Head Presenter

Film Weekly Presenter

Myles Egan
Interview
Head Presenter Grace Sheridan discusses the life and work of
Margaret Keane and proposes, was it the big eyes or the big
scandal? Thats all to come in 30 minutes. But now on Beacon
Radio 2, heres Film Weekly, with Ryan West.
Film Weekly Presenter Hello, today we are very excited to
announce the company of a talented new young director. He
directed the film Care Free in 2013 and is here now to talk to
us about his new project In Your Eyes, a social realism short,
sub genre thriller. Egan is here to highlight a subject he feels is
key to success in the industry and is also key to the creation of
product - this is the importance of knowing your audience.
So first of, hello Myles and thank you for joining us today.
Myles Egan Thanks for having me.
Film Weekly Presenter I thought we would start this chat
talking about the type of audience that In Your Eyes is aimed at
and how it came to attract these people as it seems to me that
in your eyes is aimed at a very unique audience and therefore
a niche market, would you agree with this?
Myles Egan To some extent, as the genre social realism is
always sort of a unique audience and positions itself within a
niche market as its for the more media educated viewer who
looks for difference in product compared to more mainstream
products that aim to follow the simple Todorov theory, which
are repetitive and leads to an urge for change. However, I
believe that I have aimed it towards the market of social
realism as well as a broader mainstream audience of Thriller
and also, with the inclusion of other aspects in the film - I
believe that it does access more than one market and
audience.
Film Weekly Presenter - Ah right, so how did you come about to
decide that you wanted to aim it at these audiences?

Myles Egan Well, it was through primary and secondary

research, but dominantly primary research.
Film Weekly Presenter Could you just give the listeners a
quick differentiation between the two of those types of
research?
Myles Egan Yeah, of course primary research also known as
field research is the research I conduct myself, whereas
secondary research also known as desk research is the
research I have received from existing material.
Film Weekly Presenter So how did you go about doing that?
Myles Egan With the primary research it was a range of
qualitative and quantitative,
Film Weekly Presenter What are those?
Myles Egan Qualitative and quantitative?
Film Weekly Presenter Yeah,
Myles Egan Well, quantitative research is statistical data as
the questions are structured so that they are yes or no
answers. Qualitative research, on the other hand requires a lot
more detail to the answers and participants will be made to
have an extensive and reasoned opinion on the subject rather
than just agreeing or disagreeing etc. Quantitative research
will usually have around 15-20 questions on the questionnaires
compared to Qualitative that will have around 5-10.
Film Weekly Presenter Ah, so these were conducted through
the use of questionnaires?
Myles Egan Yeah, paper-based questionnaires that I handed
out around my school to teachers, media students and nonmedia students. Asides from this I also handed them out to
people outside of school as this allowed me to gather a more
varied demographic and therefore more detailed and refined
analysis.
Film Weekly Presenter Whenever I participate in
questionnaires I tend to find myself by the end of it being very
broad and not including much detail is this something that you
struggled with at all?

Myles Egan Well, this was definitely part of the process as

that is why there is less quantitative questions as it is true that
often participants will begin to answer with fatigued opinions.
As well as limiting the amount of questions, I also structured
the questions so that they would prompt the participants to
answer and explain why they think this with the use of ending
the questions with extensions like and why? or please
explain. just to point out to them that I am looking for detail.
Film Weekly Presenter Of course, so how exactly did the
audience feedback tell you how to make your film?
Myles Egan An important decision I made through the use of
character in this initial stage of audience research was the age
of the protagonist. Both my primary and secondary
demographics contained a lot of teenagers, many of who
consumed films such as Aldulthood, Kidulthood, About A Girl
and Soft which are social realism films that document the life
of contemporary UK adolescence. Learning that my audience
was interested in this type of film, I made two core decisions
that it would have an adolescent protagonist and be a social
realist film.
Film Weekly Presenter They are definitely two very important
decisions that worked well within the film. So was that through
the use of Qualitative research then?
Myles Egan It was a mixture, but actually dominantly it was
quantitative. However, qualitative research helped me include
the idea of making the protagonist ambiguous as when asking
the audience if they felt any characters had been unfairly
represented in The Six Dollar Fifty Man, it was a fairly even
response of yes and nos but what was concluded was that I
didnt want to create favoritism to one character meaning that
I planned to provide even arguments so that the audience can
decide for themselves, which of course lead to the ambiguous
protagonist and heightening the key issue in my product of
appearance vs. reality.
Film Weekly Presenter So with this extensive research, do you
feel that this provided sufficient data to develop your film into
a certain audience category?
Myles Egan Yes, definitely in fact, it almost sculpted the
direction of my film and the development process. It made

defining my target audience very natural and I soon discovered

the path that my film was taking in having a primary and
secondary audience.
Film Weekly Presenter Would you mind explaining to the
listeners what having a primary and secondary audience
means?
Myles Egan A primary audience is the main audience that
your film will be targeted and catered towards and then the
secondary audience is created when a film includes other
elements that will attract a different audience demographic as
well.
Film Weekly Presenter Ah, so a successful example of this
would be Shane Meadows, This is England; as it creates the
main audience as social realism however it also attracts a
mainstream audience.
Myles Egan Yes, sometimes it can happen unsuspectedly,
however Meadows was conscious to this and therefore began
to inform the secondary audience with the use of This is
Englands poster and advertisement as they have used quotes
that stimulate media terminology as well as quotes that dont.
Film Weekly Presenter Thats interesting you say that, as
when looking at the In Your Eyes film poster I did notice the
use of both specific media terminology and not, and quotes
provided from niche media outlets and more broader outlets;
so I assume that you were conscious to the decision of having
a primary and secondary audience when preparing for
distribution then?
Myles Egan Yes, early on in the script development I was
aware that the primary audience would be social realism and
the secondary audience would be thriller. Therefore the poster
was purposely aimed towards the media educated and noneducated with the use mixed vocabulary that would attract
both type of audiences. As the primary audience for my film is
social realism, the magazine review is solely aimed towards a
media educated audience; this was done through the use of
media specific terminology and instead of talking solely about
the film, there were different types of conversation about the
director, his decisions and the actors etc. whereas the poster is
more bland as a key thought when producing the final draft

was to make sure it was appealing to both audiences and

introduces all characteristics of the film.
Film Weekly Presenter You say that, but I also noticed from
the poster that it is very professional and formal, and the
feeling that this provokes is that it is aimed at a more mature
audience.
Myles Egan Yeah, when evaluating my second draft all of the
participants agreed that the poster successfully aims at a
mature audience in the age bracket of around 18 to 30. To be
honest when questioning the participants about my second
draft, it really shaped the clarity of the poster and added a lot
more into the context of it.
Film Weekly Presenter Really, like how?
Myles Egan Well, first of all when questioning the participants
about the themes and issues included in the poster, I
discovered that they were unable to identify any themes or
issues as they said that they werent clear and this lead onto
me adding in things like the finger prints, the rustic look of
decay in the title and background. Secondly, when questioning
the participants about the combination of the film title and the
Polaroids, I asked if they could identify the link between the
two but participants couldnt see a dominant concept, which
resulted in adding a tagline to the poster and for this tagline
the aim was to create something small but effect that would
link the two together and add clarity to the poster. I came up
with several versions that all aimed at the same concept and
then asked the audience to decide which tagline they felt
worked the best. Through these subtle changes it resulted in a
huge enhancement in the way that the poster is perceived by
the audience.
Film Weekly Presenter Yeah, I completely agree.
Myles Egan Also, secondary research took a huge
contribution in the making of my poster as I research film
posters from similar genre products such as Fish Tank, Two
Birds, This is England and Two Cars, One Night and learnt a lot
about the importance of symbolization, depth of field, color
palette and use, choice and amount of vocabulary.

Film Weekly Presenter I assume with the vocabulary youre

talking about media specific terminology that targets the more
mature and educated viewer.
Myles Egan Yes, and also the amount of vocabulary is very
important to the film poster, as it reflects a very important part
of the social realist genre and film on a whole. Something that
Marilyn Milgrom pointed out which is the lack of dialogue and
in this case text and letting the visuals speak the most through
symbolization.
Film Weekly Presenter When you say symbolization, what is it
youre specifically symbolizing?
Myles Egan Well, in Two Cars, One Night they use a child-like
font for the tag line to represent the key theme of age in their
film this influenced me to then go for the decayed font in my
poster as this represents a key issue in my film. Also, when
researching This is England - regional identity, class and status
and other themes and issues are being represented with the
use of the set design exploring a stereotypical working class
English location. Therefore in my poster I chose to use the
location of my film as the focal point to represent the mood of
the film as well as showing film content, class and status and
regional identity.
Film Weekly Presenter Great, well this has truly been
insightful and some of your points today about the ways that
your product has shaped itself through the audience have been
inspiring and interesting to say the least. I think that you raise
a serious point about the importance of knowing your
audience. So, thank you for coming in today and we hope to
see you again soon.
Myles Egan Yeah hopefully, thanks for having me.
Film Weekly Presenter That was Myles Egan director of Care
Free and In Your Eyes discussing how knowing your audience is
a key aspect to the success of a media product. Up next we will
be joined with Grace Sheridan to explore the works of Margaret
Keane. Sheridan proposes, was it the big eyes or the big
scandal?