Who would be the target audience for your media product and how did you attract and target that audience?
Name: Sarah Thomson
age:16 years old
living: At home with mum, dad, older brother and younger sister in suburbs of Enfield
Class: She is of a middle class family, where both her parents work
Education: like her friends and family she attends a public school and is likely to go onto further education in university
style: Girly, casual, whats found on the highstreet
favourite shops: River Island, New Look, Topshop, H&M,
hobbies: shopping with her friends, going to the cinema, sleepovers, chatting to friends on the phone and via internet on Facebook, MSM, twitter
favourite films: Mean Girls, Wild Child, St Trinians, Sex and the city, Mamma Mia, Dirty Dancing
TV programmes/ channels : (tv programmes) Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Friends, Scrubs, X factor, The BIg Bang Theory, The Inbetweeners, (channels) Channel 4, E4, ITV, BBC, E! entertainment, VIVA,
music : whatever is in the charts- mainly a variation of pop, RnB, Hip-hop
** Sarah Thomson is the ideal target audience for our trailer as our trailer includes aspects of everyday life which are included in her lifestyle and involve events which are presented in contemporary life, which will appeal to her, whilst also providing an enjoyable viewing experience for the audience by the use of typical soap conventions used by the producers in order to manipulate the experience for the audience.
In order to display to the audience how we used, developed and challenged conventions of real media products my group have posted our trailer on Youtube and used their annotation tools to create speech bubles commenting on what techniques we have used, how we have used them and what effect this has on the audience.
Our group was influenced by a number of conventional soap trailers, these were one of our main influences in the creation of our product as we wanted our trailer to be conventional and successful enough to attract our target audience.
Below: An Eastenders video in which my group used as part of our research. We believed the trailer included all the specific conventions that are included in creating an effective trailer and successfully attracting an audience. The conventions included: narrative enigmas, effective lighting, atmosphere setting sound, different character types and also a (single) typical storyline.
Looking at our trailer my group feel that we have effectively incorporated these conventions in our trailer and used them in a way of attracting our audience.
Audience Feedback:
As part of gaining audience feedback we carried out a number of tasks in order to hear our audiences opinion on our product, we wanted to find out from them what the liked about our product, what they didn't like about our product, how we could change specific areas and if anything needed to be added. We believe the voice of the audience is a key component in the creation of an effective media product because if your audience does not like your product then it is not going to be successfully distributed and known.
From the beginning of the task we have been keen to find out from our audience what they wanted to see so we distributed a questionnaire asking a variety of questions such as age, gender, what tv channels they watch, what are their favourite soaps, why, ...etc in order to have an understanding of our potential market.
Further into the creation of our product we also carried out a pilot focus group. This consisted of the group mimicking a focus group practising questions and revising effective feedback techniques. The focus group consisted of random pupils within our media class, who were 17years old fitting our target group, this allowed us to have a better understanding of what we were to expect in our real focus group and also gave us the opportunity to modify our pitch and treatment that were also given out in the group. However we did not receive effective feedback as our product was not fully completed and we needed time to further discuss issues that had not yet risen in the current stage of production. Yet we received positive feedback on our pitch and treatment.
For our main focus group we filmed our target audience watching the trailer and their responses afterwards (the video can be found on the groups website). We received positive feedback on our product in particularly the narrative enigmas which where created, the eerie atmospheric music and the framing of particular shots. Again at the screening we handed out copies of our treatment and pitch, which was praised for representing different character types, and different groups within society bringing a sense of realism to the soap. At the showing we also gave the audience the opportunity to view our website, here we gained positive feedback due to our easy to follow lay out, drop-down menu style, fonts colours and layouts and also our variation of pages.
Below are some of the question which were included in our focus group:
1)"Our target audience are people aged between 16-25, do you think this trailer would attract our target audience, if so how? "
2)"What is your opinion of our trailer and what worked well/didnt work well?"
3)"The soap will be aired on Tuesdays at 8pm, would you be willing to watch it?"
4)"Does the timing of the soap affect anything else you usually watch?"
