Defining Target Audience

In our group we have decided that our target audience is going to be children of ages 1-4 and of both genders. We came to this conclusion through looking at the style of product we were interested in creating and similar existing pieces. We understand that viewers not in our specific target audience may watch the show, but it is important to have our target audience in mind when creating our product, so we are able to cater to suit their needs specifically. This is why we have chosen a quite small age range (1-4). We feel if we try to broaden this (e.g. 1 - 7) our audience will possibly have conflicting needs and we could therefore not meet the needs of all our audience members if they conflict heavily. We feel that trying to appeal to both genders however isn't such an issue. We looked at some examples of existing programmes and their target audiences which is posted over on her blog.

Brief Pitch

A Brief Introduction to my Brief Introduction to my Brief Introduction to my Brief Introduction to my Brief Introduction to my Brief Introduction to my Brief on Prezi

Market Research: Show Format.

The 'format' of a show would be judged by 3 things, the target audience, the length of the episodes, and the level of interactivity. These key factors will determine how the show is read, which, as the creators is something we need to think about and be very aware of, Hannah has looked more deeply and explained this on her blog.

Product and Campaign Research

Product and Campaign Research

This is my presentation which I will being talking through to my class. I looked at the film 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' and its related website, poster and trailer to look at the advertising techniques that were used. The main thing I found with Resident Evil is that there is a lot of borrowed interest from Milla Jovovich as she is a popular actress in many demographics.

Feminism.

Feminism and the reputation of women is a subject that interests me and often comes up in my research for media, and so, over the course of this blog and throughout my posts Feminism and the reputation of women will be a subject I will be constantly referring too.

Representation and Feminism

While talking about Anchorage, Semiotics, Context etc, we touched upon the subject of representation as it is closely linked in with what we were looking at.
  The subject of 'Feminism' as it got called in our class discussion, although I think in this context it is more suitably referred to as the representation of women, is a large issue that has been around for a long time and is still to this day in conflict. In my opinion it stands simply like this; Men and women have the right to be fairly, equally and accurately represented in the media, people who think men should always be represented as identical or superior to women, are misogynists (although that word may be too extreme) and people who think women should always portrayed as identical or superior to men are misandarists. Although the argument goes far deeper than that. Looking at pieces of media throughout history we can see the progression of sexual equality and the representation of women:

In ancient greece the equality of women varied from city to city but it was extremely rare for women to be actually equal to men. Looking at the play 'Lysistrata', a greek comedy originally performed in 411 BCE we see the attitude to women;s equality represented. The plot of the play follows Lysistrata and the women of a greek civilisation as they try to stop the Peloponnesian War by denying their husbands sexual contact. Although this may seem to be a story in favour of women and giving them power, and mocking men for their primitive minds and reliance on sex, it is actually written to belittle women and mock the idea of women having power over men.

It was not until 1928 that women got the vote equal to men, representations of this time can be seen in media pieces set from as early as 1900, for example Mary Poppins, set in 1910 shows the character Mrs. Banks wearing a campaign sash for women's vote. Despite this giant turn in women's equality the representation of women in films had not strayed too far from tradition, with the first King Kong film portraying a classical example of a 'damsel in distress' in the form of young actress Ann Darrow. Over a decade later we start to see some examples of strong female characters (or traits within characters) for example 'A street care named Desire' shows Blanche, a more independent woman, but it also has another character, Stella, who is very much dependant on, and controlled by, her abusive husband Stan. Around the 40's and 50's women started to become noticeably more towards equality in terms of media business, with the likes of Lucille Ball and Ida Lupino.

In more recent years movies have seen many female protagonists and strong female characters. For example:

• 'Alice' In the 'Resident Evil' Films - Milla Jovovich
• 'Beatrix Kiddo' In 'Kill Bill' - Uma Thurman
• 'Lisbeth Salander' In 'Girl with the dragon tattoo' - Noomi Rapace / Rooney Mara

• 'Lara Croft' in 'Tomb Raider' - Angelina Jolie
• 'Evelyn Salt' in 'Salt' - Angelina Jolie

 Now I have nothing against these films at all, especially 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' which I thought was a spectacular film. But they all juxta-impose women into the traditional roles of men, bearing weapons and killing people in hollywood style violent action scenes, Which again I don't have a problem with, I just dont like the fact that It has been pushed to this by 'feminists' saying that a man cant be dominant over a woman, saving her life, killing the bad guys and hooking up with her in the end. But I say whats wrong with a bit of tradition? Whats wrong with a bit of chivalry? It's how science and evolution and all that has built us to be, men are stronger than women to protect them. Personally I like the traditional man-saving-woman format. But that doesn't mean that im sexist in any way. Secondly the men in these films are often portrayed as stereotypical shallow, vain, stupid pricks.



(Interesting Fact: The origin of the word 'actor' is dated to be over a century before that of 'actress')