What do teenagers like and dislike? (Primary Research)

What do teenagers like and dislike? (Primary Research)

I interviewed 20 teenagers between the ages of 15-19 on what they like and dislike. I gave them a range of things to like or dislike (from food to fashion), and here are the results:

-Food: 20/20 liked, 0/20 disliked
-Drinking: 17/20 liked, 3/20 disliked
-Parties: 16/20 liked, 4/20 disliked
-Smoking: 8/20 liked, 12/20 disliked
-Sex: 15/20 liked, 5/20 disliked
-Fashion: 17/20 liked, 3/20 disliked
-Social networking sites e.g. Facebook/Twitter: 18/20 liked, 2/20 disliked
-Smart phones: 20/20 liked, 0/20 disliked
-Taking photographs: 18/20 liked, 2/20 disliked
-School/College: 1/20 liked, 19/20 disliked
-Parents: 20/20 liked, 0/20 disliked
-Friends: 20/20 liked, 0/20 disliked
-Films: 19/20 liked, 1/20 disliked
-Music: 20/20 liked, 0/20 disliked

From conducting this survey, I have found out that on average, teens mostly like food, smart phones, friends, parents and music. Because it was a minor survey, that does not conclude that all of these things should be included in the film. It simply allows a few themes and ideas to include within our film.
The knowledge that most people from my survey do not like school or college is also useful, because from that information, we could include some sort of rebellion against school in our film.

Things I included in my survey

What do teenagers like and dislike? (Secondary Research)

What do teenagers like and dislike? (Secondary Research)
Continuing my research on our target audience for our film - teenagers, I decided to get to the bottom of things and find out what teenagers actually like and dislike. From this, my group and I would be able to include these things in the film (or not), and be more aware of what appeals to our teenage audience, and what doesn't.
From my secondary research, I have found out that teenagers like:
-Loud music/Ipod
-Sleeping in
-A messy room
-Hanging with mates
-Ditching parents
-Phone
-Hot boyfriend/girlfriend
-'Cool' mates
-Social networking sites e.g. Facebook/Twitter
-Junk food e.g. McDonalds
-Food in general
-Taking photos with friends
-Taking 'selfies'
-Being alone sometimes
-Parties
-Drinking
-Porn

And apparently they do not like:
-Nosy parents
-Chores
-'Bitchiness'
-School
-Homework
-Being bored
-Babysitting

(Research carried out from www.wikianswers.com)

Of course, this is a large generalisation and not all teens will like and dislike all of the above. But as an average list, this research will help my group and I to consider our film content.

                                          Typical 'teen' situation

Our Teenage Audience

Our Teenage Audience

Our film 'Isn't that Illegal' is aimed mainly at teens from 15-19, although it may also attract young adults.
Because our film is specifically a 'teen drama' and, of course, has its main characters played by teenage actors, it is important to know what the teen audience will like and what they will most want to see in our film.
I started by carrying out some secondary research on what matters to teenagers. Here are some thoughts:

Teens share five characteristics that make them 'uniquely young':
Detached: No one desires the company of teens—they’re not unreserved as the way children are, which is why adults and children love being around each other. Because adults have reservations about spending time with teenagers and teens are skeptical of other teens—that leaves teens essentially on their own.
Oppositional: Teens define themselves not as who they are but who they are not—so the street savvy girl is highly focused on, say, not being the girl who likes riding horses.
High on influence: Teens develop special mix of exalted optimism and self-confidence when they discover their ability to understand and influence areas they’re interested in, such as politics and NGO causes.
Boundless: Teens experiment with limitations—they don’t try to experience their existence (like children do to feel the love of their parents) or to seriously engage in activities on the other side of social norms (as when adults visit swinger clubs to feel “free”). Instead, teens are simply interested in answering big questions about their abilities.
Fleeting: Teens feel entitled to change their mind and shift their fundamental ideas about the world—not because of insecurity or a lack of reliability but because that ability is seen as a fundamental privilege exclusive to being a teenager.

(Research used from www.redassociates.com)

By discovering these five aspects of what makes a teenager, well, a teenager, I can now get some further ideas of how to portray 'typical teenagers' in our film.

                                           Photo of variety of teenage girls

Reflecting on original idea

Notes from pre-production process

As shown above, the original plan for what our film opening would consist of is very different to the outcome. Some changes include:
-Showing only four characters (Georgia, Jason, Jacob and Nalika) rather than six
-Titles in the sequence were embedded differently to make the editing simpler
-Music soundtrack was changed to 'F For You' by 'Disclosure' instead of music by 'Don Broco' - we changed this because the soundtrack fitted a lot better
-We shortened the 'pregnancy' scene due to timing and so that the opening would be less dramatic
-The settings we used were a bathroom and three bedrooms, instead of shops and outside houses, as the setting flowed better with the idea of 'teenagers getting ready'

Hopefully the changes we made during editing will help to create a flowing and successful opening sequence!

Production Diary entry - 25/02/14

Tuesday 25th February 2014 - 13:00-16:00

Today, my group and I continued editing, and hopefully created our final cut (excluding titles and music).

We added a music track to our film opening today, which we finally decided would be 'Disclosure - F For You.'
We chose this track because it is an extremely catchy song, which would create audience engagement. It also went really well with the timing of the film, even before we rendered it!
Originally, our music track was going to be a song by Don Broco, for the 'alternative edge', but we eventually decided that the music track should be very engaging and fitting with the variety of fast-paced and slower shots. 

We had to mercilessly cut our film opening, cutting out huge chunks of shots that we had worked very hard on. Some examples are:

-The phone conversation between Jacob and Georgia (we had timed it to make it sound like a real phone conversation)
-Many of Nalika's shots e.g. perfume shot and alcohol shot

-Many of Georgia's shots e.g. walking into the bathroom and pregnancy test shots

-A few of Jacob's shots e.g. cologne shot

We had cut out Nalika's entire scene at first in order to fit the phone conversation in, however we decided today that the film would look much neater with Nalika's scene without dialogue, rather than a conversation with dialogue.
We will also have to mute quite a bit of the diegetic sound from our film, for example the camera clicking, in order to make the music fit with the film even better.

All the shots we took throughout our filming process will later be posted onto this blog as 'deleted scenes', however due to the time limit of two minutes, and keeping the film engaging, we had to cut put as much as we could. 

'Behind the scenes' on Nalika's scene for our film opening

This video is our 'behind the scenes' video from when we filmed Nalika's scene on Tuesday 04/02/14. The filming went efficiently well and we took many shots. We later realised that we had far too many shots and had to remove some, but we always said it was better to have too many than too little. An overall success!

Evaluation on Editing Session - 12/02/14

Evaluation on Editing Session - 12/02/14

I did a bit of editing for our film opening today. As my group and I had selected all the shots that we wanted to keep yesterday, it was easy for me to get started on cutting the shots, and ordering them suitably.
However, I could not get as much editing as I would have liked done today, for the simple reasons that the editing suite was only available for me to use for one hour, and I wanted opinions from the rest of the group.I tried to get a reasonable amount done with the time given, nonetheless.
I cut the shots down as much as I could to save precious time, and ordered them in a way that I think would look creative. Of course, this is not the final cut yet and I will need to get further opinions from the rest of my group, and the teacher, to make it look flawless.

So far, the editing of the film opening is going well and is a lot of fun to do, as well as being a chance to be as creative as possible!

Our Pitch For our Teen Drama Film Opening

This is our Pitch for our opening title sequence for 'Isn't That Illegal'.
During our pitch we conducted primary audience and genre research with our classmates.

'Behind the scenes' on Georgia's scene from our film opening

 

We created this video after shooting our 'Georgia' scene today. We had fun making it, but used our time productively to create a hopefully successful scene.

'Teen TV' book for research

I borrowed this book - 'Teen TV' - (edited by Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson) from the library for research. It includes information mainly on 'Teen Drama' television, but it explores the overall teen genre, therefore I thought it might be useful. It also goes into depth about the importance of television in teen life.

Homemade Prop - 'Pregnancy Test'

Here is my homemade fake pregnancy test. It is used for Georgia's bathroom scene, where she is about to take the test.

Notes from group meeting 28/01/14

Notes from group meeting - 28/01/14 from 13:00 - 16:00pm.
Notes include shot lists for each scene, prop and costume list for several scenes, and scene order.

Photos from group meeting - Monday 27/01/14

 

These are some photos from our group meeting where we continued to plan production; we covered character development, settings, locations for filming, actors, script, props, and the budget.

This was our first production meeting outside of class, we had more time to discuss in depth what we were going to do for production.

 

Notes from group meeting discussing film opening

These are the notes we had taken during our first production meeting.
We discussed characters, credits, music, settings, research, genre, ideas for the storyline, and how we could do our opening sequence.

Eva's notes at group meeting (21/01/14)



Chelsea's notes from group meeting (14/01/14)

Chelsea's notes from group meeting (14/01/14)

Teen Drama Research - By Eva Peerless

Teen Drama Research - By Eva Peerless

History

• Teen dramas were relatively non-existent within the first 45 years of television
• One of the first popular teen dramas was Beverly Hills, 90210
• They became popular in the early 1990s
• The first teen-orientated shows did not call themselves teen dramas
• The longest running teen drama was Grange Hill - running from the late 70's to the late 2000's

Facts

• The most poular teen dramas are set in affluent locations e.g. The O.C, or fictional small town settings e.g. One Tree Hill
• Most teen dramas have a cast of attractive, upper-middle class characters
• The teen drama genre originated in the United States, but since has also become popular in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada
• Some teen dramas can be sub-categorised e.g. Action Adventure - Smallville
• Teen dramas often include situation comedy

A few examples of teen dramas (United States)

• Smallville
• 90210
• Switched at Birth
• The O.C.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• The Wonder Years
• The Vampire Diaries

 

 

A few examples of teen dramas (UK)

• Skins
• Misfits
• Grange Hill
• Wolfblood
• Hex
• The Biz
• The Cut

ramas can be sub-categorised e.g. Action adventure - Smallville