Genre, Audience and Exhibition

I have presented the genre, audience and exhibition research of all of my three productions within the Prezi presentation below.

Resolving my Target Audience Issue

From my interview and focus group research, I have been addressing the possible issue of the older demographic of my 17-35 year old target audience being isolated due to my young, 17 year old presenter. However I found that overall, my target audience is opinionatively appropriate.

It was picked up on that younger people are represented perhaps most strongly through my youthfully fast paced, "choppy" editing style and young cast; however the formal, educated vocabulary of my narration and complex issue in focus will attract older audiences. I also found from my interview with a member of my older demographic that he did not feel isolated by my young presenter, and respected her due to her knowledge and professional deliverance. He also stated that using a young presenter would break the stereotype of young people being less interested or educated on political issues. Therefore, overall I have concluded that my target audience is appropriate, and whilst my younger audience is represented through my youthful documentary style and cast, my older audience is represented equally through my narration, costume and topic.

From the opinions I collected within this research, I've also considered marketing more closely to feminists rather than educating all people on sexism, although my documentary would be more informative to non-feminists. Therefore I've developed my target audience to include an active audience of educated feminists and people interested in sexism or the media, and a passive audience of non-feminists interested in Channel 4's successful expository documentary programming, or curiously attracted through the social media debates featuring my hashtag (two-step flow concept). My active audience will seek to be educated with information which supports their opinions and could be brought into debates and entertained by coverage issues which they are interested or passionate about, whereas my passive audience will be educated on an issue which they were perhaps unfamiliar with, and entertained by the youthful and interesting style/ composition of my documentary. Furthermore, although my documentary is supportive of the feminist perspective as its purpose is to present an awareness of sexism, it considers opposing arguments throughout therefore removing an isolating bias, which could actively attract anti-feminists who will seek to challenge the documentary through debates and social media.

Focus Group Feedback

I held a focus group with my media class in order to receive feedback on the technical aspects of the first edit of my production from a media studies perspective (including editing, style, representation and audience etc.), and to gather opinions from my target audience about the overall effectiveness of my documentary. This was an appropriate focus group as it contained 8 people, which is appropriate for creating an equal discussion but is not broad enough to rely on entirely - therefore I will continue to research wider target audience feedback. For this audience feedback I also focused on the young adult demographic of my target audience due to their ages of 17-19, as well the educated students, and feminists and non-feminists sub-categories of my target audience; however I also included one adult from my older demographic.

The first edit of my documentary which I presented to my focus group:

Documentary First Draft from Courtney O'Donnell on Vimeo.

Footage of focus group feedback:

Focus Group Feedback from Courtney O'Donnell on Vimeo.

Evaluation of what I found from this focus group, and the improvements I will make following their feedback:

• My issue solving by combining to unusable takes to make them usable did not affect their audio quality or flow of the narration, but I will need to cover them with footage as the cut can be detected.
• My fast paced and broad range of shots during the introduction, and range of angles overall work really well and are conventional of documentaries.
• The topic I'm exploring is informative, interesting and valid. This would therefore entertain my audience, attract them due to my interest topic, and create purpose and relevancy for my documentary.
• I could use jump cuts to speed up the overly long duration of location shots. I definitely agree with this improvement and will apply it to my production.
• I should add subtitles to my 'Literally I Can't' archive footage in order to draw focus to its sexist lyrics and familarise people who are unfamiliar with this song; particularly my older demographic.
• It meets the 'entertaining and informative' convention of the documentary genre to an extent, as it's informative but the seriousness of the issue makes it less entertaining.
• Suggestions of my target audience included older women and young adults (who are represented by my cast, hashtag social media marketing, and youthful cut/ transitions style). This meets my intended target audience of 17-35 year olds, therefore I think that I have resolved my previous issue about older people being isolated from my production due to my young presenter, as although my younger demographic is represented most strongly and are perhaps my primary demographic (as picked up on by my focus group), the complex topic and narration, conventionality to the documentary genre and my ancillary product main consumers also represent my older demographic.
• My male interviewee being unavailable for my production effected my gender representation negatively, therefore I will shoot an additional short extract of an interview to use within my introduction to further preview and extend my enigma for the rest of my documentary. This will either be a positive representation of males in relation to sexism, or a controversial opinion in order to fuel my entertaining debate and shock my audience.
• My presenter was very effective through her deliverance and appropriate acting.