Feedback
Getting audience feedback is an important step, as it tells us if our efforts to appeal to the audience were successful. We recorded interviews with members of the target audience after showing them the opening, and also got some target audience members to fill out questionnaires.
Theory
Expectations
Uses & Gratifications
The audience theory of Uses & Gratifications is all about what the audience actually gets out of watching the film.
Conforming
Subversion
Pleasures
The theory about audience pleasures hinges on what the audience enjoys about the film, in some very specific ways. Some, listed here, apply to our film more than others.
Emotional Pleasure
If the audience get some kind of strong emotional response from the film, whether its horror, comedy, etc., they enjoy it. The most obvious in our film would be empathising with the characters who have lost a friend- while some of the suspects didn't have great relationships with the victim, some of them did, and the audience gets pleasure from the experience of identifying with this.
Intellectual Puzzles
In any film with a mystery narrative, such as our film and others of the crime and mystery genres, challenge comes from the audience trying to decipher the plot and solve the mystery before the 'Aha!' moment. Either way, once this climax is reached, the audience derives pleasure from either the satisfaction of being right or from the surprise of the twist. In the opening of 'What Happened to Peter Smith?' we don't have a climax moment in this style, but we do build up mystery and suspense by making it unclear who committed the crime. This sets the audience on the path of Intellectual Puzzles, and ensures they will receive pleasure by the ending.
Identification
Often people like to identify with the characters they see on screen. This is different from Emotional Pleasure from the other branch of theory explored here, as it is more about representation. People like to see parts of themselves on screen. To this end, we included a diverse cast that we thought was fairly representative of the different kinds of people in Britain. Hopefully this means everyone who watches the film will identify with at least one aspect of at least one character.
Entertainment
Entertainment is probably the most simple section of this theory- it deals with the enjoyment the audience gets just by watching the film, and being entertained for the duration without having to do anything, as is the purpose of films. However, this was one of the hardest things to do with our film- you can pack a film full of techniques and representation, but if it isn't entertaining, it won't appeal to the audience. Thus, we tried to keep the pace of the opening high, with lots of variation in the camera's framing and movement, alongside interesting dialogue, all to keep it engaging.
Escapism
Sometimes a film's audience is watching so that they can stop thinking about their real life for a length of time. Thus films often try to provide a story that is unlike anything an ordinary person would encounter in real life- even in our film, which is grounded in reality and doesn't have any fantasy or sci-fi elements, we still try to provide this. We do this by including a narrative about ordinary life being disrupted- Peter's life is disrupted by his death, and characters like Raj are both figuratively and literally disrupted by the investigation. Thus, people can view someone similar to themselves in a unusual situation, and identify with them, and thus enjoy what happens to them from the safety of behind the screen.
See underneath this webtool for a GIF and some further explanation on how it relates to identification and escapism.
By conforming to expectations, we are reinforcing the conventions of our film, and thus in turn the genre, narrative, and so on. This both makes the audience feel involved, as they know what is happening, but also helps to appeal to fans of the genre. They know they are getting what they are viewing the film to see. In 'What Happened to Peter Smith,' we try to use genre-specific music, lighting, and even narrative and characters, to enhance this atmosphere and achieve these effects.
Subversion of expectations works alongside conforming to expectations. People want to see what they expect, but if that's all they see, time and time again, they will get bored. Subversion revives appeal by avoiding staleness. In our film, we subvert typical features of the genre and add our own twists to it- for example, it is unusual to see younger people as main characters in crime and mystery films, and it is also unusual to see white male characters depicted as the victims in the place of the usual female damsel-in-distress. Large subversions like the former and smaller ones like the latter all work towards keeping the film interesting and appealing for the audience. Also, we create visual pleasure through subversion- as we swap between the fairly large cast of characters smoothly at unexpected times, we can entertain the audience by subverting their expectations on who will appear next.
Please ensure you have annotations on, and pause when necessary to read them. Open in a new window if need be.
Here you can see a video we took of two members of our target audience during an interview about our opening. They gave us quite a lot of useful opinions and feedback, which we cross-referenced with the questionnaires.
All members of the target audience who we gave questionnaires too, from across the age and gender spectrums, could identify all the basic information about the film, and most had good things to say about more specific things too, such as good character roles, music, and lighting. This seems to point to a successful attempt at getting across information and appealing- especially as all the interviewees said they would watch the film.
An extract from one of the filled-in questionnaires, that says, in response to the question 'What went well?'
"Musical Choice, Lead Actors"
An image showing an emotional moment in the opening- Cherish breaks down crying, and the Detective hands her a tissue.
The audience want to know what has happened to Peter.