focus group

general information about the focus group:

In order to get a wider understanding of what our target audience like and dislike, we organised a focus group. This meant that we could ask questions and have more of a discussing but also get a wide range of answers from a variety of people. However we did come across some issues when doing our focus group. We were meant to have a range of ethnicity within the group however the girl that was meant to attend had an illness so couldn't join us. It was intentional that we did not have any male individuals attending the focus group as we already know that we want to aim our film at teen girls. because of this, the people who attended ranged from 16-18 years of age. 

We also had technical issues with the opening we used. Originally we were going to show an opening with a voice-over, then an opening without - however we couldn't find the openings on YouTube and the links that we had previously used on windows did not work on the school imac. Another issue with this was that we couldn't show the clip we intended to with the female protagonist: instead we had two clips, both with male protagonist. Despite all this, we still managed to get the answers that we needed, even though they were more general, we came to some conclusions from it.

In the end, we showed 'The Art Of Getting By' and 'The Perks Of Being A Wallflower'
The perks of being a wallflower = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQPhbA1luzw

The art of getting by = http://www.sockshare.com/file/83E68BA0D728A39F

The questions we asked include:
- Out of the two openings, which did you prefer?

- Do you think the voiceovers were effective? or would you prefer it if there wasn't one?

- Which background music did you prefer out of the two?

- Which character did you prefer from what you saw in the openings?

- Which opening was best in terms of setting up the plot for the rest of the film? 

- Which one made you more intrigued to continue watching it?
- If you could improve anything what would it be?

Conclusions made from the focus group include: 

- There was a mix in opinion as to which opening was better. It was said that an opening would be more effective if there was a mix of both openings as the second one tells you more about the rest of the story. However, they liked the fact that in The Art Of Getting By, it went straight into the story and they felt like the opening to The Perks Of Being A Wallflower was a little too long before we were actually introduced to the main character. They also thought that In The Art Of Getting By there tended to be too many statistics, they liked that it was more personal with Perks, therefore it is important that we focus on both these things and not just one of them (have a mix of a personal touch with statistics).

- It will be best to use a voiceover in our opening as they thought that this was more effective.

- It is best to have a song in the background which is upbeat and makes you feel more excited to watch the rest of the film. In the focus group they said they preferred The Perks Of Being A Wallflower as it had nice acoustic, happy background music to start the film off and set the mood.

- The character out of Perks is preferred as you feel more sorry for him. I think that because of this in our opening we need to make sure that we do make a connection with the audience through a voice-over which is personal and lets the audience into the characters life more.

- They favoured The Art Of Getting By in terms of setting up the plot because it just went straight into it, whereas with Perks, it was the long introduction of the travelling through the tunnel. I think that in our opening if we are to have an introduction it should be quite short as it is important we introduce the protagonist.

- The whole mystery at the beginning of the perks was something that out focus group liked, it made then intrigued to continue watching the film however they thought that it was maybe a little too mysterious so as you are trying to focus on who he is talking to, you miss out on vital information. Therefore we should have a small aspect of mystery in our opening but make it a little more subtle.