Qualitative Data Analysis

I think our research was quite helpful in terms of narrowing down and developing our BSR film concept as we asked the audience what they liked/disliked of films in general and also what they thought of our idea. 

When we asked them about our idea, many of them said it would be interesting as we explained that it was a real life story. They thought it was a good idea, as we could educate people about what happens in the real world, but in an interesting way rather than just through the news. As it's mainly teenagers we're targeting, it would be good that they realise that things like rape are happening in the real world and this film would portray that. The other answer to this question was that they didn't like it as they thought it would be too sad. I have taken this into account so when we make our opening sequence, we want it to be hard hitting, but not so sad that the audience actually feel hurt and very upset and would want to stop watching. I would do this by not actually showing the rape, as I feel that is what would make the story very sad. But I will show the location where it takes place and you can hear her struggling, this will have the same effect on the audience as the rape, without them physically seeing it. 

Another question that was helpful in terms of developing our film was the types of serious issues the audience thought we should explore. It was interesting to see what they came up and most of these we had already had in mind to put into our film, but they also came up with a few more such as exam stress, wrong influences and womens' rights. Issues we had in common were poverty, parenthood and bullying. This helped us as now we know for sure, that we have to show these issues in our opening sequence as these are what will grab the audience in. We will show poverty through the area she's living in, parenthood as she's struggling to provide for her baby, which can be shown through the costume of the baby and the bullying will be shown right in the beginning when the two girls are fighting. 

Asking the audience about music helped us the develop our idea as they all wanted quite upbeat, urban sounding music. We've listen to their feedback of the music and decided to have this type of music in the opening while all the texts are getting exchanged. We thought it would be a good idea to have this type of music then as it goes with the action that is going in. The children are exchanging rumours via text messages which can get pretty heated as people will be offended by what they've read, which will create a tense atmosphere and the upbeat, urban music will heighten this. The genre of music we are thinking of having is Grime, Rap or Hip Hop, as these were the most popular when we asked what type of music the audience likes. 

Professor Green - an artist we will base our background music around.

In terms of the lighting and atmosphere, at first we wanted the film to be quite dark and scary as the subject of the film was quite dark and we wanted the atmosphere to reflect that. But after asking the audience on their opinion, we have decided to change it a little. They thought that if the mood and lighting was quite dark and gloomy through out the film, it would be too scary and people would lose interest. We took this on board and now in our opening, the only time we have minimal lighting, is before the rape as we want to foreshadow the dark act that is about to take place. But the rest of the shots are in a normal light. 

How we want it to look before the rape.

One thing we were unsure of going into our research was the idea of having 3 main black characters. It wasn't a conscious decision that our main characters have to be black, it was more so that the people we want for these characters just happen to be black. We wanted actors that would be able to portray our characters perfectly. When we asked the audience what they thought if the main characters were all black, most of them said they didn't have an issue, but thought it wouldn't represent society as a whole. We were going to have other races in our film originally, but just not as the main characters, I think the audience didn't quite understand that as they may have thought that we said all the characters would be black. We're not going to change our actors as we feel they are the best to play these characters, but we just have to be aware with what stereotypes we place on them as we don't want to offend anyone.

When asking the audience on if they prefer a narrative with flashbacks or for it to be straight forward, most of them said they want it to have some sort of flashbacks. Originally, before we wrote our treatment, the revenge rape was going to be the main plot of the story and we were going to have that in our opening, then turn the film back so it would reveal how the girl got into that situation. But later we had a dilemma as we didn't want to reveal too much of the story in the first 2 minutes, but we also really wanted to show the rape as we thought it would be a good starting point. So we ended up changing our idea, into a film about a single mother who has to bring up her baby that came from a sexual attack. What was going to be the main plot of our film, is now the beginning of how this girls life turns out. So in the case, we aren't going to involve any flashbacks as we feel it would be difficult to do in the first 2 minutes without revealing too much of the story.