Focus Group Analysis

Why was the focus group useful?

It was useful having a focus group because we then get couple opinions on what is and is not liked about the opening scene of terminator genesis. We found out that they liked the narration over the top of the scene and the title, 'TERMINATOR GENYSIS', appearing on a black screen. In order to get more from this, we should have asked them to explain slightly more. We found that cliches are liked and disliked by different people. One participant said that the film opening itself was more cliche and and therefore would not watch it. Therefore in our film we need to try and avoid the large cliche's like seeing a male hero immediately established.  The opening scene to Terminator elicits feeling of excitement and intrigue, similarly to what we are trying to achieve. Like I said earlier, we should have asked the participants how this feeling is brought about, but that is our own fault for not considering how we could use these answers to establish our own film opening. Both students said that they found that the CGI and editing helped the opening flow smoothly, which is definitely an aspect that we want to incorporate into our shots, utilizing Adobe Premier. We asked about the concept of a flashback which we have on our storyboard. Zack said that he didn't like having a flashback in the beginning as that is typical of a lot of different genre's. In contrast, the other participant said that this is a good concept as it gives the scene context. Taking this into consideration we decided to have only a few quick, flashy shots of me in a flashback, giving it some context but also hiding any huge giveaways. Although they both agreed that the title appearing on a black background, we decided that our film was going to do this. We discussed with them off screen and explained why we think we should do this, showing them a different film as an example. They both said that this does achieve a bold effect and that it would look good in our film opening.

It was nice to work with these two boys as they had very conflicting opinions. Seeing the two of them explaining a few of their answers was fun because it gave us a wide range of options for our film. It also showed us what to avoid, for example, the cliches that I mentioned earlier.