Radio interview script
- 1. AmberO’Dell RADIO INTERVIEW SCRIPT EVALUATION QUESTION3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK? TIME SPEAKER AUDIO 00:00:00 - 00:00:12 Ending of the previously played song (Music) 00:00:12 – 00:00:49 Presenter (Christina Gadsby) That was David Bowie with ‘Heroes’… it’s just coming up to 2pm here at WY-brow radio and we have an exciting line up this afternoon. We’ve just heard from cinematographer Beth Izatt on styles of film and how to get the perfect shot, and coming up now we have a visit from young, up and coming director Amber O’Dell. We’re going to be speaking to Amber about her upcoming project First Impressions’. Not only will we be discussing the film, but we will also be exploring the complex relationship between the production of a film and it’s intended audience. 00:00:49 – 00:00:58 Transition music/jingle (Music) 00:00:58 – 00:01:00 Christina We’re happy to have you, Amber. 00:01:00 – 00:01:02 Amber It’s good to be here. 00:01:02 - 00:01:08 Christina As a young filmmaker, did you find it challenging to explore the medium of short films? 00:01:08 – 00:01:30 Amber It was a challenge but one that I welcomed. I put a lot of research into it and spent a lot of time studying the genre, watching films etc. I think a short film is more challenging creatively, in terms of creating an interesting and successful narrative for a contained amount of time. For example, I did struggle with trying to keep my film under the 5-minute mark.
- 2. AmberO’Dell 00:01:30 – 00:01:34 Christina Were there any short films that you drew inspiration from? 00:01:34 – 00:02:04 Amber In terms of style, I looked to films such as ‘Stripes’ by Sean Spencer, I took inspiration from the series of detailed and well thought out close-ups used and incorporated that idea into the cinematography of my own film, though I didn’t use a lot of close shots. Instead, I chose to tell the story with a majority of medium and wide shots. And as for the story, I got a lot of ideas from the film ‘Antonio’s Breakfast’ by Daniel Mulloy, mainly the themes of family and responsibility that are rooted in the storyline. 00:02:04 – 00:02:12 Christina So, the short film research you conducted was part of your secondary research, is that correct? 00:02:12 – 00:02:23 Amber Yes, that’s right, alongside this film research, I conducted research based on Marilyn Milgrom’s ‘The Script’. This was incredibly helpful in terms of me building my story and writing my script. 00:02:23 – 00:02:33 Christina What aspects of Marilyn Milgrom’s work did you find most helpful with your own project? 00:02:33 – 00:02:58 Amber ‘The Script’ was somewhat of a guideline for me throughout my short film project, but there were certain tips and pieces of advice that I found more useful than others. For example, Milgrom mentions that it can be effective to set your film on the premise of a universal occasion, to follow this I decided to base my narrative on the theme of a first date, which I believe is an idea that, for a short film, provides a lot of interesting material. 00:02:58 – 00:03:01 Christina So, what did your primary research consist of? 00:03:01 – 00:03:21 Amber Well I tried to gain a wide understanding of my audience through different methods. I used both a paper and an online survey at first to vaguely establish the
- 3. AmberO’Dell identity of my audience. I found through this that my audience were generally somewhat familiar with short films and were used to using streaming services and social media platforms to watch these films. 00:03:21 – 00:03:27 Christina Is it safe to say that you are targeting a younger audience with your film? 00:03:27 – 00:03:47 Amber Yes, I’ve found that my target audience is formed of under 18 year olds. This is obviously something I had to consider when I was writing the story of my film, as I wanted to make sure it was age appropriate. Mature, but not too serious. This also meant I had to ensure my film was relatable enough for a teenage audience. 00:03:47 – 00:03:51 Christina How did you succeed in making the film relatable for the audience? 00:03:51 – 00:04:09 Amber Following some audience research on genre, I found that a younger audience does prefer to consume media involving a lot of dramatic narrative. Therefore, by producing a dramatic narrative with teenagers as the main characters, I provided a relatable and interesting piece to be consumed by the audience. 00:04:09 – 00:04:15 Christina For you, what do you think the most important part of audience research was? 00:04:15 – 00:04:34 Amber In terms of my film, a very substantial piece of work was my focus group. I conducted this with a group of peers who are fairly media literate and asked them various questions regarding their film preferences/experiences and then their feedback regarding the assembly edit of my film. 00:04:34 – 00:04:38 Christina How was the focus group important to your research? 00:04:38 – 00:04:57 Amber The focus group was important firstly because the group of people I had conducted it with fit the profile of my primary target audience and therefore I had a perfect insight into how the typical
- 4. AmberO’Dell audience member would respond to my film. I also gained a lot of feedback into what works well with the audience and what is less successful. 00:04:57 – 00:05:04 Christina Going back to the survey, what questions did you ask your audience? 00:05:04 – 00:05:24 Amber I asked a few questions regarding the general identity of my participants such as “Whereabouts do you live?” and “What is your ethnicity?”. Aside from that, I asked questions regarding the participant’s film habits, such as “Which platform would you use to watch short films?” and “What themes would you like to see covered in a short film?” These questions were helpful in really gaining a deep insight into the audience and therefore discovering how I can cater to the needs of the majority. 00:05:24 – 00:05:28 Christina How did you analyse your responses? 00:05:28 – 00:06:09 Amber Well firstly, I can admit that I didn’t receive as many responses to my online survey as I did in tasks for my previous project. However, I received a fair amount of data and I managed to track this using the website SurveyMonkey. After about a month of the survey being up, I gathered my responses together and marked the patterns I could find in the demographic I was reaching. In terms of people I surveyed, it seemed that my primary audience is female, aged 16-22 and are generally used to watching mainstream, feature films. This provided me with an incentive to create a short film with a strong narrative that would be interesting to those who are used to consuming more mainstream media. 00:06:09 – 00:06:15 Christina How useful was the feedback you received from your focus group? 00:06:15 – 00:07:22 Amber The feedback I got from my focus group was useful in the reshoots
- 5. AmberO’Dell for my film, as I showed them a copy of the assembly edit. So, they gave me some ideas as to what to improve, following the reshoots. For example, they mentioned how they liked the action in one scene where the sister slaps the other sister, but they would prefer it to be faster paced, to make it more realistic. So, then when I did reshoots I took that on board and I tried to make it as realistic as possible. Another reason that the focus group was effective is because I did an introduction before we talked about the assembly edit, and so in the introduction I got an idea of this group of people’s film habits. The things they consume, what they like to see in film, and just an idea of how to market to this audience. 00:07:22 – 00:07:28 Christina Did you conduct research for any of your ancillary tasks? 00:07:28 – 00:09:25 Amber Yes, I did conduct research for my ancillary tasks. However, the research I conducted was more focused around my poster than the review, as I believe that the poster is a task that perhaps is more important for audience feedback as a poster is something that is used to draw the audience to a film. I do understand that the review is used for that purpose as well but I feel that the poster holds a higher ranking over the review in terms of audience reaction and opinion. I composed a questionnaire for my audience to fill out in terms of the poster, I provided four test images and questions such as ‘What connotation can you infer about the film?’ and ‘Which image is most appealing to you as an audience member?’ I got a few responses from people in my target audience bracket, I got a lot of different feedback on different images. It gave me a good understanding into what kind of
- 6. AmberO’Dell thing the audience expect to see and what they like to see in a poster. For example, a few of the responses I received mention that they liked the mysterious and gritty feel of the images which is perhaps produced using low key lighting, dark colour palette and iconography. Overall, one of the most interesting things that I found was that the audience were quite concerned with what was conventional for a typical film poster which suggests that they prefer to see a more conventional film poster than a more unconventional, niche poster. 00:09:25 – 00:09:32 Christina How did the feedback affect the outcome of your poster? 00:09:32 – 00:10:43 Amber I think the audience feedback did affect how the poster turned out and one of the ways it did is that the final draft of the poster was an image that wasn’t as popular in the audience research but the people who did prefer it said that it was one of the strongest images. Obviously, when you have a film poster, the best thing is that it’s striking and is something that would attract an audience. This is one of the main things you want. I took that image and tried to make it as strong as possible. I used orange text to make it stand out, tried to really bring out the tools in the image and I also took on board the feedback I got about lighting, that they preferred the low-key lighting as it created a mysterious feeling and gained the audience’s interest. 00:10:43 – 00:10:49 Christina What were the most positive things you got from your audience research? 00:10:49 – 00:11:44 Amber I think one of the most positive things about my audience research was that I got a strong idea about the age group demographic that I would be promoting my film to and I got to
- 7. AmberO’Dell speak to a lot of people that fit the description. I could get their opinions, ask them for advice, find out what they’d like to see in a film which is what I got a lot of so I managed to find out what the people in my target audience would like to see and then I was able to construct my film based on this research. The audience research was very responsible for most of my film, the genre, the age of the characters, the plot in general, as I believed that this is something the audience would want to see. 00:11:44 – 00:11:49 Christina Do you believe that most your audience can relate to your film? 00:11:49 – 00:13:29 Amber This is an interesting question as throughout the filming, production and pre-production of my film, one of my main aims was to create a relatable piece of media for the audience to consume. As my audience is aged around 16-22, mainly female, used to consuming several types of media, I tried to come up with ideas, characters, plot points that this kind of audience would be able to relate to. One thing that I did with my film was create the characters around the same age as the audience to make it easier for the audience to relate to the character’s struggles, what happens in the film etc. They would be able to think of an experience they’ve had that relates to this situation. Typically, an audience member is more likely to enjoy the film if they have a way to relate, in any way possible. My film is quite easy to relate to as it combines the dynamic of first dates and romantic experiences with the family dynamic. 00:13:29 – 00:13:33 Christina Thank you for coming in today and sharing with us the secrets of the screen, Amber. 00:13:33 – 00:13:37 Amber It’s been great. Thank you for having me.
- 8. AmberO’Dell 00:13:37 – 00:13:45 Christina All of us here are very much looking forward to the release of ‘First Impressions’ and we’d love to have you back again anytime. 00:13:45 – 00:13:48 Outro/Transition music (Guitar riff)