Evaluation - Question 5

Q5
How did you attract/address your audience?

From conducted research relating to our audiences expectations from the fantasy genre. We found the expectations to be very similar. The whole idea of fantasy is to have that surreal and unrealistic film that will ironically feel and seem realistic to them. Having the magical unrealistic adaptation in the film but forming it in a way that seems normal. The audiences like the effect as they can clearly see a difference between their own world and the films world. However, the audiences need something to relate to. Having something completely different might push audience off track and feel confused, it would show no bond between the film and its audience and therefore a gap is caused. Therefore, our audience expects the fantasy to have a theme that they can relate to throughout, though they expect the fantasy film to be one level higher that we cannot imagine realistically, in terms of its storyline, the characters within, e.g. fairies, dwarves involved in magical events in the film etc.


Though specifically for children audiences the expectation may differ more, children need something to be easy to follow on. This means they would not be able to follow on too much going on in the film. A simple but interesting storyline with twists and unique elements is what they expect.


The fantasy suits the audience very much, our audience female children ages 8-12.
Female children seem to be quite mature even from young age, most play games of pretending to be a mother or their mother, and they look after fake baby dolls with push prams for them, play with Barbie dolls, and play with doll houses. From these childish games the affect family life has on them comes from young age, they understand the basic idea of family and think quite ahead. They act on from what they can see from their own family or from what they can see from other families shown in children films and cartoons.


This is why we thought our film considering the storyline and the characters within it would be a very good match to its audience we chose, since our film runs with the theme of family throughout, it shows a 8 year old female child’s views, helping the audience to relate or understand, and it also shows the theme of family but in a more light hearted way that falls into the audiences interests but without the complexity of family life and various issues within (as that would lead to an older and more serious and experienced audience).


For instance, night at the museum has a theme of family, there is a stepdad, mother and father, and the theme of family focuses into a father and son relationship and shows the theme of family relationships throughout the film. Similarly we have done this, we show the mother and step father and step sister, and then further in our film is goes into the relationship between the two sisters, and the theme about the relationship between the two sisters is constantly shown similarly to the father and son relationship in night at the museum. Night at the museum also has the theme of a modern family, not the old and orderly fashioned mother, father and children but the families we come across in this modern day and age, where there are step brothers/sisters, half brothers/sisters, and step parents also. It broadens out and reaches out to a wider audience, people who have similar families like these characters too, and not just the stereotypical ideal family.


We saw from other films the camera movements used and how significant it was in terms of relation to the film. Night at the museum uses steady shots. They are shown constantly one after another but subtly shown in its sequence, they keep the shots still for a certain time and they have it in pace with the music’s pace. This creates the magical effect and atmosphere and this links to the magic seen later on in the film. Also labyrinth uses a steady pan through the girls (Sarah’s) possessions and room. This type of camera movement is similarly used in our opening sequence, we used a steady pan. The reason for all these camera movements was to suit its audience. As my audience are young female children, they need a camera movement that can show them enough to keep them interested and tell them what they need to know but not make them lost or confuse them, this is why slow camera movement is popular, not too slow, but not too fast, this helps the audience to watch and follow on what is happening and fully understand.
From research it was found that the fantasy genre was not very frequent in before 1960, and in the sixties there was only few. However, in the eighties did the genre become increasingly popular to this very day and have been very successful.


As primary research I found that on the 26th December, were several popular fantasy movies showing on TV; Hook, Snow white, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Twilight, jack frost, The Neverending Story, Bridge To Terabithia, Bedtime Stories, Inkheart, and many more.
For Boxing day, it has been chosen to show many fantasy movies on TV. It proves this genre as very well known and shows the success of it and the popularity of interest it has in its audience.

A useful link below showing the genres popularity over the years and this helps determine the likeliness of success for our film.

http://www.teenfi.com/movies/Genre+of+the+Month+Fantasy-5853.html


“The Spiderwick Chronicles enjoyed surprise success earlier this year and with The Hobbit, Inkheart and The Mutant Chronicles still in the pipeline this is a genre that appears to have serious legs as well as finding a loyal audience.”
This shows the advantage of having this particular genre for its audience as this genre is very popular it has quite an advantage over less popular genres and therefore through its popularity, the genre has most loyalty with its audience, the genre is familiar with its audience and has resulted in success through recent fantasy films with its audience so our film is likely to follow its trail of achievement.