Who Is Your Intended Audience?

Isn't this question, when put to a creative originator, of only the most limited use?

It's most used by various types of arts executives floundering for purchase on the creative, the imaginative - most threateningly, the original.

If they really want to be a good disciple of 'market forces' shouldn't they be asking 'How are we going to sell this?'

And the answer to that lies with the marketing department.

It is a question most used by those lacking commitment.

They are the very ones who misuse the word 'passionate' - with 'I am' and 'very' just in front of it (if they use 'absolutely' or 'totally' just practise deep breathing).

In the recent (Issue 18 Spring 2010) Australian Writers' Guild journal storyline editor Rosalie Higson offers  in her article 'what audiences want' the evolving thoughts of major Australian film maker George Miller on putting bums on seats -

'For a long time the question that drove a lot of my process was how do you tell stories well? And then it became, why do you tell stories, why do we need stories. and why do we tell each other stories? And when you get into that question you realise that there is an interplay between the people who create the narrative, whichever form it is - a journalist, a songwriter, a poet, someone on the Web - there is an interplay between the narrator and the zeitgeist. And so I think what you do is you spend a lot of time trying to sense what's out there and you're basically  responding to that according to who you are'.

Even though no artist would consciously 'spend  a lot of time trying to sense what's out there', this is surely a more useful, realistic - a truer approach than to ask 'And who is your intended audience?'

Recently I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1. The audience was overwhelmingly young Chinese Australians. Did J K Rowling have them in mind when she set out to help produce the film? What marketing executive would have thought of them? Especially in terms of what they seemed to find appealing - an identification with nerdish, smallish, dark haired Harry and the hilarity the dumb bunglings and unrequited love of Anglo-Celt Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint - isn't his name better than the one Rowling gave the character?) seemed to inspire?

This article is in part my response to the issue of 'intended audience'.

BUT WHO ARE THEY MADE FOR? - WEST and NOISE

One of the questions which has come to haunt scriptwriters and film directors in the fraught quest to garner production money is –Yeah, yeah, but who is your intended audience? Anyone who is going to give a project money feels as entitled to an answer to this as they do to demanding the script be rewritten to configure with their fantasies and whims.

What answer could there possibly be? Teenage boys? Teenage girls? Middle-aged men? (the response to the latter would immediately be, But they don’t go to movies). And yes, there are films which seem clearly aimed at an intended audience – Finding Nemo was obviously developed as a kids’ flick but did the pitch also include, For kids and those who pay for their tickets? Indubitably.

The answer the creatives would want to give to the question, But who is it for? is, As many people as possible; as my film project has universal themes, naturally everyone will want to see it. Or, Film Lovers (this response is guaranteed to get a laugh or exasperated sighs). Maybe this is what  Matthew Reeder and Anne Robinson who produced West (Dan Krige, 2007) meant by  – ‘It was a film we wanted to make and I think it will find an audience’ (Matthew Reeder quoted in AAP article ‘West director lived on beans for movie’ www.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=277212 accessed 19/07/07 - THIS LINK SEEMS TO BE NO LONGER OPERATING).

Who, come to think of it was My Brilliant Career made for? Gallipoli? Or Harvie Krumpet if it comes to that? And was the success of Kenny (Clayton and Shane Jacobson, 2006) due to its addressing universal themes thus appealing to a universal demographic? Were its producers actually surprised by the extent of its success? Did they accept that their demographic was to be middle-aged men? (In Australia figured as male over twenty-five hitherto believed to have been lost to the allure of film).

Surely that question about intended audience, put blankly, is unanswerable in any sensible way? Pitches though, are not entirely about good sense. And as much as film producers and government funded script developers pretend to be economic rationalists, they are not working in a rational sphere: movies are magic; formulae are death.

David Stratton on the Movie Show asked by way of being dubious about West, But who was it made for? And it does seem extraordinary, given the fairly long line of Australian films which address urban youth hopelessness, that it got producers on board. Perhaps though its line of antecedents were an advantage to West – it could be understood in terms of a tradition of such films. Following this line of inquiry, who did the producers of Noise (Madman) think would be rushing to put their bums on seats to watch that film? Madman, unhelpfully for us, sees itself as a ‘strong supporter of quality content, regardless of how eclectic or unique it may be … Madman will help it find its target audience’  (‘Speciality Genres’CLICK HERE accessed 20/07/07). Which audience did they see as the target for Noise? Madman is also a significant distributor.

Pursuing the matter of how and why West and Noise (Matthew Saville, 2007) got made might allow us to infer what aspects were intended to make them ‘commercial’, what effect this had on them artistically and how the ‘commercial’ and the ‘artistic’ can be separated in the context of Australian feature films when so many projects do not get out of the barracks in the production stakes.

Noise is a superb production. The use of new audio technology is only one of the elements which give this film such a high finish. László Baranyai’s photography is for the most part accurately evocative. The dim cold blues and threatening darknesses of the exterior shots and the ominously shadowy domestic interiors suggest whoever did the Lighting was/were in deep sympathy with Baranyai and Writer/Director Matthew Saville’s vision for the film. Paddy Reardon’s mise en scène compounds this sense of production harmony … the victim’s home is cold and bare, she trembles and it offers no succour; the principal couple’s home is busy, witty and slightly disturbingly unreconstructed with seventies kitsch, it is warm with yellows but the dim lighting is ominous and the dark recesses suggest potential violence. There is one serious problem: it seems the team were unsure whether they wanted to reveal the killer’s identity in the slaughter scene; he is either deliberately obscured or badly photographed. This has serious consequences for the intention and effect of the film’s denouement. And there are a few very ordinary touches - the flickering Milk Bar sign, the spot from the helicopter on the body. Perhaps more could have been made of the interior of the police caravan. The high finish of this film and much of its artistic success can probably be traced to the fact that its Producer Trevor Blainey had worked with Matthew Saville and László Baranyai on the award winning short Roy Hölsdotter Live (Matthew Saville 2002) so that high levels of trust and understanding were in place from the beginning and were sustained despite inputs from backers/distributors. The producer and the creatives had a good history and it showed.

With its limited set-ups West seems the result of a lower budget ($1.2 as against $2 million insofar as I can ascertain) but there is also a filmic familiarity which cannot be blamed on budget restrictions alone. Paradoxically, familiarity can sell a script: producers may like what they recognise. But audiences tend to like fresh springs bubbling from familiar genre landscapes. West does not offer this. The originality of Noise emanates largely from its adventurous criss crossing of genres: horror, thriller, domestic drama, cop, noir, comedy and romance. West seemed content to lie somewhere between Ken Loach type docudrama and a (diluted) noir thriller. Its irresolute conclusion (conclusions? - there seemed to be about three moments when the film was gesturing at ending) might have been the result of trying to give its worthy social realist purposes some sort of commercial appeal - no that’s absolutely bleak, that’s too unsettling, that’s too clichéd. Finally it settles on an extremely tentative positive note somewhat at odds with its course. Its producers specifically mention (AAP article ‘West director lived on beans for movie’ op cit) that it was eschewing ‘Hollywood hope’. What then did they imagine was in West which would encourage an audience to ‘find’ it? In its way it is a powerful film but it is not original. Surely it was important that it had something new to say?

The admirable genre complexity of Noise might have been the happy result of many hands attempting to give it audience appeal (though this process can result in unpalatable genre potage). However its success in this regard seems to have derived from imaginative narrative structuring unmolested by multiple script interferences. Matthew Saville claimed that after eight drafts the script was given only ‘incredibly precise changes’ as a result of an AFC SP*RK script hothouse workout (‘2004 SP*RK participant Matthew Saville …. speaks to Dan Edwards about his debut feature Noise http://www.afc.go.au/newsandevents/afcnews/converse/saville/newspge_276.aspx accessed 19/0707 - THIS LINK SEEMS TO BE NO LONGER OPERATING).

Be all this as it may both films suffer from that characteristic fault of Australian films – emotional thinness. It is as if Australian filmmakers cannot understand character. Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001) was known as ‘at last an Australian film for adults’ because it could confidently attribute complexity and maturity to at least some of its characters. Neither of the films under consideration managed that. At the moment this weakness would seem to be a national failing beyond the ameliorating influence of commercial appeal (to whichever proposed demographic(s) or government funded interventions.

Noise very, very well establishes the desolation of Melbourne’s Sunshine by the most economical of implications. West flounders in its context (Sydney’s Merrylands sometime in the near past though it could be almost anywhere with a blood house pub, a drain and a chicken franchise). West is extremely well served by its actors but their characters remain, despite their changing circumstances, simplistic. Jerry (an exceptional performance by Nathan Phillips) it is true, grows towards some kind of maturity through his love for Cheryl (the names have a tellingly inaccurate ring) and the ambition for a different sort of life this love fires in him. But this growth is very small - from the outset he has been more responsible and feeling than his adoring cousin Pete (Khan Chittenden) and remains so. The film lavishes attention on these two characters and they are very well served by Phillips and Chittenden yet they remain beneath both our sympathy and contempt. Worse, Cheryl (Gillian Alexy) comes across as if through a glass misogynistically because of this sketchiness: she is a veritable Lilith slithering through Merrylands intent on seduction, destruction and a good time (Gillian Alexy and Krige give Cheryl too much poise and assurance). Oddly enough, the much lesser part of her friend Bunny (Blazey Best) is more successful. The script and Blazey Best’s performance allow Bunny a desperation for affection and affirmation, a clinging to some notion of self-respect which engages. All of these actors incandesce in pub, tree-house, drain or chicken franchise only to blink away again on some frightful errand of despair. Matt Saville and co were able to make of the space between Noise’s police caravan and milk bar, a world. If West was made for the audience with a social conscience many more opportunities for human understanding needed to be up there on the screen. Writer/Director Dan Krige insisted, ‘The relationship with an audience is like any relationship – people know if you are bullshitting’. This seems to suggest he thought his personal authenticity would carry the film. Krige’s need for catharsis (attested in everything he said about West) may not have translated as catharsis for his audience for one basic reason - they did not seem to figure sufficiently in his and his producers’ vision for the film, great though their faith in it was.

Noise has an associated problem – it is vitiated by its witty Australian laconicisms. No doubt this increased its appeal for backers because, in its fashion, it is funny. The problem is it thinned two of its characters into caricatures. This mattered less in the case of Maude Davey’s policewoman Rhon (the naming is characteristically hilarious and accurate) than with protagonist Constable Graham McGahan (Brendan Cowell). Cowell’s role was overwhelmingly important. As suggested, his performance lacked nuance. The film suffered accordingly. Writer/Director Saville must take some of the responsibility for this: Cowell was not helped by a script that insists on that laconicism some filmmakers seem to find an irresistibly attractive Australian trait and the fact that Constable Graham McGahan is allowed an emotional age of sixteen. Oh well this is two years more than the same type of film makers can usually endow their male protagonists with. Also characteristically, Noise explores larrikinism. The way it does this is a distinct advance on the usual cinematic demand for a mindless guffawing admiring response. Too many Australian films have been made by boys with budgets who believe the pranks they find hilarious will find a resonance with audiences - that is, they believe their audience is just like them, or ought to be.

In the AAP interview article ‘West director lived on beans for movie’ (op cit) the producers of West follow writer/director Dan Krige’s insistence on the integrity of their artistic undertaking – ‘It was never a commercial proposition in the beginning’ (Matthew Reeder – does he mean it became one in the end?) and Reeder and Anne Robinson ‘admitted it could have been a commercial risk making a film which wasn’t “full of Hollywood hope” … [Well, was it?]  Everyone was very pure about their motivations and I think that comes across in the finished product’. (In what way?). West also had Australian Film Commission support as one of its very few IndiVision Projects. Its very familiarity in a line of Australian films and its ‘purity’ of purpose might have helped it to garner this AFC support as might the fact that it was to be shot in HD. The AFC say they supported the production of West because they felt it met their brief to progress/promote the careers of film talent in Australia. In this regard they saw the careers of Krige, Reeder and Robinson as worth investing in. The AFC felt the script of West was vivid and put characters up on screen whom Australian audiences do not often get a chance to see. The AFC considered that West might have some difficulty finding its theatre audience but felt confident it would make its mark on the big screen thereby securing a further audience via DVD. The AFC feels vindicated in its support of West by its selection for the Berlin Film Festival (pers comm AFC – Jackie McKimmie 30/07/07). The post production company Cutting Edge also demonstrated its faith in West by backing it.

The history of the film’s development suggests it was driven by Krige’s passion for which he was fortunate to find support and understanding in Matthew Reeder, Anne Robinson, the AFC and Cutting Edge. The result is worthily confronting but after such knowledge what forgiveness?

The reasons why producers get behind a project may not be all they proclaim; the project they wish to associate themselves with and to some extent control probably resonates with them for personal reasons of which they may not be fully aware. However as previous articles in Metro demonstrate (see for example Ann Hardy’s ‘The Accidental Author’ in Metro No 148 ), an examination of the backing process and the motivation behind this process will often reveal a lot about the screened result. Those aspiring to make feature films almost invariably find themselves exposed to intense economic rationalist scrutiny at some stage. This need not necessarily be an impediment to a fine, original, imaginative work of art which speaks to audiences. It will be interesting to see if the Government’s revisiting of tax breaks for film backers will result in a flow of features which are screened only to reside for ever more as neglected DVDs. Let us hope the new round of backers will know enough about film and themselves to contribute to more rigorous and original works and that not only the film industry but the nation has grown past our cringingly apologetic – jump cut to - aggressively defiant sense of ourselves.