Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

This is the questionnaire in which I gave to a class of students who were in the target audience for my film

The aim of this questionnaire was to find out if my target audience opinion on my media products including if they found them interesting and if not what they would change. (Some of these answers were taken into consideration when finalising my media texts and changes have been made because of the answers that were given)

Questionarre

 

1)      Can you tell from the beginning of the trailer what the genre is? If so why? If not, what would you change?

2)      Does my production company logo look realistic? If not, what would you change?

3)      Can you tell that the flashes of the two young girls in the beginning of the trailer have been included to show you that they are the antagonists? If not, what would you change?

4)      Does the trailer make you feel in suspense? If not, what would you change?

5)      Did you find any parts boring or uninteresting in any parts of my trailer or in my other media products? If not, what would you change?

6)      Did you enjoy watching the trailer? If not, what would you change?

7)      Did you find the film poster and magazine cover interesting to look at? If not, what would you change?

8)     What age range do you think these media products are aimed at?

The first question of my questionnaire was very successful as all of the answers were very similae. It allowed me to see that the public could defiantly tell the horror genre of my trailer. I have selected similar answers and graphed them together so I could see which was the most effective feature in making people aware that this was a horror trailer.

Can you tell from the beginning of the trailer what the genre is? If so why? If not, what would you change?

 

From this pie chart it is clear to me that the eerie atmospheric music clearly helps the audience to identify the horror genre of this trailer, and I think this is because spooky music is very conventional of and horror film trailer. Slightly less than three quarters of the people who were asked this question agreed that from the music/soundtrack it was obvious of the genre. This goes to show how effective the music is in my trailer and I am please it has given the desired effect.

 

I can also see from my pie chart that a small number of people said that there was conventional shot typed used as the beginning of my trailer that gave it away. I am very happy with getting this answer as I feel it is very difficult to show the genre of a trailer though the use of shot types alone. I feel I gave achieved this through careful use of planning and careful editing.

 

The minority of people said that the text about the crash and the dark lighting gave the genre away. This is believable as dark lighting is conventional in many horror films, so these viewers may have related my trailer to other horror trailers they have seen. Similarly, the text at the beginning of my trailer is seen in the trailer of Paranormal Activity so this collection of people may have related to that existing trailer.

 

From this feedback I have found that the music backing my trailer is very effective and serves its purpose well. The effectiveness of the whole soundtrack in my full length trailer has also persuaded me to use the same or similar music in my two other shorter trailers.

 

My second question was asked to find out if my production logo looked professional and realistic. This question was asked before I had created the final edit of my trailer so some of the answers have already been taken into account and added or taken away from my trailer.

 

2) Does my production company logo look realistic? If not, what would you change?

 

I chose to include this pie chart so that I could see how many people replied yes, compared to the other answers which gave me suggestions on how to improve my logo. It is clear to see that the majority of people asked this questio did believe that my production company logo looked realistic, however there were some comments which said otherwise and I have taken these into consideration.

 

Over half the people who suggested improvements said that I should show the production logo again towards the end of my trailer. Since this questionnaire has taken place this has been taken into consideration and I have chosen to include it again at the end, along with the title of my film. Overall I think this looks better and I think it helps to promote my production company better whilst also reminding the viewers the name of the film. Other suggestions say that I should show my logo for a logger period of time, however I think I have responded to this suggestion my including the logo again at the end. Some people said that I should use bolder writing however I wanted my production logo to look sophisticated and professional so I used a font which I though expressed this. One answer clearly said that he didn’t see my logo, but I personally think that it is easy to spot. Overall this question has helped me in making my trailer more professional and pleasing for the viewers.

Question three was asked to check that the public understood the layered parts of the video, without having to explain the meaning of the before hand.

Can you tell that the flashes of the two young girls in the beginning of the trailer have been included to show you that they are the antagonists? If not, what would you change?

There was various answers to this question but the most common answer was simply ‘Yes’. The second most common gave me some kind of indication to how you could tell that the two young girls were antagonists and the most common reply was ‘because of the way they are dresses’ and also ‘because of the hand held video’. I was please with this answer as my carefully thought out costume for them (mise-en-scene) was shown to be effective and also my careful consideration of camera movement (cinematography) was also seen as effective by my target audience. It was clear to me that my target audience understood layered parts in my trailer and this is the answer I was hoping for. Effectively it meant that I didn’t need to change the beginning of my trailer.

I asked question 4 to see if my trailer was effective in making the viewers of it feel suspense, like they were on the edge of there seats. I knew that if I had created this than my overall trailer was a success.

Does the trailer make you feel in suspense? If not, what would you change?

From this question it made me realise how much of an impact the music had in creating suspence within different points in the trailer. The music change and points where it comes to a crechendo really adds to the impact of the action and I realised this when I watched my trailer back with no sound. After getting this feedback I chose to enhanse this even further by turning up the volume at the climax of some of the music helping to add suspence within the action.

Some of my feed back said it made them feel in suspence because they want to know what happened to the other female character and they also want to know what the young girls do. This I found was the best answer as this is the main perpose of a trailer. This answer told me that my target audience were left wanting to know more and this will effectivly make them want to watch the full film.

This question in my questionarre has helped me to realise how effectrive my trailer really is in relation to existing and already successful ones. It includes many conventionalfeatures of a horror trailer and I think this is why it is so successful.

I included question 5 to help highlight, from an audience’s point of view, the boring or plain parts in any of my media product. I found this would be a useful question to ask as it would highlight any points to me that needed to be changed or adapted.

Did you find any parts boring or uninteresting in any parts of my trailer or in my other media products? If not, what would you change?

 

I didn’t realise when watching the trailer myself how long the beginning was untill I showed it to a group of the target audience for the trailer. This question came to be verry effective as it made me cut lots of clips short at the beginning of the traielr to make it more snappy and fast paced. Appart from this small change the audience who I shoed this trailer too found it very interesting. The target audience also didn’t find any faults in any of my media products including my poster and magazine front cover. Overall from the feedback of this question it has given me confidence that all my my media products are very successful.

Question 6 was just a general question to see the target audiences interest in my trailer

6) Did you enjoy watching the trailer? If not, what would you change?

When I asked this question a lot of the responses included praise to the effective editing of the trailer. I found this as a nice surprise as I spent a lot of time making the editing and effects correct so that my trailer could look the best it could be. 25% of the people who responded to this question relied with ‘Yes, I wanted to see what happened next’ and this again displays to me the effectiveness of the trailer as this is the overall purpose of a film trailer. Finally some of the feed back said that they found the home video was effective. I think this may perhaps be because it is a conventional feature included in many horror trailers and the audience who watched my trailer may have related the two. From this question it has told me that my target audience for my film really enjoyed my trailer and are eager to watch the whole film because of the suspense created.

I asked question 7 to see if my other two media products got such a positive responce.

7) Did you find the film poster and magazine cover interesting to look at? If not, what would you change?

This question also had a positive response from the audience with comments such as ‘Yes they look very professional’ and ‘Yes they look very effective’, however I did get some criticism suggesting that they could link slightly better. I think this is because of the vitiation in the text used in my media products. I feel this criticism had been said because of the conventions we are used to seeing in media products for example the same text and colour used throughout. I chose to challenge the conventions in my media products so that they were unique from any existing products, however I feel that they include enough conventions to still appear as successful media products. Overall this question has made me aware that the public are aware of the changes I have chosen to make, but some are unsure on how to take it.

Finally I asked the target audience for my media products what they thought the target audience was to see what response they gave

 8)What age range do you think these media products are aimed at?

Most of the people I asked this question to believed that the target audience for my media products is 15+. This in some respects could be true, however I was aiming towards an audience of 16/17+. The reason I feel most of my responses are this low is because of the lack of blood and violence involved in my trailer but because of my low budget on producing this trailer I didn’t want to include anything that looked very amature, taking away the prosessional dge on my trailer (ketchup as blood). There was a large majority however who said they though my trailer was for age 18/16-18/teens-young adults, and these responses are what I was hoping to get. From this questionnare overall I have been able to highlight features in all of my medua products both good and bad and make changes depending on this. Lots of changes were made through my own judgement also but these were recorded through different stages in my design and editing shown on my blog.

I thought that getting feedback from my teachers would also be a helpful source of feedback and this was the response.

This feed back from a more experienced person in media helped to highlights effects that I had forgot to include and also suggested some extra things I could include to make my trailer better. The suggestion of a voice over seemed daunting at first but I am glad I took on this advice as overall I feel it had improved my trailer drematically.

All of my feedback from different types/genderes/ages of people has allowed me to cater for a wide variaty of people. Whilst focusing my products to a spercific target audience I feel it was important to get feedback from someone who has a wide variaty of media knowledge as this was bound to help me  make improvements