Mix Tape

3. Short Film – “Mix Tape” – Audience – for this particular film, who is the target audience as defined by age, social class and gender.  We did work on target audience back in January when we used the Pearl & Dean website.   The above demographic information is detailed on this website.   You need to also consider viewing platform / place of exhibition as well as content of film.

The opening sequence begins with a mixtape and carries on to show a characters hand writing a label, this is an old styled film as in the present day we use cds or downloads. The label acts as the title “Mixtape” and a soundtrack begins to play with an old song ‘I wonder where my baby is tonight’ by the kinks. Zooming in from a medium close up to a close up which then switches from the back of a character to the front introduces the young boy who is one of the main characters of the short. He has headphones on making the soundtrack on screen diegetic sound because once he takes them off we can hear the music playing through the headphones. From his age we can see it’s likely to be a child friendly short film, there has not been any thriller, horror or sexual conventions shown so far to indicate a high age rating. Removing the mixtape the young male places it in his pocket and leaves his house, loud music plays as he shuts the door building an intense atmosphere as he walks down his path looking nervous. An extreme long shot shows him leaving his house and turning towards the house next door, a sudden cut to a buzzer stops the music. Dialogue is exchanged between the character, now identified as “Ben”, and an older woman asking after “Lily” who we can assume is the woman’s daughter. The story begins to piece together and we can now clarify it is an affectionate short film rather than a restricted rating. In a shot reverse shot sequence body language shows he is nervous or shy to be asking after the girl but as she is not home he asks the mother to give the mixtape to lily. A medium long shot of ben on his bed reading a newspaper this further shows the time the short is set as he isn’t playing videogames or on a phone. As the camera zooms out music begins to play and ben turns his head suggesting it is lily playing the mixtape and the sound is diegetic. The camera cuts to a young girl in a close up we can assume this is lily, she is singing along to the song we heard at the start. The editing shows parallel cutting between ben and lily as the music changes to a soundtrack, they both dance around on their beds and singing some lines  of the song. This adds an element of fun to the short film and as the song finishes a split screen displays ben and lily sat against their walls smiling back to back. This short would be for a large range of audiences, due to the genre of romance it would be a predominantly female audience. For age it would be for a young audience around the actors age 13-18 year olds but also an older audience those who were around in the 60s therefore would be around 50 years old today this would be because of the music. The setting would lead you to believe it is aimed at a middle class audience because they wear casual clothes and live in flats. I would say this is a U rated film but older audiences would understand it over younger.