What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Target audienceDuring the planning process with the plot and developing the film trailer, as a group we created a questionnaire to help understand what the audience which we aimed to attract would like to see within the film trailer. We targeted 20/30 year old and the results we obtained gave a clear indication of what we needed to include and what to make sure we did not include. We asked 10 people and got develop our results of what works and does. 80% of people who answered the questionnaire believed that a relationship breaking between a family would extremely thrilling to watch. This was important to know as it means we knew was directing the correct audience and using the right type of plot to interest them into watching what we create. With the naming of the film we had a question and had five examples which they could choose from, as a group we had our personal favourite being with Delirium but the other examples were: Unhinged, Delusion, Misconception, Deranged and Delirium. 40% of the audience liked the name Delirium which was a majority which helped us decided on what the name of the film was going to be.

Animatic During the creation of the animatic we was always looking to improve as a group so we tried gaining as many opinions as possible when coming to creating a good animatic. An issue the first time three people viewed the animatic was that they did not understand what happened to the mother as it was not clear what happened to her Its unclear how the mother becomes possessed at a first watch but closely looking you can see in the barn scene, it needs to be more clear. From this statement we tried to make scene in the barn longer and more significant when coming to the filming of the actual trailer and made us work a lot harder making it a more important scene. They understood that the plot was the mother was possessed and it was effecting the whole house and disrupting the family. Four people out of 6 said that the scenes throughout were not scary enough the most iconic image was the shot of the mother in the chair being possessed and we needed to incorporate more shots like that into the actual trailer for it to be more successful. Being told that at the start we could add a bit of asynchronous dialogue to the start to allow the narrative to be told even further for more development of what is actually happening between the family. This was all very important information to take forward for the making of the actual film trailer as it gave us an idea of what we needed to change.

Film TrailerWith our film trailer we were constantly looking for peer advice from people who were within our target audience, as we would feel we were nearing completing our film trailer we would ask certain individuals to view our trailer and to say if any other changes needed to be made. During this process we got very good feedback but also two people said that we need to work on the soundtrack. This lead us to developing a shot for shot structure on our soundtrack to make sure that everything synced up to each shot correctly and made us be more picky about whether something was complete as we got very critical with our own working. The use of dialogue was rather limited during our trailer and when questioned people did request for more dialogue to be used. This lead to us creating more relevant shots to make the narrative be more clear but we did not want to overwhelm the viewer with dialogue as we wanted to make an eerie feel about the film and to use the child's singing to disturb and we didnt want that to overlap with dialogue which we used.

Focus Group As a group we organized a focus group to make it more clear what other changes could be made and whether it was a near finished film trailer. We recorded their first reaction of watching the film and then a set questionnaire which had a yes/no answer basis was used to gain valuable feedback on what we had created. We filmed their reaction to see how the trailer would effect there physical emotions whether it be shock/frightened etc.

Focus group questionnaireAs a group we crated a questionnaire for the focus group to fill out and this highlighted key ideas and asked whether they could understand the plot well and any improvements to be needed, most iconic images etc. Here is an example of one of the completed questionnaires.

What I learnt from my questionnaireAs a group during the planning process we planned our target age range to be 20 30 year olds and within the questionnaire which we created 78% of people agreed that the age range this film trailer was for was directed at people within the age range of 15 30. This is important information as it shows that the age range we had ambition to hit has been successfully done. We had 100% of people say that they understood the narrative of the film trailer which we created but a few predicated the wrong storyline but was along the right lines of what we were attempting to portray, this shows supports the idea of poststructuralism. this shows that we was able to create a strong narrative and this could be helped by the audience feedback which we got from our animatic as it told us to work on the strengths of bringing out the narrative and we feel we did that successfully. 89% of our audience said that they would go and watch the film if it was to be released, this figure is extremely high and we had one person outside of our age range for a wider range of the spectrum to see how they would be effected and he disagreed with what he was viewing and said he would not go. This shows that we have targeted our audience well as all but one viewer would go and see the film which could have been created.

Improvements that could be made from the focus groupI want to see more of the child During the questioning of what improvements could be made this statement was made. This helps us understand that his fear can be translated to the audience strongly, the final shots we had of him looking isolated, alone and scared made you fear for his safety and thats the effect you want to have on him throughout and it would be more effective if we have more panicked shots of him as it makes you feel uncomfortable and thats the effect a horror trailer should have throughout. As a group we wanted to keep the child as more of a mystery to keep the audience interested of what happens to him, is he going to be ok? We want to leave the viewer always asking more questions about it and making them want to research more into the film and make them want to go watch it to find out what happens. As a group we believed we had the correct amount of the child to give this effect off. A faster soundtrack This is a very important point to focus on as our soundtrack was not the fastest of soundtracks throughout but this has its reasons. We wanted to create an eerie feel towards the film and make it quite mysterious, this lead to us thinking of a slower than normal soundtrack for a horror film trailer. Another example which has this effect is The Women In Black. We feel it was very effective with intriguing the audience hence the speed of our soundtrack. There was positives about our soundtracks that it was synced well and created a mysterious feel to it but others feel it did not meet the regular conventions of a horror film being extremely snappy and loud compared to our own. As a group we feel the soundtrack was successful.

MagazineDuring the creation of my magazine I took in lots of advice of what can work and what does not work. When working with my magazine when asking the audiences changes I needed to make they were critical but in-depth. I was told to brighten up the image to bring out the eyes of the mother to make her stand out in more detail. After asking comparing whether people liked the bright photo or the darker photo, I got the majority saying they preferred the lighter image because of the representation of her eyes making them brighter caused a bigger attraction to the page. The final change I made to my film magazine was to change the size of my Masthead as I got told by two peers that it was too small and did not stand out enough and reach out to the audience. I think making it bigger and spread further across the page made a huge difference to the look of it and made it more attractive

PosterI made a lot of drafts for my magazine this was my first drawn draft and received feedback from my peers In class and developed on it from there. From here I took to designing it online, when I created my first draft it was said that the image was not big enough and the image was not scary enough and I needed to show more of the teddy for it to be more attractive to the audience I was trying to target. They liked the image but said it needed more development to make it a lot more scarier. In class we did a peer review of each others posters, here is the photo of the results I obtained, it clearly shows that the image is not scary enough and show more of the teddy I took this advice and transferred into my final copy and tried to make it look like the audience wanted to see. The group also refered to the shadow figure in my image needed to be more prominent in the image to make it a lot scarier. I took all these ideas and transferred It onto to my work.

PosterAfter this I then took to designing it in a different light trying to make the view of the teddy bar more clear and brighter to stand out. I added the development of a noose around the mothers neck to try and add a higher fear factor for the audience as it he noose signifies death and is intimidating to look at. I asked for opinions of the different images and 10/10 people agreed that this was the better image overall and worked a lot as a media product. 8/10 people would be more interested in looking into the film and possibly watching it. I feel the feedback which I received helped me understand what I needed to create in a lot more depth and showed me how important it is to look into minor details to bring out a better representation of an image. The increased size of the shadow image behind her enhances something within herself and makes the image stand out even better. The audience helped me a lot within this as it helped me understand how little changes can make something look a lot more professional.

Conclusion What have you learnt from your audience feedback?The audience has taught me a lot and has helped me develop all of media products within them developing. Being able to constantly look back at feedback which I have obtained was important as I always knew how to improve and what would work and what didnt work and what changes needed to be made and what could stay. Using the criticism to benefit your media products and having to adapt to constructive criticism and make it work within your products was difficult to adapt to but was very beneficial to what I was able to create for a successful final piece of work.