Evaluation task 3 - What I've learn't from my audience feedback

Please follow the link below to see a short clip of our focus group

http://mediaunit3.blogspot.com/2010/03/focus-group-meeting.html

The video clip shows a specific conversation we had that was about a specific character we had brainstormed. (we fully prepared for the focus group and handed out a programme that had sketches, storyboards, brief treatment, characterisations and possible story lines). They said the PA (personal assistant that was originally Peter) should not be homosexual as he already has a family and extended problems/worries that are associated with that. We took this into consideration and understood that maybe we were over complicating characters, so we chose to simplify this and not completely challenge the conventions of stereotypical characters but develop them slight (as we chose to keep the boss to be a female Muslim).

Yet there was a contradictory statement that was said which was; that we shouldn't assume that due to the fashion nature that it will be filled with gay man but should be seen as a generic business trade that will follow normal business procedures in a non stylised or glamorous light. (well that was implied anyway). This helped us identify our target audience more, it helped us to grasp the concept that we're portraying an office/business environment and the ideology of a fashion trade should be scrapped. This helped us to stray from a stylised representation like Ugly Betty and towards a realistic version of The Office.

We had the opportunity to see/hear real accounts of real peoples experiences at work during these times of recession/depression. There's evidence of this towards the end of the video clip and you can see that it was very tense and the mood became very solemn. This gave me a very clear indication of these peoples "fear" and "uncertainty". These people appeared petrified that they could lose their jobs tomorrow and there's the possibility that they'll unable to provide for themselves or others as jobs are hard to find. This changed our focus of the programme; rather than representing an extremely eclectic mix of characters representing the diversity of London life we thought to engage all these hard workers struggling at this very moment.

I personally interpreted this as an overwhelming and honest moment and this was my inspiration for my poster. I mislead audiences to believe it's a horror show style as whilst i was sitting amongst these people listening to them i felt a sense of terror/emergency (can be seen in the emergency exit escape, a door going down the stairs/high angle shot). This inspired the new trailer structure also. As they dismissed ideas about revealing balance sheets because they informed us that this would be strictly confidential they said that the boss would speak privately with individual employees and brief them of the current scenario. Give them what we should have done percentage wise and what was done. They also said that the boss would announce the redundancies in the privacy of an office which formed the entire environment of our trailer.