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Science of Producing

The Science of Producing Films That Audiences Want to See

White Owl Films Uses State-of-the-Art Research Techniques To Create Movies Destined to Succeed!
At White Owl Films, we don’t guess, we partner with a company, GAF, who tests every aspect before approving a film to be made. No matter how much people inside our company lobby to make a show, if there’s no quantifiable audience interest, it doesn’t get made.

GAF utilizes three separate pre-production research protocols to determine the market viability of every project:

  1. Statistical polling of show concepts
  2. Generational research
  3. Brain chemical response testing.

Statistical Polling Research
•   GAF tests hundreds of programming ideas before it creates a treatment for a concept.
•   Then it tests the treatments before it commissions a script.
•   Finally, it produces a television commercial for the project based on the screenplay.
•   Only those ideas that rate high in polling as few as  1% of the initial group of ideas will ultimately be produced.

For several years, they used the Gallup. Today, GAF use several very sophisticated organizations in producing our research protocols.
Common in political campaigns, social sciences, and marketing research, statistical surveys collect opinions and quantitative information about human populations and institutions.

White Owl Films Predicts Show Winners

GAF have trained polling administrators contact typical audience members and present one hundred word descriptions of proposed feature films. The way the questions are framed and the manner in which the poll is structured and evaluated are strictly controlled by their staff. They have honed this process over decades. Their histories of top grossing independent movies and consistently high television ratings have demonstrated the validity, reliability, and statistical significance of the results.

Generational Research
 
Generational research is the next generation of the field of demographics. Based on five hundred years of generational cycles, researchers are now able to predict types of behavior exhibited by individuals within the grouping of people into demographic groups, for marketing decision-making is being replaced by grouping them into generational clusters, explains researcher Darryl Howard.  Previously, we looked at demographic groups of men and women 12-18, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+.  As you age, you graduate to the next demographic division.  By understanding generational traits and characteristics, we now see that someone who is twenty-five today, for example, is part of the Millennial Generation, while men and women who are twenty-six fall into the generation dubbed Gen-X. Next year, a twenty-five year-old doesn’t join the Gen-Xers, the entire generation of Millennials get a year older. When they’re in their sixties, the Millennials will still be Millennials.

The generational breakdown as of 2009 is as follows:

GI Generation Born 1901-1924 Age 85
Silent Generation Born 1925-1942 Age 67–84
Boomer Generation Born 1943-1960 Age 49–66
Gen-X Generation Born 1961-1981 Age 28–48
Millennial Generation Born 1982-2001 Age 8–27
Homeland Generation Born after 9/11/01 Age 0–7

The significance of the new generational research is that chronological age is far less important than studying the traits and reactions of people who experience the same societal, cultural, and historical phenomenon. Interestingly, researchers have found that every four generations since the year 1431, the generations have repeated themselves. They believe that we can expect the same behaviors from people who were born since the fall of 2001—the Homeland Generation—as we observed with the Silent Generation, people who are now in their mid sixties through early eighties.

When GAF researchers look at a movie or documentary idea, they examine whether it will appeal to the target generation of decision-makers. It’s a terrific tool.

GAF Research Predicts Show Winners

Brain Chemical Response Research

In the human brain there are more than a hundred billion nerve cells connected to each other through an infinitely complex network of nerve processes. The message from one nerve cell to another is transmitted through different chemical transmitters.

It has been scientifically determined that certain of these neurotransmitter chemicals can quantify emotions more accurately than personal interviews.

People have been known to censor their verbal responses ―The reaction of their brain chemistry, however, are involuntary and can be gauged quite precisely.

By knowing normal levels of each chemical, researchers can record increases or decreases as a subject interacts with a specific stimulus. Three chemicals in the brain are measured in brain chemical research: serotonin, which increases as you feel better about something; dopamine, which increases with pleasurable experiences; and, norepinephrine, which decreases as you withdraw or flee from something to which you react negatively.

Looking for Stories Passed Over By Studios

We test to find subjects and we test to identify our audience. Our objective is to produce stories of encouragement for audiences that are ignored or underserved by the major studios and television networks. Once we have a project ready to go into production, the fun starts! Knowing what audiences want is only part of the battle, producing a product and getting it to market is critical as well. We have taken great lengths to avoid the “Hollywood Minefield” that plagues many promising productions.

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