AUDIENCE RESEARCH/FEEDBACK: genre

Why I did it  
 This is the questionnaire I asked a few people to gain some feed back on the genre of film we should do. I wanted to see if people could recognise the films that have inspired our film. However the main reason was too see if people within our target audience (15-21) would watch films of the same genre.  

The questionnaire 
Can you name these films and would you watch them. 

The Worlds End:Why Audience Research Is Vital

Why Audience research is vital- The worlds End 
This is one of The Worlds end official websites.

The film had promotional media sites including Facebook, twitter,
YouTube and email updates.

Not only did they distribute posters and trailers but also combined the two to create a motion poster as well. The Worlds End motion poster
The film received critically acclaimed reviews from not only British and American media but also A-list stars like Robert Downey JR.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (EDGAR WRIGHT, 2004) [Wiki]
BUDGET: £4m [IMDB]    WORLD BOX OFFICE: $30m     Released in 16 countries. [boxofficemojo]
[BBFC: 15]



HOT FUZZ (EDGAR WRIGHT, 2007) [Wiki]
BUDGET: $8m [IMDB]    WORLD BOX OFFICE: $81m     Released in 42 countries. [boxofficemojo] 
[BBFC: 15]


THE WORLD'S END (EDGAR WRIGHT, 2013) [Wiki]
BUDGET: $20m     WORLD BOX OFFICE: $46m     Released in 18 countries. [boxofficemojo] 
[BBFC: 15]
NB: This is the 'official trilogy trailer'


The first two films in the cornetto trilogy were a lot more successful than The Wolds End. Shaun of the Dead multiplied their budget of £4m by 5 to create their world box office total of around £20m. Hot Fuzz's budget of £8m was multiplied by 7 to around £54m, where as The World's End world box office total of $46 was only just larger than double the budget. Therefore their over all profits were less. 

The Worlds End: Why Accurate Audience Research is Vital! 

The Worlds End (2013)
BUDGET: $28m (£18.4m)
BOX OFFICE: $46m (£30m) Worldwide
DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
BBFC: 15
CAST INCLUDES: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, 

Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan,

 Pierce Brosnan and Paddy Considine.
GENRE(S): Adventure, Horror, Comedy



DISTRIBUTORS
The World's End was released in 18 different countries by:
 Universal Home Entertainment, Universal Studio Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures Benelux, NBCUniversal Entertainment, Home Box Office (HBO), Universal Pictures International, Synca, Parca Co. Ltd., Interfilm Distribution, Focus Features, E1 Films Canada AND Universal Studios. 
[IMDB]


FRANCHISE
The World's End is the last film in The Cornetto Trilogy franchise which has the other two films Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead also. 

SOUNDTRACK

The soundtrack is clearly aimed

 at the older generation as younger audiences may not have the same 

reading, preferred reading, as the

 older audiences. This is because 

most of these songs and artists are

 from the 80's and 90's. 














TIE-INS
The most obvious tie-in in this film 

and the other two films is the 

Cornetto that they eat at some 

point in each film, hence the 

name, "Cornetto Trilogy".



TRAILERS AND TEASER TRAILERS
The first teaser trailer was released on the 8th of May 2013, it was an international trailer

 and it got a record number of views for Universal UK. The teaser trailer shows the plot 

line of a group of friends wanting to finish a pub crawl they started when they were

 younger. Immediately this is aimed at an older audience as younger viewers wouldn't 

be able to relate to this. Also it limits the global audience as some countries, (USA), 

might not understand this concept as it is a British concept. 

DID THEY MARKET IT RIGHT?
No, not in my opinion. I think they tried to market it at 15+ and both genders but I don't 

think anyone below the age of 25 would find this film that appealing. Different elements 

of this film signify that a younger audience wouldn't understand or wouldn't like this. As 

I've said above, the soundtrack is dated and the theme of a pub crawl is something 

someone 18+ can do, therefore someone under 18 would find it hard to follow the 

preferred reading making it difficult to deduce anything about the film. Also in the 

trailers it focusses heavily on the main pub crawl theme, maybe if they had used other

clips from the film it might have appealed more to the American and global audiences. 

Also, the genres it is associated with doesn't appeal to a female audience very much, 

there doesn't appear to be much romance in the film from the trailers or the posters 

and the male actors in the film don't really appeal to a female audience either.  

Fan Art

In this short video clip it shows Simon Pegg and Nick Frost 

reviewing the fan art they received from the audience. 

This is showing how the line between producer and 

audience is cracking as the audience has a bigger

 impact on the film its self. 

Posters

I've found posters for the worlds end and I saw a reasons why this film 

may have failed. The age of the characters signifies to younger people 

that this film is too old for them as there are no young characters to 

sympathise or communicate with. This stereotypical image that is 

shown on the poster had a massive impact on the younger target 

audience. Also as the main focus around this film is alcohol and 

pub's, parents of the children may not want them to watch the 

movie as it may have a bad influence upon them. 

Gender is also another key point that is shown in these posters. There 

is only one with a woman. Her eyes, hair and facial expressions are all 

signifiers that signify a sexual appeal towards men. Compared to the 

audience being for woman where there is no sexual appeal towards 

them as the characters are purely chosen for comedy not looks.

Trailers

Trailer 1(official trailer)



Trailer 2 (international trailer)



When looking at the different trailers I found that trailer 1 was used for 

the english audience unlike trailer 2 which was used for the RoW audience. 

The 2nd trailer shows a lot of comedy and also action which is easy for anyone to relate too.

What would you do differently if you were producing or distributing this film?

If I was producing The Worlds End, first of all I would have a character that 

could relate to the younger age group of 12 years upwards. By doing this 

it would make my target audience much lager therefore more people 

would come and watch the film. I can prove this by using the commutation

 test; for example if I swapped one of the group with a 16 year old boy 

it would  encourage younger teens to go as they would want to aspire 

to him. I would also make the film more relatable to woman by having 

some kind of romance and maybe another woman that then can get 

into a love triangle with one of the characters adding more binary 

opposition and making the story more interesting.

If i was distributing this film I would change the main poster that is

 the face of the film to one with the main male protagonist and the 

female protagonist with the other characters in the background. I 

think this is important because it then relates to woman as they 

may see the poster and automatically get a reading of romance 

but yet the fire in the background and the knowledge that it is 

the 3rd film of the cornet trilogy, would keep the male audience

 eager to watch it as they want to see their favourite comedy 

duo getting up to know good once again.

   

AUDIENCE FEEBACK: genre

The recordings of the audience feedback

Clip 1- Pretty in Pink



Clip 2- The breakfast club



Clip 3- This is England 



Clip 4- Submarine



What I did and why
I used clips from 4 different films (shown in a previous post) and showed them to a female within our primary audience. After showing her each clip I asked her two simple questions, 1. if she could name the film and 2. if she would want to watch this film. Each film has influenced our film therefore I needed to check to see if they are films that would appeal to our primary audience. This also helped us to finally decide on our genre if we wanted to still use our hybrid rom-com and social realist genre. If she liked all the genres I showed her it would mean that our film would appeal to our primary audience as clip 1. was from Pretty in pink a rom-com that influenced our shop scene and costume for Hollie and Harri. Clip 2. is from The breakfast club a teen romance which influenced Brads costume, persona and our school setting. Clip 3 from This is England which influenced our social realist genre. And finally clip 4 from Submarine which has overall heavily influenced our film. 

Results
Our respondent successfully answered all questions without help and said that she would happily watch all of these 4 films. This therefore concludes that our genre will appeal to our primary audience. 

AUDIENCE/GENRE – ROM-COM

Rom-com audience

Rom-com definition  
Romantic comedies are hybrid films which by definition from http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms10.html, means "a film or production that combines or intersects two or more distinct genre types, and cannot be categorised by a single genre type; see also cross-over " this means that the films audience has widened as it is not restricted to just one genre so it will appeal to a wider fan base, there for increasing profits. 

British rom-coms rating in the US
Using information from http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=romanticcomedy.htm we can see that there are 3 British Films in the US top 50 (using the total gross) Romantic comedies from 1978 to the present day. These are: Notting Hill at 21, Shakespeare in Love at 27 and Briget Jones Diary at 47. 

BBFC ratings given to rom-coms 
From http://pro.boxoffice.com/latest-news/2013-09-11-uk-romcom-about-time-beats-riddick-with-27m-debut , we can see About time, a rom-com, received the largest gross (£2.7m) in the Top 10 Films in the United Kingdom and Ireland in September 6-8, 2013. They commented saying "It posted a comparable debut to films like 50 First Dates ($14.2M Cume), One Day ($13M), and The Time Traveler's Wife ($12.7M Cume). Universal is reporting that the time-traveling romantic comedy scored particularly well in exit polls among females over 25." This shows that rom-coms can do very well with the British public as many big hit films in the UK are rom-coms. 

Producers and directors 
A company that largely produces rom-coms are Working Title, they have produced the likes of Bridget Jones and Notting Hill both directed by Richard Curtis and which have both profited greatly globally.  Another main producer of rom-coms' is Woody Allen who has directed the likes of Annie Hall, Mighty Aphrodite and Scoop.

Target audience
Usually the audience is mainly female based but due to the comedy aspect it also appeals to men. The age target varies from teen rom-coms' to adult rom-coms', but the romcoms' usually range from 12-44. E.g 10 things I hate about you (directed by Gil Junger) is a teen rom-com' and the main audience age will be teens and adult rom-coms' like About a boy (directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz) a larger older audience. 
Most rom-com ratings are 12 or 15, due to swearing or sexual content which will appeal to the 14-44 rating and that is a commonly used in rom-coms' due to the key love theme.  

GENRE – SOCIAL REALIST CONVENTIONS/AUDIENCE Meadows’ films + Mickeybo + Me

Social Realism Audience

Box Office
Social realism cannot compete with many genres in terms of mainstream mass 

box-office appeal. I began by looking at the all time box office figures for the American 

market on boxofficemojo.com. By doing this I discovered that in the top 200 films there

 was no social realist films included in this figure, but then looking at the top 20 all time

 box office figures in Britain, I found that 'The Full Monty' came 18th. I also discovered 

that most of the British all time top 20 were franchise's making it hard for other films 

to get into it as the audience are already familiar with the first film released. On looking

 into further detail on 'The Full Monty', I've found out that it is an exception that shows 

you can have a block buster social realist film. I also counted that it had 28 distributors 

in countries including Japan and Argentina and that it was distributed by one of 

The Big 6, '20th Century Fox'.  

Age
Usually in a social realist film the age rating is 15 or above for example in 

'East is East', 'West is West', 'Slum Dog Millionaire' and 'This is England',

 all of the age ratings are 15 or 18. This is generally because the target audience 

they are trying to promote their film too is an older age group. This is because 

social realist films don't have as much action as the youth of today want and

 is not the typical story line they will be interested in. On saying that some age

 ratings can be below that  for example 'Bend it like Beckham'. This is because

 he is an icon and idol to young children therefore the film he makes needs to be

 suitable for this age category as they are the main target audience. Another factor

 to age is teen characters. This is shown in 'Billy Elliot', 'This is England', 'Sweet Sixteen'

 and 'Submarine' as all of these films have characters that teens of today can relate 

with, making it easier to empathise with them and understand the character. In some

 cases such as 'This is  England' it is a problem as the age rating is an 18, therefore

 not allowing the younger teens to watch it.

International Appeal

Billy Elliot
Cover

International appeal is a huge factor as it will bring in most of the

 income to the film. This means that it needs to appeal to people in 

different countries where they have a different language, accent, 

economy, political views or generally an idilic film preference. This

 is proven in the film 'Billy Elliot' as it made a huge $21,995,263 in 

America alone. This was all down to the typical American idilic movie

 as it reflected the American Dream.

Gender

Gender is also another key factor in Social Realism films as it needs to appeal to

 the male and female audience. On looking into further depth about this I found out that 

'Tyrannosaur' directed by Paddy Considine does this very well. He uses violence

 with the main protagonist to promote his film to men but he also uses romance 

and empathy to promote his film to the female audience. By using both of these key 'genres'

 in a social realism film, it opens up the amount of people coming to watch it as

 it is for both men and woman. 'The full monty' also do this as even though the film

 has men in it, it has comedy and a feel good factor allowing a wide of people to enjoy the film.

The Full Monty box office figures

Tyrannosaur Cover

East is East Cover