WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM THE AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

By Kirsty Steward

Audience feedback is necessary to obtain after making a media product because, as the producer, I need to see whether my target audience read the text how I intended them to as well as seeing what I did well and what I could improve on. The format in which I collected my feedback was conducting a two small focus groups , one in which I recorded on a video camera and one in which I took notes, so the people could feed off of each other as well as not being too influenced by others, giving them a chance to voice their opinion. This feedback applied to all three tasks I completed meaning I will discuss each in full throughout this question. On the whole, my audience did recognise most aspects I intended to include in my piece, yet there were some criticisms I could develop on to make my piece/s better.

Firstly, I regarded my teaser trailer as it was the main product of the three tasks and was the basis of the other two ancillary tasks. The audience did recognise a lot of the intentions my group and I had planned to be included in the teaser trailer. For example, they recognised most of the themes included such as catfishing, online dangers, relationships and starting a new school. Also, due to elements included such as the music we used at the beginning of the trailer and the cinematic boom sound effects at the end and the structure of the piece in general made one girl want to ‘watch it more; and the other , ‘felt like’ they ‘want to know more about what’s going on’ within the film. This shows that the audience did recognise the main themes and even went on to comment on how the protagonists abuse of alcohol resulted from pictures being sent round the school, which was a more difficult concept to interpret from the piece. Therefore, we did provide elements that the audience could read effectively and enjoy, making them intrigued as to what happened so they would want to view the whole film. However, not everything about the piece was as good as it could be. One of our target audience members responded with ‘I’ve never heard that before’ after being asked about the theme of cat fishing meaning that maybe not all of our audience would be familiar with such a prominent theme. However, prior to the question she had recognised the theme of ‘online dangers’ meaning the topic itself was familiar, but not as familiar as it could be. In addition, when asked about any upsetting or disturbing themes in the piece, one girl replied with ‘rape’ maybe being an upsetting theme, regarding the protagonist sitting on the park bench when someone approaches her. This was not a theme included and not what we intended, meaning our audience may interpret our piece more negatively than we proposed. In order to make our ideas apparent, we would maybe need to include more dialogue to explain what was going on, yet this mystery was left in the piece to leave our audience guessing and have their own interpretation of the piece.

Secondly, I will discuss the second ancillary task with is the film poster. I did receive lots of positive feedback from my audience. For example, on member said they ‘liked’ the movie poster because it relates to ‘society’s’ view ‘on how girls should be perfect’. Although this wasn’t my intention when creating the piece, it shows my audience has polysemic interpretations and the theme of society is a convention of the drama genre. In addition, one reply I received was that an audience member really ‘liked the layout’ meaning the z composition/layout I chose to impose meant that it was aesthetically pleasing for my audience. Therefore the two are loosely linked, but the main point is that my audience like the piece I created. The main criticism about the film poster was the size of the notebook in the middle of the page. My audience said to make it ‘a little bit bigger’ as the writing was harder to read. Moreover, when asked how eye-catching it was, I got the answer of ‘3/4’ and this was, again, due to the size of the centre image otherwise ‘it would be a like a 5’. If my poster were to be displayed, it would most likely be online due to my position as an amateur film maker. This means the piece would need to be clear as it would not be ‘blown up’ in size, compared to posters made by conglomerate companies that feature on the sides of busses etc. To make this text fully appeal and stand out for my audience, I will make sure to increase the size of the image to make the piece as good as it could be. Also, relating to the genre/s in the text, I got a reply that ‘the film poster was a bit ambiguous’ but she ‘liked the fact that it was ambiguous’. This shows that my genres aren’t fully clear in the piece, meaning if I were to create it again, I would have to be more conventional regarding the genres. I would achieve this by using more evident low key lighting and show evidence of themes such as relationships more. However the fact that she ‘liked the fact that it was ambiguous’ means she enjoyed the mystery element to it, meaning I succeeded in that area.

Lastly, regarding my second ancillary task ; it was apparent that this task as well as the other ancillary fit well with our pain piece as after being asked whether all three pieces combined clearly and effectively, one of the girls replied with ‘yeah’ because they all ‘give the same message of what the film’s about’. This shows that all three do combine and my audience would be able to relate them effectively. Focussing on the second ancillary task; my audience recognised the theme of thriller being evident because the protagonist ‘looked scared’. One audience member suggested there could be drama but didn’t explain why. Although I used the thriller genre to entice my audience and I used the image that I did to recreate a key scene in the trailer; by not including some drama elements, I could be deceiving my audience by not making both genres evident. Yet I did receive a lot of positive feedback from the front cover. One audience member thought it was good because it was ‘expressive’ and showed her ‘what’ she was ‘guessing the film would be about’. In addition, when asked what improvements I could make to the piece they did not say to make any improvements because they thought the magazine front cover and teaser trailer were ‘really good’. This shows that my audience received the piece well but if I were to do it again, I would consider adding more drama elements to the magazine front cover to make the second genre more apparent. For example, I could achieve this by having the model in a setting of a bedroom, which is a conventional drama setting meaning the genre would be more apparent.

Overall, the need for improvement lies most with my movie poster, however improvements could be made to adhere to what my audience said. On the whole, my products were not perfect but effective enough to target my audience and for them to understand each text. Regarding my method of collecting audience feedback; that could be improved as well. As with one focus group I only recorded notes, I could not gain an extensive collection of their opinions on the piece, meaning my audience feedback from that focus group was quite vague and unreliable. Furthermore, I would ask more in depth, open questions to get specific answers from my audience that were sometimes lacking, especially in the second focus group. Lastly, I would ask some older audience members as well to get more reliable feedback. As my target audience is meant to range between 16-24, my feedback was not as effective as I only mainly asked 16-19 year olds. Therefore, if I was to repeat this task, I would ask people over 20 as well to ensure I obtain the best feedback possible.