Summary of research

Overview

After doing six pieces of research for my final major project, I have successfully identified the key features that I must use in my final film to make it successful in its purpose. My aim is to create a short film about grief and how it affects people and how I dealt with mine when I lost my Grandma two years ago. I have realised that it is not going to affect everyone and I cannot help that as not everyone can relate to grief.

 

Primary Research

Questionnaire - This piece of research was very helpful because I found the opinions of people who are not my age and who are much more experienced in knowing what makes a good emotional film. The responses that I get have heavily influenced my film ideas, for example, Dean Craddock (a friend) recommended that I used a black and white grainy tint to the final film to give my film the full sad and depressive atmosphere. Personally I think the questionnaire was the best piece of research as it was done by people who are no going to be in my audience and therefore no nothing about the opinions of my peers who will be my audience.

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Social Media - The social Media research was not very useful as I did not get any written feedback, only three "likes". This did show me that my final idea was thought to be a good one by three people. I was happy with this though because all of the feedback that I did get was positive and I had no angry reacts or hateful comments. I think that people focused on the questionnaire as I posted them at the same time.

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Survey - The survey was very helpful in making me realise what sort of amount of people in my audience will be able to relate to my film and whether certain ideas that I have for my film will work or not. I got very positive feedback to my ideas and am now confident that my audience will be affected in the way that I had planned.from my survey I have also learned that having a piece of music can y effective in revoking emotion, for example, in Marley and Me a track is played whilst the dog is being put down which does add a sadder atmosphere to the scene.

 

Secondary Research

YouTube comments - The comments that I found were for a video about a teenager experiencing his mother pass away and how it made him feel, this is similar in some ways to my film and the comments that the video got were really supportive and complementary. I did not see one comment that was hateful or negative in anyway which reassured me in how I thought my audience would react as I was afraid that my audience would mock my film as it was meant to be a genuinely sad and emotional video.

 

Short film - I watched a short film on youtube very similar to how I want mine to be and  took note of what camera angles, tones, etc were used and which, I thought, were very effective in portraying the correct mood and atmosphere for the short film to be successful. I have included this in my plan of what angles to use in my own film. I also liked the use of a story being told throughout the video and I am now torn whether to tell a short story about my Grandma or just have a piece of music playing. The short film that I used for research did not have music and I think it would have been more powerful if it had.

 

Rotten Tomato/IMDb reviews - I did struggle gaining research on the topic similar to my film but there was limited films that were just purely sad films, for example, Marley and Me or Gladiator which were not solely based on being sad and revoking emotion but the endings and plot were made to make the audience feel sad. The ending of both Marley and Me and Gladiator were extremely emotional as both main characters die a sad death. From reviews that I have read on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb praise these sort of films for their genius in making the film more excellent by making the majority of the audience sad and even cry. This method has been highly praised by the reviewing sites that I have researched and makes 9/10 films more effective.