Evaluation Question 3 - What Have We Learned From Our Audience Feedback?

Evaluation Question 3 - What Have We Learned From Our Audience Feedback?

Tinika and I asked people to view our trailer, poster and magazine cover and then took them outside one by one to ask them for their honest opinion on each aspect. We asked them to give us varied feedback, some positive and some constructive. Below are the clips of the people we asked to give us feedback and underneath is their name and age. 

We chose to interview them and record it as a video to allow them to express more of an open opinion rather than a questionnaire which wouldn't allow for their own personal input and detail. 

We also chose to vlog our feedback to tell if our understanding of our audience's demographic had been effective when creating the video; especially in targeting the right demographic. 

Our trailer was aimed at males and females aged 16-25. We conducted our interviews on a few of our peers, all aged 17 and 18 and also we decided to do our interview on two people who fell outside out primary audience as their ages were younger or older than 

Name: Monique Jackon

Age: 18

Our participant made clear that she really liked the text we used throughout our film trailer and how she like the way we portray the stalker. She also goes on to say how she thinks it has come a long way from our first draft as we have condensed our film clips and developed the text on screen during our trailer. Her favourite clip was of our protagonists screaming and we added a blur effect at this point so it showed her exhaustion which she liked. She would have our text on screen on for another second just to make sure it is clearly readable and she would have the same title from our magazine cover/poster on the trailer to show they link. When we moved onto our magazine cover and poster, our participant said she liked the fact they weren't too busy. She said she also liked the colour scheme with our magazine cover and poster which links with the colour of our trailer creating the synergy and showing these media texts link. This is something we were aiming for and the fact one of our participants picked up on it is really positive. She also said both texts look professional and if she saw them in her day to day life she would believe it is a real film.

Name: Amber Ellis

Age: 18

Our participant made it very clear that she liked the editing of our piece, she also liked the mood lighting throughout the piece which she spotted carried on into our film poster and magazine cover which is again what we were aiming for. This is very positive as two of our participants in our primary audience have picked up on a key feature we were aiming for. She also liked the variety of shots and angles used and a low angled shot of our protagonist running was her favourite. She thinks its come a long way from our first draft due to our music and editing. The thing our participant would change would be our text/font to make it more suitable for our genre. When we moved on to our magazine cover, she said she liked the continuing colour theme and our central image. She said she would make the barcode clear if she could which was something new which we hadn't heard before which was an interesting piece of feedback to have! When asked what she liked about our poster this participant said she liked the colours and the water effect that is going on. She liked how bold the font was and the actual name of our film trailer. She said to be fussy she would change the accent colour on our poster to be a navy blue instead of a red or a white just so there wasn't too much going on. However, she did say she thought the poster and magazine cover looked professional and if she saw them in her day to day life she would think it was a real film coming out.

Name: Sue Cattermole

Age: 37

This participant said she really liked the music we added to our film trailer as it engaged her; due to the fact it was tense. She continued to say that she liked the variety of cuts we had used as it made our trailer look very fast paced and she liked how you could see a few different story lines in the trailer also. She believes it has come a long way from our first draft due to the editing and how the format now looks more like a trailer rather than a film. Her favourite shot in our trailer was when our protagonist was on the running machine in the gym. However, she was unaware of what our antagonist was doing writing on a whiteboard and would want to make that more clear if we were to include it.

Moving on to our magazine cover and film poster, she said she liked the different colours of blue and the contrast of the text colour with these blues to make it stand out. She said she would add a few more details about the film on the poster to give more of an idea of what it was about. However, our participant said she would not change a thing about our magazine cover. She also said she thought they looked professional and if she saw them, she would believe they would be part of a real film.

Name: Ionie Wynters

Age: 15

This participant said she liked the text on our film trailer as it engaged her into our trailer. Moreover, she said she liked the editing of the trailer as it flowed well and the quick cuts, even though they were quick, still allowed for a lot of detail to be added. She also said it has come a long way from our first draft as the images now catch her eye which is something we were really looking to do. Her favourite shot was our protagonists eyes as she said it showed her emotions which is also something we were hoping audience members would pick up on as we wanted our protagonists eyes to speak for her in that shot. She said she would add the release date into our trailer so audience members knew to look out for it. Moving on to our magazine and poster, she said she liked how colourful the magazine cover was which will draw her attention into it from a distance. This is a key thing to have as it means it appeals and engages with our target audience. Our participant also said a similar thing about our poster and how the writing and the colours would draw her in which is a really good thing to hear as it means we are engaging with our primary audience. She would keep the font of the title of the film the same throughout all the media products to create synergy and she agreed it looked professional and like a real film!

The main thing we learnt from our media feedback was our editing needed to be improved and spent a lot more time on. This is due to the fact that editing combines everything together and if done right can make it seem professional and can create many different emotions for an audience member.

Initially our editing was very jumpy and quite plane because we used Serif Movie Plus X6. However, from our experience last year and having this software which limits us, we realised that we were able to make a lot of the shots we wanted ourselves. One example included a CCTV shot. We initially thought we would have to use an overlay but we were mistaken when we just added a black and white filter and text on screen. Getting a variety of shots and speeds allowed us to mix it up and appeal and engage our target audience more.

Our editing process improved when using iMovie. It helped us to create a story line whilst following the conventions. It was a much more helpful piece of software to help us edit.

Adding in text really allowed us to change the format from a film opening to a film trailer. After doing so, we received feedback telling us it was a little too revealing and getting feedback really helped us to develop this and not reveal too much of the plot.

Moving on to our poster and magazine cover, we created a lot of drafts before getting these how we wanted them before receiving feedback as we knew we weren't happy and we didn't want to release them. 

When we eventually did show our peers our poster and magazine cover we received really helpful feedback about our background colour on our magazine cover as half of it was blue due to the fact we took a picture of our protagonist with an L.E.D light which only covered half the background in the picture. Our peers told us to make sure we colour the whole background and we spent ages on a website called Pixlr trying to colour the background...unsuccessfully. I decided I would cut the image of our protagonist out and stick onto a different coloured background. Even though it took a while, it was praised much more by our audience.

Another thing we struggled with was our credit block, Tinika created an amazing credit block, however it was not able to be used on the editing website we were on called Canva. It was a really good website which is where we created our poster and magazine cover. However, it doesn't let you copy and paste texts without a white background occurring. Therefore, Tinika and I had to work on creating a new credit block at the last minute with limited fonts which became very frustrating. However, we did manage to develop a credit block that we liked and we were able to change the spacing between the letters and lines to make it have more of the conventions of a credit block.

One final thing we struggled with was changing the film title on iMovie to the one we had created on Canva. Tinika and I were unable, in the end, to change the film title on our trailer to match our poster and magazine cover which was a real shame. We were unclear of how to do it and ran out of time to change it.