Question 3What have you learned from your audience

feedback?

Feedback on magazine

I have learned a lot from my audience feedback, from our survey monkey it told us to improve a number of things on our magazine, poster and trailer; for our magazine we were told that we should make it more exciting, make the website bigger, make it less bright, include ratings from critics and many more. After great consideration we decided to not make any of these changes; this was because of the fact that if we were to make the magazine front cover more exciting, then it would challenge a convention that shouldn’t be challenged; this is because if we make the magazine more exciting then it could result with portraying our movie as an action film or comedy instead of what the genre actually is (a horror). We also learned from the survey monkey our audience suggested that we should make the website bigger on our magazine to make it more visible; however when we did make it bigger we found that this took the attention away from the main focus (our film), therefore people my get distracted and consequently result with us losing out on attracting our target audience. It was also suggested that we should make the contrast less bright; we also decided to take this into consideration and see what it looks like if we did lower the contrast, we found that this was not a good look due to the fact that it was not only hard to see the main image but also it was hard to see the cover lines; this would again result with not allowing our viewers to be immediately engaged due to the fact that if they were to see our film or the cover lines they would have to really put the effort in to see what it says due to the low contrast. Another request which was put forward by our audience to improve our magazine was to include some ratings from critics; although this would allow them so see what other people think of this film we came across a problem, if we were to include this then it may result with people mistaking this for a film poster instead of a magazine due to the fact that this is most commonly used within posters; this may then result with viewers getting confused and consequently not purchase this issue and not being able to find out more about our film. Our audience also suggested that we use images with our cover lines, when we decided to see what it looked like we saw that this made the magazine look not as good as it did therefore we all came to the agreement that the pictures with the minor cover lines in the film roll was enough. Even though we decided to not change/include any suggestions from our audience we can still see that from the people who done our survey all of them said our magazine was either good or excellent showing us that the changes they recommended were not very important due to the fact that they already liked our magazine. From the response we received from our Vox Pops we only had one person who made a comment about how we could improve this, this may signify that this is a good magazine but to make it even better we would have liked to get a response back from all of them. ‘Rory’ said that the yellow font reminded him of a horror colour and we maybe shouldn’t have used that, however the colour yellow we used was fairly dull which can connotate caution as well as stood out on the background we used enabling the viewers to easily read the cover lines/skylines etc. We also found that if we used different colours such as white or red then it would look dull and just have one colour for all different fonts and if we were to use the colour black then it would be hard for the audience to read and therefore will not successfully be attracted to this magazine.

Feedback on Poster

As you can also see we have had a good amount of feedback from our survey monkey on our film poster; this enabled us to see what needs improving from an outsider’s point of view. The suggestions put forward included aspects such as make the font itself more exciting, although this may seem like a good idea to attract the eyes of the viewer a bit more we had to consider the fact that this may result with affecting the whole tone/image of the film, even though some horror films may include exciting scenes on their film poster they create a dark/scary tone which avoids the film being misunderstood for an action film or a thriller therefore making this a convention we don’t want to challenge. Another point which has been raised by a few people who filled out our survey monkey is that the poster is dark compared to other posters, it was suggested by this audience to make the poster brighter. However we did this to create a more scarier and intense tone to our poster which would result with putting the viewers at unease almost immediately when seeing this, a person also goes on to say that it was a good use of conventions due to the fact that the horror film posters they have seen have used this technique. Again although the feedback we was given has improvements such as to make it lighter, the people who filled it in also said that this film poster was either good or excellent therefore telling us that although they have suggested improvements they still find that this is a good attractive poster which would attract the right audience. However we also got the feedback from our Vox Pops; this also allowed us to get feedback from people who have seen our media products and discuss them face to face. This proved to be very beneficial but only two people were able to give us feedback on what needs improving so consequently we were only able to try and improve two aspects of our poster. As ‘Jack’ said on our Vox Pop too much of the poster was used up with credits from the actors and production companies, however when we made everything else smaller and the image bigger we found that it looked a bit distorted so therefore we decided to keep this the same. But nonetheless another piece of feedback we were given is by ‘Gertrude’; she recommended that the antagonist on the poster should have more intense eyes however as we looked at the poster over and over again we could see that this man was not only frowning but also he had a fierce/angry look to him signifying to the audience that he means business in this film. But if I was to make another horror film I would get a better actor who could look even angrier to prevent this problem from happening again.

Feedback on film trailer

From the survey monkey we had carried out it showed us what people think of our film trailer and the any improvements they recommend, the first person recommended that we smooth out the sound; although this was very vague we watched the trailer through a few times and finally gathered what this person meant, we then made the made a transition to make the diegetic sound seem a lot smoother and less interference. This was a very advantageous response given back as it enabled us to improve this trailer to not only make it more professional but also allowed us to make the audience enjoy the experience of watching our trailer even more, therefore resulting with making the chance of attracting our audience even more. The second type of feedback we were given was to make the scenes shorter, again when we watched through the trailer we saw that they were right consequently we decided to

cut the different shots as well as speed up different scenes; this create many advantages due to the fact that it prevented the viewers from getting bored during the build up. Someone else suggested that we should include some special effects, although this may have attracted a new type of audience our film is not one which would include explosions; it has been made to seem like true events therefore including explosions would make this unrealistic and ruin the type of film this is. The other responses we were given is that people were recommending that we do not change a thing, although this is good to hear that our trailer is good it did not benefit us at all, we would rather get criticized and told where they think needs improving so it could result with making this trailer the best it can be. But nonetheless all of the people who filled out our monkey survey all said that our trailer was excellent, this showed us that we are on the right track to attract our target audience and with their help we could appeal to all of our target audiences. However compared to the other results from the Vox Pop we found that the results from this were very beneficial due to the fact that we were provided with many improvements which I will discuss. When we discussed our trailer with ‘Rory’ he suggested that we should smooth out the sound (less background noise); although we smoothed it out a bit on our final cut we will make sure that the next time we create a trailer we will make sure we have less interference. ‘Ben’ also said that we should include more gore; this said to us that we should have had better mise en scene and now lets us know on what conventions of a horror we should use. Again we was asked to improve acting, after the Vox Pop we asked him to be more specific and he said when opening the door then man turned around and said ‘its closed’, our reasons for putting this in the trailer were that we had to completely get across the fact that the door was close and they were trying to get into the church otherwise he would have tried opening the door, turned around and gone home leaving the viewers a bit confused as to what they were trying to do. However ‘Gertrude’ replied to this answer by saying we needed shorter cuts, although we were trying to build tension with some long scenes at the start we now know not to go too over the top as it could result with just boring the viewers and result with them losing interest.

ConclusionI have learned a lot from my audience feedback especially on our trailer due to the good amount of feedback we were given on it; this proved that for making changes to our trailer the Vox Pops were more helpful but when improving the magazine or poster the survey monkey was. I have also learned from my audience feedback that when creating a horror film trailer we should try and include some conventions such as blood/gore etc. This is because this is what may attract a large proportion of our target audience and consequently we should have tried to make the mise en scene a lot more gory/exciting (we should have made it more like a stereotypical horror film). It has also made us realise that we must film in a quiet atmosphere sue to the fact that we may get some interference and as a result make the diegetic sound seem a bit rough. Overall I would have to say that doing the survey monkey and the Vox Pops proved to be very helpful as they made us realise a number of things which we can make sure we will and won’t do in the future therefore making us able to create another horror film knowing how to successfully attract our target audience by using different kinds of sound, mise en scene and also aspects such as the editing techniques.