Reasearch
Target Audience
Researching the target audience is important as It allows you to know your audience, at the end of the day the end product isn't for me but for the audience. If I don't know what my audience wants to see, how can I deliver that from them?
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If I create something designed specifically for my demographic the viewer retention is likely to improved as its exactly what they want to see.
LEARNING FROM DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCES: A Market Research Study
by Maria De Rosa and Marilyn Burgess
Overall documentary is a growing genre of film with 68% more people watching it than 3 years ago with large popularity coming from large streaming services such as Netflix making documentaries more widely available.
LEARNING FROM DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCES: A Market Research Study
by Maria De Rosa and Marilyn Burgess
In a 'Market Research Study' written by Maria De Rosa and Marilyn Burgess they state that the average viewer of the documentary genre is typically 18-34 year old with their main access to documentaries being through streaming platforms at home.
Since most of the gaining popularity in documentaries comes from streaming services, the dramatized approach Netflix takes to its original documentaries is what people our audience is become more engaged with.
Spangler, T. (2021). “The Office” Was by Far the Most-Streamed TV Show in 2020
The Office US. (2005). [NBC] NBC Universal Television Distribution.
Within these streaming platforms like Netflix, one of the most streamed streamed shows of 2020 is The Office US. With the office being a fictional documentary about the lives of the people that work for Dunder Mifflin paper company, the show adventures into the genre of 'mockumentary'
Since Netflix is the largest streaming platform one of the largest I think it would be good to turn the dramatic Netflix style of documentary into a satire.
Focus Group
After this I presented my ideas to a focus group where I gave them a survey to complete after, in this survey I asked questions to get a better gage on what my target audience liked.
Focus Group Responses
I asked this question because I wanted to get a general view on my target demographic. Majority of them watch Netflix so if I was to make a mockumentary I think it would be best to target a style that most of my audience are familiar with.
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I thought that the dramatic style of Netflix documentaries could be easy to be mocked and caricatured.
Further more, since I wanted to create a mockumentary (a fictional documentary) it would be a smart decision to see the percentage of people that actually watch documentaries which luckily according to my survey most people do.
I also wanted to see how my audience reacted to their favourite Netflix series on social media to see how easily my project could build a social media presence similar to shows such as Tiger King but on a smaller scale.
I wanted to see what people thought about the concept of my idea so I got their opinions of it. Overall, the opinions were quite mixed but mostly positive, the majority of the negative options came from the older people within the focus group and helped me refine my demographic slightly more, I now know that I should target my short film to a younger audience.
This helped me figure out how I could improve my concept and make it more enjoyable for my target audience. Another thing I need to consider is the intended reading I want from my audience, as one person that took my survey suggested: 'some may take it seriously or get offended if them or their loved ones have had a bad experience with cults'
One point raised by Nigel, one of my lectures, is the potential Ethical issues regarding satiring potentially a serious and personal subject to some people. I feel like behind the satire, there should be some kind of message which raises the serious point that anyone can be manipulated by people into this kind of position despite how ridiculous it seems. Most people seem to agree to some extent about the message idea.
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One of the ideas was that 'It should help bring light to the realness of cults and how easy it is to get trapped in them, that way it won’t seem like it’s mocking the victims.' which is a very good point that I seriously need to consider whilst in the later stages of this project.
Conclusions
In conclusion, from the research I have conducted on my target audience it taught me a lot about how I need to improve my project. For example my target audience has now made allot more concentrated as the older generation didn't seem to quite understand the concept.
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I also am now fully decided on a Netflix style genre as the majority of my target audience watch Netflix on a regular basis. That means that my our passive audience is more likely to be able to understand how our final video is a parody of.
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Overall everyone in my target audience said they often watch documentaries in some capacity which means everyone in will be able to understand the mockumentary concept in some way or another.
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Although its a parody of a Netflix documentary, it still deals with some potentially serious themes and risks taking away the serious aspect of it. To overcome this I will use the narrative I have created to shed a light on how cults are easy to end up in even without knowing and that you are in one. The overall message should be one of caution for people that could potentially be subjected to this.