Initial Audience Research

I've done some basic research into what appeals to 11 - 18 year olds, I have a cousin who is 11 another who is 14 and I am 18 and after talking to them about what appeals to them and their friends in addition to what engages them in learning, I have compared that to myself and what I find engaging when learning presently and back when I was in secondary school. I'm going to focus this audience for 11-14 year olds - no specific gender.

Engaging ways of learning: being interactive with the lesson e.g. quizzes and guessing games. Gaming - character choice/creating your own avatar. Fun tasks that don't require too much work/thinking like acting (English class Shakespeare) or games. 

What they like: Sims, DC and Marvel, Youtubers (especially Zoella), Lego, Roadblox/Steam (online gaming collections), FIFA,  Minecraft, Broadchurch, Flash, Arrow.

What I used to like when I was about 11-13: Panfu, Club Penguin, Avatar The Last Airbender, Recess, Kim Possible, American Dragon, Lilo and Stitch, Brandy and Mr Whiskers, Phineas and Ferb, Emperor's New Groove, Fairly Odd Parents, Dave the Barbarian.


Just from this I could go down different routes depending which idea I go with. 

For the cancer development maybe I could go with a Broadchurch detective theme where the camera could act as the detective revealing all the mysteries and answers and go dark with it... OR I could stick to a gaming regime and make the animation work out like a level in a game, you find things out and as a result boss battle (the cancer cells), using sound to make it feel intense since in reality it's life or death. The attacks on cancer could be chemotherapy and nano particles, using what I've studied from films I could direct the fight to be intense and have my audience in suspense.

For the Mitotic cell division I would play this out like a game, Start > {list of stages, previous ones before Mitotic would have a big tick next to it and when scrolling down which ever one the controller is on scales larger than the others} > Mitosis Cell Division. And then the game level would begin taking you through the four stages: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Level Cleared Successful Cell *cheers* and goes down a G0 slide onto what would be the next level but fades to black.

Thinking about games and what always gives games a personal touch is being able to choose your own character or customise your own character, for cells it would have to be default characters to choose from but in this case it would be randomised of different cells to create that 50/50 chance of being a successful cell after the Eukaryotic cycle. The cell would have a character bio and that's where you'd find out what a cell is made up of.

These are just initial thoughts for now... More research left to do into audience and science and style.