Role Of The Writer
A certain piece of content will not appeal to all audiences. This is why broadcasters need to understand their target market and who they are making their product for. Products can be constructed to appeal to a audience through the content used in them. If beautiful women are used in an advert it is made to appeal to the male audience, mostly between the ages of 16-25 as men of that age are influenced by the lifestyle these adverts show. Lynx adverts are the best example for this as there’s always a male character getting chased by beautiful women.
The construction of content is how the dialouge and actions are written to affect or appeal to the correct audience. Broadcasters can demand construction of content by commissioning a brief that asks for a certain type of TV show, for example, a broadcaster would commission a show that would be shown on BBC One at 7.30pm and has to be for all the family and have a great story and lots of action. By doing this the broadcaster has decision over what is shown and how it will look and appeal to the audience at a certain time.
The codes and conventions can be created by the broadcaster telling the writer the symbolic or technical conventions that need to be used in a certain show or movie. For example, a Sci-fi show would be based in space with space ships and loads of future technology with a lot of visual effects, therefore the broadcaster needs to get this across to the writer so he or she knows what they are writing for.
The BBC commissioning process is a long process to get through if you want to have a show on the BBC. The process goes;
Genre heads – A person who is head of a certain genre at a broadcaster i.e Emma Willis is head of Documentaries at the BBC
Channel heads – Controls a certain channel i.e Charlotte Moore is controller of BBC One
Commissioning editors – Decides whether a script is good enough or not
Reader – Reads the script or idea and decides whether it is good enough to progress to script editing
Script editors – Once a script has be accepted by the commissioning editors the script editors edit the script to suit the needs of the broadcaster.
Throughout all of these stages the writer would be making slight changes to their script, if needed, and would be taking notes and tips from the commissioning editor and script editor up until the script is made into its actual project. Throughout the project the writer would still be making changes to his or her script as ideas will change and something may influence a change of mind.
Scriptwriters have ways of fitting in with the commissioning process.
The purpose of a script is so the actors/actresses know what they are saying and how they are doing it, although they won’t have the script in hand on a shoot they can ask someone for lines if they forget them. The Director and crew need the script as they need to follow along with the acting to provide the effects and shots that are needed. The Director needs the script the most on a shoot as he is controlling what everyone is doing and everything goes by what he says. “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts” Larry L King. I believe this quote is very true because throughout the whole production of a film the script never stays to one exact final product, it is always changing even up to post-production and the editing stages.
Usually scriptwriters aren’t paid like a leading actor is. Scriptwriters usually get paid around £180 a minute. Scriptwriters who write for big movies get paid a lot of money if their script is perfect. For example, Night Shyamalan made $2.5 million dollars for The Sixth Sense but that was a massive film and still is. If you have a solid script and you know it could make a lot of money and a great film you can receive an incredible amount of money. Screenwriters get their scripts out to film producers through Literary agents. Literary agents represent writers and their written works to publishers and film producers. There a few well known Writing agents such as, Erin Hosier, John Brockman, and Carole Blake.
Writers must properly copyright their work as their content and ideas can get stolen by another writer. On the writers manuscript the copyright must be clearly shown. It must appear on the front cover of the script and on the foot of every page in the script. For censorship writers are restricted when using violence or sex. It is bad to show real sexism and racial debates in a film but others debate that it is good to show these issues in a positive way. Finally, a libel issue is the worst thing for a writer, it could end their career. A screenwriter must write the truth about its personal experiences and what it can prove. The libel issue can affect a non-fiction and fiction writer as producing a professional script can be seen as libellous. In other words, if the script is about a real person it must be made with care and or the person they writing about can be harmed. To copyright your material it is advisable to mark your work with the ‘©’ symbol and the name of the copyright owner and the date and year when the work was created. In the UK there is no official registration system for copyright, there are no forms to fill in nor are the any fees to pay. There are ways to get a clear date stamped on your material such as sending a copy of your material to yourself in the post so it is labelled with the correct date. In the US you there is copyright registration that is online and cheap to do.
If you’re writing for a channel and they find your script provocative they will change the basics of your script as it may upset the audience and public. Time does effect the nature of a script because if a show with loads of shooting and swearing in it is shown before 7pm usually younger children are watching and families are watching and they don’t really want to see that so therefore a broadcaster would rather show a action/shooting TV show or film at a later time, usually past 8.30pm.
Budget for a scriptwriter is very important as they need to know their constraints. If a scriptwriter, for example, writes about a man travelling around the world in his movie the filming of it is going to get very expensive as it would have to be filmed around the world. Knowing the budget will help the scriptwriter understand what he has to write about and what he needs to not put in the script.
In conclusion, the role of the writer is one of the most important jobs in the production of a film. The script writer is the engine to the whole of the film team and they drive them to what they need to succeed at the end. A scriptwriter doesn’t just write a script and then starts another one, they are there throughout the whole production of a film making and changing decisions with the Director along the way. A good scriptwriter doesn’t stop writing until the film is finally complete, they work throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production.
Bibliography:
– http://www.screenwriting.info/
– http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/how-much-do-screenwriters-make-on-average.128728343/
– http://www.industrialscripts.co.uk/uk-screenwriters-pay/
– http://www.creativeskillset.org/film/jobs/script/article_4057_1.asp
– www scriptfactory co uk
Market Research – Jess Mitchell
What is the purpose of Market Research?
The purpose of Market Research is to determine the popular trends in the industry or finding out what the audience’s particular favourite product is currently and what film appeals to what audience more. This is to gather information to help make informed decisions for ideas intended for upcoming films and products, as well as looking up previous similar films with the same genre, picking out the reviews and rating in order to use this for your film to create an improved and more popular film for your target audience. This could include the popular trends or create a film with a particular genre that is selling in a current season or year.
What methods are used within Market Research?
The methods that are used within market research are straightforward questionnaires. This is to analyse a sample audience that represents the target audience. There are many ways to do a survey to a sample target audience; this can be through face-face surveys in the centre of town or other public places. This enables the person to express more freely as well as getting the facial responses back about the product being described. There are also telephone surveys and mail surveys, which aren’t so popular to gain feedback. But the biggest method is online surveys, this is because it is simple, inexpensive way to collect data and gather target audiences opinions and preferences.
Focus groups is also a method used as you can target them directly by either pitching the idea or presenting a rough cut trailer for them to give their feedback on. Depending on the target audience for the film, saying for example the film was to be targeted at 16-24 year old males with a genre of an action film; they would then have a focus group containing those aged males. That way they can get an accurate feedback from the target audience that they are pitching too.
Another method is secondary research, this is to research what types of films with the same genre have hit a big blockbuster and sold really well. This is through sources like IMDB, Empire, Total Film, Guardian, etc, to look at film ratings and reviews, in order for them to gather information from the reviews to them use that information when going through pre-production stages.
What sources of information are used in Market Research?
Product Market: This is when you research to find out what other products are out in the market today as well as the one that have a high selling gross and popularity. This research then gives us information on what other products are being produced to the same target audience you are targeting at. This is so we can research our competition and see how we can create a product that is better than the current selling product. An example of this would be Fast and Furious as they are in competition with Fast Five, Gone in 60 seconds and American Graffiti, etc. This is because they are all aiming at the same target audience of males 15-24, who are interested in action, adventure and car type films. They all follow a similar storyline and all use product placements within their film, e.g top of the range cars.
On the other hand, this could include what similar films did not hit a big gross income and what the film critic’s opinions and ratings on the film were. This is useful as it spells out from the film critics and ratings what big point or mistakes to not include or use similarly within the film. This keeps the competition going as finding out the mistakes from other films enables your film to not make those mistakes and actually create a much better product.
Audience Research: Audience research is used within market research because it gathers information from a target audience to find out if they are the type of demographic that is suitable for your pitched film. This may be found from talking to focus groups, as well as using secondary research with similar films. It helps the company see what target audience is most interested in and whether their film product will sell out to their chosen target audience. This means, that they can now experiment with a wider audience and see how far of an audience they can reach too. This means that they have the information ready for this film to go into production. As well as information on the estimate of possible gross, as the bigger the audience the more gross income there will be.
Advertising Placements: Advertising is when certain adverts depend on what audience you are targeting at, are to when they broadcast at a certain time. An example for this would be young child or baby’s toy. This would be advertised early in the morning on a children’s channel such as Cbeebies. I find this a brilliant way to advert these types of products because it’s aiming it direct to the audience due to the audience of the television shows that are broadcasted. Like, you are not going to see an advert of a children’s toy in ad breaks between The Only Way Is Essex, because one, it’s not aimed at young children and second, by the time the program is on the television, the child is likely going to be asleep.
Market Research
Product Market
What else is out there? this is a good question to think about. You have your product but what else is around in its market? for instance you have a phone and you have an Iphone but then you have the Iphone 3gs and so on.
Competition
What is against your product? so against the Iphone you have android, Another example you have Rice krispies and Golden Grahams.
Advertising placement
Where are your adverts going to be? what time? what channel? you need to think out your target audience like Jeremy Kyle they have there Show on at 9:25-10:30am so the advertising is on in the morning before it’s on because the audience is people who don’t work and like to see reflections of themselves on screen… (sadly i am a fan).
Purpose of marketing research
The purpose is to see what else is out there and do the people like it, they will find out by how popular the product is through sells.
methods of marketing research
surveys such as telephone surveys, mail surveys, in person surveys and online surveys. Focus groups, where a moderator has scripted questions that they tell to a group of people. Personal interviews, which is unstructured open ended questions. Observation, videotaping customers.
Sources of marketing research
There are many ways to find out i would highly recommend Barb. When you want to look at Tv schedules you could look at tv guides.
Who is ITV’s Audience?
What are they on about?! http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/202041/research/itv-audiences
ITV’s Commercial Researchers are analysing the audiences habits, technology & usage, and lifestyle trends to find the most popular TV show and what keeps the audience watching. The audiences are split into 5 categories; UK Kids, Housewives with Children, Modern British Families, Mass Affluent, and 55+.
What is Quantitative Research?
How is this information collected?– Using programme ratings, hits on websites and box office figures as these are provided by the companies that own the sites, films and television programmes.
3 techniques for collecting it–
Programme ratings-Programmes ratings are a rough figure of how many people are watching a TV show when it is being broadcast.
Hits on a website– Website hits are how many people are using a website on average, it counts how many people are using that site per day and gives an average of how many people use it a day.
Box office figures– These are the figures of how many people have watched a film or bought one. Figures are counted from people going to the cinema, buying DVDs and watching films on things like Netflix.
Defining research
Qualitative This is about exploring issues, understanding phenomena and answering questions. This can be in the form of in-depth interviews, content analysis and focus groups*. Qualitative research in it’s basic form is open-ended surveys, open questionnaire and audio recordings. To put this simply it’s collecting information (opinoins and views) from others but wanting more then a “yes and no” answer. *explaining focus groups, basically they are just the group of people you are focusing on (target audience).
Quantitative This is a closed question based research to give facts and statistics. This would be used for large groups of people in your audience/target market to find out the facts eg Gender. So the type of answers you would allow your audience to have would be like “Once a week, monthly”.
Primary
This is new research that is mainly consisting of surveys and questionnaire this is to get information on certain issues or questions, it is carried out in small groups. This is research done by you only.
Secondary
This is research that is used previously for other purposes and publicly available. This includes the internet, books such as books produced by the Royal College Of Physicians. *This is also known as “Dark Research”.
Types of Research.
Qualitative – This is the type of research that isn’t consisting of ‘yes or no’ answers. These would be more about the qualities of the target audience you are looking for. So, if we were looking at making a promotional video, for let’s say, a college, you would choose to ask questions that hit the 16-19 age range. They would also be open questions, like ‘What is your favourite colour/animal/thing?’ These give a more personal response than the closed ‘yes or no’ questions you get sometimes.
Quantitative – This type of research is more on the numerical side, where the answers are closed in order to make a ‘tally’ of a particular audience. Questions could be: ‘Are you Male or Female?’ or ‘Did you like this?’ These questions are less personal, but they give you a rough idea of how big your audience actually is, and that’s important.
Primary Research – This is research that you have collected yourself. You make the survey yourself, send the survey out and then collect and analyse the results yourself. This means the questions you want are being answered and you don’t have to scroll through multiple websites and look through books to get answers.
Secondary Research – The polar opposite of primary research. This is when you use another source e.g. BARB , to get your answers. Other sources are: Google, Wikipedia, Newspapers/ Magazines. Secondary research from these isn’t as reliable as getting your own results, as websites, such as Wikipedia, can be edited.
Research in the media industry
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
Qualitative research is based on opinions, attitudes and preferences rather than hard facts. Questionnaires are used to gather opinions and views.
Quantitative research uses numbers, graphs, and tables of facts to produce research. It is statistics, it’s reliable but sometimes it can be untrustworthy.
Primary & Secondary Research
Primary research is your own research, for example if you were to make a film and then want people’s opinions by doing questionnaires, focus groups and surveys. It’s original research that you can’t gather from anywhere else.
Secondary research is research that you take from other resources like the internet and books. It’s someone else research which you take to personalise it into your own projects.
Market Research
It is looking at other people ideas and projects, to see what is in the market at the moment and it can inspire your own ideas.
Audience Research
Targeting your audience, by age, gender, culture and social class. Doing primary and secondary research to research your target audience.
What Is Production Research?
Content– What is included in the production, the scripts, actors, costumes and musical scores.
Costs- Looking into what everything you do will cost you such as renting equipment, hiring actors, food, costumes, crew
Locations– The locations you are going to film in to make your production. You need to check you can use all of your locations as some could be private land and be illegal to film on.
What is the purpose of production research?– Production research is used to ensure that the product being made fits in to the demand in the marketplace and that the product has the right content to please consumers. If you make a film about horror and your target market are children aged 1-5 then this wont be the right content for your target audience.
What methods are used within production research?– Looking into the cost and checking it is within budget, working out the content, finding locations, finding actors.
What sources of information are used in production research?– This could be sending out a survey to see the content your target audience would like to see so you know what content you should put into your product. This could be asking what their favourite genre of film is or finding out if they prefer some actors over others. All of this can help to reach the target audience as it is research into a production.
Media Fort 2 