Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the time of making our film trailer and ancillary text I have made constant reference to audience feedback. This has been done in order to ensure that I have a high quality product as a result. Audience feedback is a vital part of developing our products as it helps to ensure that it is suited to other people as well as getting different perspectives on how it can be improved. This process started from the very initial product in our practice short film, ‘Day in the Life’. Our group saw this as a vital step to take as it helped us to get the general feel of what people looked for in a film. Although this short film is not similar to the end result of our trailer, it was an important learning curb for us. From this point we then went on to have a group decision on what our trailer should be about. This helped us develop more of a target for what we were hoping to achieve, as it allowed us to put forward some of our ideas. As well as allowing us to discuss genre and plot of our trailer, it allowed us to get audience feedback on what techniques they have found to be effective from previous products.

After the initial stages of deciding which direction to head in with aid of our audience feedback, we then put forward our ideas for the plot, setting etc... in a presentation format. The feedback that we received at the end of this had its positive aspects, as well as its negatives. The people that we interviewed both liked the plot for example, Maria Gonzalez said that ‘the story line was very inventive and one that can attract an audience’. As well as Mr Morris saying that he thought ‘the plot was reasonably sound’. From this feedback we did not change the plot greatly, only the areas that we saw to be weaker than others. However the audience feedback from our presentation also gave us some areas of thought. This is because a problem that people thought that we could encounter along the way was location. Mr Morris said an issue that could arise would be whether or not ‘we would be able to find an abandoned house’; this would be where our main scene would take place. From this point we went on further to investigate whether or not this would be doable, this was the result:  Link. The audience feedback from this early stage helped us to consider factors that hadn’t been bought up before; hence, it helped up to ensure it was practical before we went any further. As well as that it highlighted the strong points of our trailer, this is the plot, so we didn’t make radical changes to this as it was seen to be a good idea.

Once we had started our filming we thought that it was important to get some feedback on what we had done so far. This was an effective thing to do as it allowed us to take on board their comments to ensure that the rest of the trailer would be effective. For instance a comment that was made said that, ‘things that need to be improved are the editing between clips and captions’, and that ‘it was too slow during the clip’. This was an important thing that we needed to improve upon. This is because some of the main conventions that a horror film should posses are fast pace camera shots, this helps to build up tension and suspense. After this feedback we then went on to improve the footage through cutting sections down and editing it so it gave a stronger sense of horror. This concept was also mentioned in another piece of feedback through saying that, ‘the length of the one shot does seem a little long for a trailer or though could be used with a supporting voice over to introduce the film's concept to the audience.’ From taking both pieces of feedback into account, we decided to edit the length of some section and to use a voice over at a later stage of the trailer. This can be seen to be done on many accounts throughout the trailer once the rest of the filming was done, hence the audience feedback can be seen to be very effective and useful. Through the use of the audience feedback I have managed to learn from it to help develop my trailer so that it was a better standard of product.

Another prime example of the use of audience feedback is when it came to producing my ancillary products. This has been done for the same reasons that audience feedback was a vital a thing whilst making the trailer; in order to develop my product more towards what the audience saw as being effective. As in the majority of attempts at making either the magazine cover or the poster, I asked for audience feedback after each product. This was important as it allowed me to ensure that my next attempt took on both the negative and positive aspects to develop the product further in the hope of the final piece was strong. For instance in my second attempt at a film poster someone said that it was ‘not very informative’. This made the poster weak in general, as providing enough information is a vital convention that a poster must possess. So in my third and final attempt, information was something that I felt as if I hugely developed to the extent that it had all that was required. This resulted in the final product having strong feedback. I took on the same format for when it came to developing my magazine cover. The final product of the magazine cover was one that was seen as being ‘effective and eye catching’. So due to the general strong feedback and time constraints there was no reason to further develop the cover.

Overall audience feedback was a vital thing that helped me to develop my product. Through taking on the comments I was able to adapt the trailer and ancillary texts to make it something that was suited and liked by the audience.