Weekly Blog

Week 6 - Research

I started this week by doing target audience research survey on my Instagram. I asked about gender,
age, hobbies, favourite film genre and if people are interested in ghost films. I received very useful
information from this so then I can understand my audience, I got around 60 responses for the option
responses, such as age and gender. To consolidate and collect my information, I made an infographic
to display the results I got. I found my target research very useful because I am now certain that
people will be interested in watching my short film.

I moved onto character profiles. I had a rough idea of what I wanted my characters to be like and their
interests. I took some of the hobbies that my target audience have and inserted them into my
characters, so then my audience can relate to my characters in some sense. I talked about their
interests, hobbies, careers, and personality traits. When deciding the career for Andy, I talked to my
friend who is a teacher and asked him why he became a teacher, and I revolved my character around
his answers. I created a mood board for my characters and the short film- I wanted to create
something which would display the vibe and aesthetic of my short film and characters. I included
camcorder screenshots from things I have filmed and other pictures which have a similar vibe.
For the last section for my research, I looked at characters in movies which I thought are most similar
to the characters in my short film, personality wise. For my male character Andy, I chose a mix of
Charlie and Nicole from Marriage Story due to their quick temper to inconveniences. For my female
character, I chose Beverly from IT, as she is always kind and very welcoming. This research helped
me to analyse my own characters better and how I wanted to portray them in my short film.

Next, I went back through some of my work and tried to improve it. I started by analysed ghost clips
from different movies to look at codes and conventions, for example Paranormal Activity, Ghost,
Supernatural. Through my research, I found that a lot of sheet ghosts are used in a comical sense and
not taken seriously, except A Ghost Story. Also, through my research I was able to find examples of
the codes and conventions I researched, such as in eerie music, dramatic sound effects and night-time
and darkness.

Finally, I started brainstorming my script for next week. I want to start brainstorming so then when it
comes to script writing next week, I will not be completely lost, and I will not be making things up on
the spot. Doing this research and planning my characters this week has helped me to brainstorm ideas
of flashbacks that I could use, such as memories of my characters reading together in a park or them
playing instruments together.

This week, I found it incredibly hard to focus and get back into the routine of getting work done at
college, seeing as it was our first week back. I have always struggled with getting work done during
class time, especially when I am in a room full of people. Hopefully next week I can be more
productive, as I have to start writing my script and I can’t waste time as it is time consuming.