Focus group feedback

• ‘There will be a female antagonist/protagonist’ 
• ‘This will subvert from gender roles’
• ‘Males and females are separated’
• ‘because of the BBFC 15 rating [we are aiming to meet,] we won’t be showing sex explicitly’
• ‘we chose this post-apocalyptic theme as it is very popular e.g the walking dead, the 10 etc.’
• ‘we chose to discuss sexual disease as this isn important issue for our teenage audience’
• ‘’we will being using several props to implicitly show the disease being contracted"

• "How will you show the dystopian place”
• "I don't think succeeders would be advisable. I think maybe more explorers or reformers would be better. I feel like this challenges people’s assumptions "
• "When showing the disease, maybe have it be only contracted by teenagers to help with the audience you are directing this at"
• "To show what the disease is use like propaganda or someone handing things out"
• "For exposition maybe use titles on the screen or a voice over. Social media will be of great use as it will be for the youth and be a way to make it more realistic”
• "use real life news outlets, edit in rallies, VICE news as they are a more youth based news”
• ‘we will be breaking some conventions such as when the woman will be spiking the mans drink which subverts from typical gender roles’
• ‘We were talking about three colours blue and we would like our extract to rumble three colours blue stylistically’ 
• ‘Look at online tutorials to make it as believable as possible’
• ‘its going to be more politically dystopian’
• ‘things routed in whats familiar are more successful than big hollywood stage films’
• ‘very futuristic’ 
• ‘We are linking it to our target audience through portraying relevant themes such as date rape and date rape’
• ‘could argue the woman spiking the man’s drink, brings awareness to date rape’
• ‘cinema has found countless ways of showing sex implicitly’
• ‘suggest this encounter is a subtle way yet give the audience the information needs’
• ‘the underlying moral tends to be promiscuity leads to death.’
• "if the disease effects this particular age group it is more likely that your audience will be able to identify to the film."
• "With this may we see a rise in Homosexuality... such as this is prominent in prisons...I think your idea is open to many topics"
• “You didn't refer to the Hunger Games which is one of the most successful dystopian, hollywood movie also with a female protagonist. I would definitely would recommend watching it again over the holidays and borrowing the best ideas in terms the cinematography, script, narrative etc.’
• “Diversion is a good one"
• The ending: ’It gets worse”
• “There will be no new equilibrium” 

Our focus group consisted of three group members: Gifty, Muna and I pitching in front of a group of seven people. Our pitch included discussions of our narrative and other ideas for our three minute production.

To begin, our initial idea was a horror, thriller film based on a dystopian, post-apocolyptic world in which  there has been an outbreak of a sexually-transmitted disease amongst the community. This subsequently leads to a mass pandemic and resorting to the separation of genders in order to decrease the amount of people contracting it. This leads to the evicting sex. Our initial antagonist and eventually protagonist will be a female, trying to find a way to minimise the epidemic by experimenting on others. The main focus in our video will initially be seen as the antagonist as she ends up spiking the male characters drink and then takes him to a place in order to test on him. This subverts gender roles and how females are usually portrayed in the media as being the vulnerable, and susceptible to date rape drugs. However, this label of being an antagonist changes rapidly once we realise her true intentions.

Our target audience will be targeted at  young adults in the age range of 15 to 25. This is due to the fact that the characters will be of their age so they were created in order to enable for them to identify with them.  Our audience is likely to be split 60/40 female to male ratio, as it will most likely appeal to a female audience since the protagonist is a female. An interesting point was brought up within our discussion. Mr Bush suggested "When showing the disease, maybe have it be only contracted by teenagers to help with the audience you are directing this at" and that "if the disease effects this particular age group it is more likely that your audience will be able to identify to the film." This is a very good idea will will definitely be considering and taking on board. Moreover, earlier in the discussion, we mentioned that in order to meet a 15 certificate, we will be avoid "showing sex explicitly."

In terms of the physical appearance of our extract, we mentioned how we wanted our clip to resemble the opening of Three Colors: Blue. By resemble, we mean in terms of the cinematography and use of shots. The use of the specific use of shots helps distinguish this extract as being from an arthouse film. To continue, what also makes our extract an Arthouse film is the fact that it will not lead to a positive resolution as there will be no new equilibrium. This subverts from typical dystopian films such as the Hunger Games. Instead this is similar to the film 'It Follows' where there is also no new equilibrium formed and leaves the audience with a myriad of enigma codes. Ultimately, this is the main aim of our extract. We hope to evoke feelings of intrigue and confusion. To elaborate on the physical appearance, we were asked "How will you show the dystopian place." To which, we answered that we decided to use a 'near-future', rather than an entirely different world as that would be very challenging for us to show. We reinforced this by saying "it won't be filled with fly-cars and talking robots." This adds to the realism.

As the discussion went on, we were asked what other themes our film will entail. We were told our initial theme is open to many additional themes it could allude to. "With this, you could refer to homosexuality as this is prominent in prisons...I think your idea is open to many topics" This is an interesting theme that is prevalent in today's society and broadens our target audience. It would be an interesting theme to prevail as without mention of it, it would lead to asking how normal it would be in a gender separated community. In addition, another rusggestion we were given washow we could make clear that there is a  disease being spread. Our audience suggested we could use propaganda in the background of our shots to portray the epidemic. As well as this, we could mimic news channels and make our own articles to show within the film.