (Final draft of the survey)


1.      What is your age bracket?
·         15- 20
·         20-25
·         25-30

2.       Are you :
·         Male
·         Female

3.       Do you watch films?
·         Yes
·         No

4.       How often do you watch films?
·         Never
·         Once a week
·         More than twice a week
·         Several times a week
·         Don’t know

5.       Who do you watch film with?
·         Parents/guardians
·         Friends
·         Siblings
·         Alone

6.       Where do you watch films?
·         Home
·         Cinema
·         Both
·         Don’t know



7.       What kind of movie do you like?
·         Romantic
·         Comedy
·         Action
·         Suspense
·         Slasher/Horror
·         Family
·         Drama
·         Bollywood
·         Fantasy


8.       Why do you watch films?
·         Don’t know
·         To relax
·         To keep up with friends
·         To learn something
·         Other, please explain:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


9.       Your all time favorite movie?
______________________________________________________________________________


10.   Why?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


11.   What do you look for in movies/ what makes you choose a film?
·         Famous actors___________________________________________________________
·         Famous director__________________________________________________________
·         Songs
·         Award winning
·         Reviews



12.   Do you prefer the main protagonist (One who takes the leading part in a drama) to be
·         Male
·         Female
·         Animal
·         Kid
§  Boy
§  Girl

13.   What would interest you in the following scenario?
·         A protagonist:
§  who is jealous
§  Rich
§  Depressed
§  Poor
§  Funny
§  Serious
§  Having supernatural powers
§  Other, please suggest:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Friday, 9 September 2011

Audience and Genre Research (first draft)

As we are confused what genre we want to work on this year, my group is taking a survey we have prepared a few questions and we will distribute the questionnaire tomorrow. This will help us in deciding who our target audience is and what genre majority of people like.

Questions for the survey:

Name: (Anonymous)

Age:

Gender:

Occupation:

Where do you live? (Defense, Clifton etc)
________________________

How often do you watch films? (Rate from 1 to 10)
_______________________



What Kind of movies do you like?  
  • Romantic
  • Comedy
  • Action 
  • Suspense
  • Slasher
  • Family
  • Drama
Why Do you watch these films:
__________________________

Your all time favorite movie? Why?
 _______________________

Who would you like to see playing the main role in a movie you like?
  • Male
  • Female
What occupation should the main protagonist hold?
____________________________

Would you like to watch movies that represents our society or something fictional?
 _______________________

Thursday, 8 September 2011

The basic questions of audience research


1. How large is the audience - both as an average, and as the reach (number of different people)? This is explained in more detail in the box [separate file].





2. What kind of people make up the audience? How do they differ from the whole population - e.g. in terms of age group, sex, occupation, etc?
3. Where is your audience? In each part of your coverage area, what percentage of the population are members of your audience?
4. When does your audience use your publication (or tune into your station) - what time of day, what day of week, etc?
5. How do your audience members spend their time? How much of their time is spent being part of your audience? And how much with your competitors?
6. What type of content (e.g. radio and TV programs, newspaper articles) interests your audience most - and least?
7. What styles of presentation do your audience prefer, and what styles do they dislike?
8. Which activities, attitudes, and other effects do your publications cause among your audience?
9. How will your audience react to a new kind of program or article that you might introduce?
10. How can you increase your audience? Is it best to try to find new listeners? Or to bring lapsed listeners back? Or to persuade existing listeners to spend more time with your broadcasts?
11. What percentage of the population in your area know about your station - and how much do they know about it?
12. What is preventing people from using your service as much as they might? 
Most audience research is directed towards answering the above general questions. Some of them, of course, are more than one question. In fact, some of those questions can be divided into hundreds of more precise questions.
With any proposed research project, it is useful to work out which of the above general questions it tries to answer. Most research projects will cover more than one of the general questions, but if you have done no audience research before, it will be impossible to cover all questions with a single project. You would have to ask thousands of questions, and most respondents would not have enough patience to answer so many questions accurately.

http://www.audiencedialogue.net/kya1a.html

Saturday, 3 September 2011

Codes and Conventions of Trailers

As I have been browsing and watching trailers, I have analysed three trailers in terms of their codes and conventions and the meaning they represent for its audience.

1. An Education:


This is a typical Hollywood/British film trailer. It begins with telling us that the film is about a young girl Jenny who is very smart and wants to go to Oxford. Shen then meets an older man and her life and her goals change.
As the trailer advances the situation of the trailer changes and that is realised by the audience through the change in music thus in this trailer the background music speaks/narrates. In the very beginning the background music is piano and it is played in a such a way that it gives the idea of happiness and also the type of music tells that what time/age the film is shot in e.g. 1900s or 2011.
The text and its colour(s) in between the scenes used reflects youth, and gives the feel that it might not be a serious film but as the trailer is played the music changes and some seriousness is shown.
So basically this is a very cliché trailer, begins with happy music, happy actors and ends with hard and serious emotions and music that saddens the atmosphere. It clearly tells the audience what genre the film is going to be (Romantic/Drama) and the only enigma left is that what will happen to Jenny in the end and only the people who will the trailer and the genre will watch the film.

2. In The Loop:



This trailer is completely different from the trailer above. the trailer begins with a dialogue and the film seems serious. But as the trailer is played along with fast music and fast paced editing and short dialogues and texts the audience realises that it is a comedy film and the fast paced editing creates enigma and the audience is confused that what exactly the story of the film is. Thus a large number of audience will want to watch the film. In this trailer the music is there only to make it more interesting and energetic and the fast editing is the core aspect that speaks to the audience and tells them what the film is about or what genre it is i.e. Comedy.

3. Dhobi Ghat:



This trailer is a Bollywood film's trailer with no dialogues and only moving images, still images and music. The only information given to the audience is through texts and images which is not very common at all. In this particular trailer not only the music but the editing, the pictures, the text everything speaks to the audience, they all carry a message and they all create enigma especially the music used. The trailer only introduces the main characters of the film and gives a very little idea of the story i.e. that they all are linked and their is a love chain. this trailer has bassically broken the common codes of the trailers in terms of
a) Music - the same tune is repeated thrice which is not a convention in trailers.
b) Editing - still images are used along with moving but with no dialogues or spoken narration.
The text has been used in a very interesting way, each character is introduced with their names and professions and rest of the information disappears quickly and the last word of each set of texts is "Mumbai" which tells the viewers that the film is set in Mumbai.


So these are the three trailers absolutely different from each other and I thought that analysing the different techniques that have been used in these trailers would be a challenge and a good way to start with the project.

Friday, 2 September 2011

A rough start

In A2 again my group consists of 4 members. Arika, Fatmah (me), Afia and Sama. and we have decided to work on a trailer. The genre is not decided yet but it is definitely going to be something similar to chick flicks, comedy, romantic, drama and(or) action.

I have already started looking at trailers of British films of different genres so that I know what genre I like the most and I would be thrilled and enthusiastic to make, here are a few trailers I have watched for my own brain storming and ideas. Also watching trailers of different genre gives one more exposure towards research and knowledge about the codes and conventions of the real media products.