Q: Who would your audience be for your own media product?
A: Interesting question. Our audience would simply be the cast in our movie who would be true, and not cliched, representations of the audience themselves -- so, for example, the main protagonist, Bradley Keano is an ex-gang leader who has ascended into football superstardom as well as ascending on an academic level too. We thought that by varying these personalities, he would be able to connect with so many target audiences on a level that other movies such as Shank, Adulthood and 1 Day couldn't do.
We're trying to craft a media product that would attract viewers of all kinds -- football enthusiasts, gang members who watch this movie and leave the theatre thinking, "Wow, that really reflects us", and be able to use our movie as an inspiration to change themselves. It's a movie that inspires the audience and takes the courageous movie of emulating everything that is bleak, uninspiring and gritty about Southern London crime life.
Q: However, it must be difficult trying to develop and market a movie like this. You've got to think carefully of avoiding obvious stereotypes, one-sided characteristics that may occur often throughout the movie and you've got to make sure that you represent whatever you are trying to portray in a realistic manner. How challenging has that been?
A: Well, it has been challenging and your explanation seems to be the words that would have come out of my mouth now that you've asked me that. But seriously, we're trying to hit all emotions -- just because it's a gang movie doesn't mean the emotion throughout will be bleak until the final moment. Bradley Keano goes through some humorous moments, there will be crying when the movie reaches its climax, there will be joy when Keano achieves what he does.
We've just been trying our best to represent a person's life and not an actor's life. There's always going to be that difference between portraying a person and portraying a character; we knew the only way to meet our audience's needs, and for them to watch it, would be to make Bradley Keano feel like a human being when he speaks, cries and all of that and not speak all 'gangsta' [laughs]..you know, just because he's been through gang life before. Gang members are humans, act human.
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The picture expresses movies such as 'Training Day' and action-adventure/thriller movies in general due to the fact that we would expect our average movie viewer to be interested in this type of movie genre as well as football movies (represented by the football logo on the left side) to represent the fact that since there may be a lot of male viewers (especially due to the fact that Split is a male-dominated movie), it is likely that some, if not the majority of them, would either watch or play football - whether virtual or real.
As well as this, they would watch TV programmes such as 'Top Boy' due to the fact that 'Top Boy' is, once again, a real-life representation of South/South-East London life as a youngster and how it is even difficult from a black African family's perspective -- which reflects our movie specifically due to the fact that Bradley (Nile O'Meally Newell) is a character of Afro-Caribbean origin so elements of his heritage will be included in the movie itself.
They would watch 'Waterloo Road' due to the secondary school atmospheric feel of the series itself as we feel that most of our viewers would be invested in watching movies and series that are actually genuine and not mainly big-budget Hollywood-filled blockbusters.
Last but not least, they would listen to grime music (e.g. Krept and Konan, Skepta, Wiley etc.) due to the fact that the licensed soundtrack in the movie itself would be, all rights reserved, to these grime artists as the soundtrack itself would echo the Southern London lifestyle and emphasize how gritty and dark life is there so we would expect most of our audience viewers to listen to this type of music if not R&B, rap music or hip hop aside from that.
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