Development of ideas

The results I got from my questionnaire about the mockumentary genre, were very different to what I predicted. I thought that people on the right wing of the political spectrum would like the mockumentary genre because it is often focused on right wing people, mocking left wing people and certain religions. For example, Borat is a Christian and we see him being anti-Semitic and ignorant towards American/Western culture. The reason this film is actually mainly meant to attract a left wing audience is to mock people who show these ignorant attitudes. For example, in Borat, they are not mocking Jewish people, instead they are mocking people with these right wing views about different religions and cultures. My questionnaire suggested that a lot of people who are interested in the mockumentary genre are left wing and mockumentaries are often politically themed. Borat in fact is almost a documentary because there is a scene where the protagonist and his camera crew travel with a real group of conservative Americans and the film exposes their fascist and xenophobic views. This influenced my plan for the script because it made me decide to involve more political themes such as the upper class divide between the teachers and the students.

The most useful insight that I got was about what types of teaser trailers the respondents. I asked if people prefer classic cinematic trailers which reveal a majority about the film, trailers which focus on a single scene, or footage that does not exist in the film. I asked nine people and found that two-thirds of them said that they like the classic cinematic trailer the most.  The reason why I it was the most useful insight because it made me rethink my approach to how I plan the trailer. My original plan was to show one scene of the character because I thought it would hype the audience up for more. I chose this because it was a trend that I spotted in mockumentaries, such as David Brent: Life on the Road, and Borat. I plan to combine my insipiration, and questionaire results together, to make a trailer that has a feel of the single clip style, as we see in Borat, but also has some cinematic elements for example, the trailer of The Bad Education Movie which was also an inspiration.

My questionnaire was quite effective because it made me have a better understanding on people's political views, and how they can impact on people's interests. However, there were sereval limitations I had during my research. They are that I mainly asked teenage boys, who are quite left wing. I should have expanded and asked more people because I asked only one female responder, there was a struggle because I go to an all boys school. In the future, I might expand my research, and ask more people from different areas to get more respondents who are female, or on the right wing side of the political spectrum. If I had more female respondents, it may have impacted what gender is more interested in the mockumentary genre, The age range also made my results less useful, because I did not see if age had something to do with people's interests in the mockumentary genre. However, I do think I choose the right people for my focus group, It was the same category of people who mainly asked the survey.

Overall the research was useful because I got some good feedback which changed my idea's for the teaser trailer, however I realise they are are limitations to the pool of people that responded so that led to getting a narrower view.