FOCUS GROUP

For our focus group, we chose to use 2 people who fall into our target audience, 2 industry professionals who work within advertising and a boy from our secondary audience: Niamh – 17, Lizzie – 25, Pippa – 45, Samantha – 32 and Jack – 17. We asked our group questions from our questionnaire and finalized the ones we were not 100% sure on. We also asked for any further opinions on what we could include in our opening sequence.

Niamh In our focus group, Niamh expressed her opinion on the fact that she liked that our main protagonist was a male, which goes against the idea of a main protagonist is stereotypically a girl in a rom-com. She felt this was unique and it had never properly been done before so it could appeal to both the male and female audience, which is what we would like to achieve. On the other hand, she did say that she would prefer our opening sequence to have a voice over, with no dialogue within the film but we queried this and gave her examples of appropriate films with dialogue in, and she changed her opinion and decided we should have dialogue.

SamanthaDue to Samantha being in the professional advertising industry, she has a very good idea of what is to be expected within a media project. She agreed with the questionnaire results of the fact that we should have a medium close up for an eye-locking scene as it creates Bulmer & Katz’ Uses and Gratifications of Personal Identity as you can associate yourself with the love which is portrayed in our film. She also thinks that using a long shot for the skateboarding scene is effective but she thought that if we were going to open the film with it, she thought that an establishing shot would be more effective, we are going to take this on board.

PippaPippa is also an industry professional within advertising. She believes that to make a opening sequence of a film capturing for the audience, we need to introduce the characters so the audience can associate themselves with them. She also thinks that using a village instead of a bustling city will be better for our income bracket B-E as we are aspiring to all. She also thought that teenagers who go to private school would more likely live in a village rather than a city, so this fits our narrative. From giving Pippa our music choices, she went against the majority of the vote and though the best song to use was ‘Better Together’ by Jack Johnson as she felt it fitted the plot better and the genre. This is good as this is the song we hope to use, as we are contradicting the results given to us by the questionnaire analysis.

Lizzie Lizzie is at the very top of our age bracket at 25 years old, this means that she has already experienced a levels and also university which gave us a good insight on what our 4 protagonists were going to face. She liked the fact that we are using 2 males and 2 females, and that it balances the friendship group out. She also said that she thought high key lighting was appropriate as this would normally be associated with a romantic comedy, and she felt that low key lighting would be odd as that it normally used in a horror film. She loved the whole going to university and hating each other because 2 friends hooked up, then bumping into each other when they come home for Christmas as this is a very realistic plot line.

Jack When speaking to Jack, he liked the fact that we were having a male as a main protagonist and due to him being in our secondary audience, he still said that we would probably watch our film. Also we will be able to relate to Harry, the main character, he thought the character should be extrovert. He also liked the fact that we would be having the 2 boys skateboarding and the 2 girls getting ready for a night out, he said this splits the genders well.