What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback

Audience Feedback is crucial in allowing a product to evolve into a well formed and received film trailer/poster/magazine. With this in mind we made sure to ask for feedback throughout our whole researching, planning, editing and producing stages in order to keep us along the right path and not divert our attention to menial things that could change the look or continuity of our products altogether. 

Unlike last year, this time we constructed two questionnaires as a source for feedback, in addition we approached Facebook and filmed some first time responses after having looked at our promotional package and held a number of viewing sessions.

Trailer

At the end of the long process of constructing the trailer, we asked a hand full of individuals if they could watch our Queensdown Warren film advertisement. Their ages ranged by three years, they were mainly 15-18 years of age.

Issues that were bought up derived from the lack of shots portraying all three girls together. Whilst this was valid point, we felt that in order to achieve the feelings of isolation within our trailer, it was more useful to us to not show her with her friends. In addition, the main girl is the character who carries the film's message of resisting and fighting situations which you did not plan to be put in. 
We thought it would be effective to have two friends which could symbolize what would happen to people if they did not fight, and as there are two or them, and two of the men it would reinforce the power that they had over the girls. 

On the other hand, our audience expressed their fondness of the contrast between the fact paced shots and the slow motion leaf falling shot. They said that they thought they worked well in highlighting the calmness which is usually associated with the countryside and the fast moving shots to resemble the fast moving life of the city.
Moreover, another element which caught their eye was the ending shot where the girl is being dragged and then the camera goes out of focus. It was noted that this was particularly effective as it directly showed the audience the girl's perspective and how we wanted our target audience to sympathize with the girls.

Reflecting on the usefulness of organizing feedback sessions, we felt that it was a quick and easy way of collecting opinions on our work and this meant that we were able to correct any issues with immediacy. Also, by holding these viewings it meant that while the people we were watching our trailer we could attain their reactions and this was useful to know. It informed us where we needed to make the soundtrack louder or a shot clearer. 

Overall, I think we would use this method again to gain consensus of opinions on our work as it is a quicker way to in effect, perfect our work to a higher standard. However, the only negatives that this approach has to offer is that it does not have that element of anonymity which questionnaires and blogger comments have. They may have felt under pressure to give the same opinion of others within the focus group. 

Magazine

As useful as it is, getting feedback from media students, we realised that it can be more important to get opinions off those who are not inclined to be thinking in terms of  - what does that shot connote? and the lighting here suggests... We also learnt that obtaining outsider's thoughts on our work would give us a fresher perspective on how our version of a Total Film magazine cover looks in comparison to others, and whether we have established a consistent brand that evokes the 'must see' feeling.   

With the magazine cover that we thought of adopting the viewing/Q and A session once again, as it proved itself very effective with our trailer. 

Advantages of Q and A session

• Produced instant results
• Results were rich with detail 
• If responses were unclear, we could ask them to elaborate
• Face to face technique worked well in allowing us to see their facial reactions 

In light of the benefits to our viewing sessions, there are disadvantages to using those techniques...

• Social desirability, the participants may say what they believe the rest of the people are thinking in order to gain respect or feel equal to everyone else
• Pressure in acting a certain way in front of us, so they do not offend

Responses to our magazine overall was positive with people saying that the girl's poses and expressions were very good in showing fear (this response shows continuity in our three products) and that in terms of achieving a cover that looks professional, we have managed to do so. 

Despite all of the good points, there was one critique, and this was that the words Queensdown Warren did not stand out very well against the girl's navy hoodie. Due to this, we highlighted the font in bold however it did not make much of an improvement. The reason why we did not change it further is because we would have had to change to font, and for continuity purposes this was too much of an alteration. 

Poster

Lastly out of our three products, we learnt that our poster was very professional looking and would not stand out amongst other posters that are displayed outside of a cinema, like Odeon, for example. 

It was through the Facebook website that helped our poster to develop in the earlier stages, as we posted the image to the left there were both positive and negative comments. There was a desire that they expressed to see more of the girl's surroundings. As a group we felt that this was a reasonable idea and by make the overall expression of the poster lighter, it would help people to see the boys in the background much better and increase the feelings of danger upon the girl. 

After we had made the changes someone stated ‘the two men in the background look intimidating and stronger than the girl.’ This is positive feedback because as a group this was the vibe or expression we hoped the audience would see now.

It was important to us to receive opinions from people our age so we can tell if we had achieved what we set out to do, to produce an effective, conventional thriller trailer than manages to make our audience feel something towards the characters. In light of this, Facebook was extremely helpful as it is a very interactive site and we could spread our trailer/poster and magazine cover across  Facebook to address a mass audience, relatively quickly. 

The disadvantage about the aforementioned site however, is that there is an option to like the image or video that has been posted, and whilst collecting individuals thoughts on our products, many people "liked" our post and did not comment on why they liked it. This gave us very little information to go on as it did not specify or give us constructive criticism.  

- By Katie and Grace