Evaluation Question Three: Audience Feedback

How has the feedback given helped you in producing your final product?

Different ways in which we received audience feedback….

• Before we had even begun making our trailer, one thing we sat down and thought about was the ways in which we could make our trailer available to a wider range of people in order to receive some audience feedback, as we knew like with all products, we needed to make sure our trailer completely appealed to the needs and demands of our target audience

• To do this we mainly focused on social websites as a way of gaining audience feedback, due to the fact our target audience ranges from 15-25 year olds, in which social networking websites are popular with that particular group

• We also used video sharing websites such as YouTube, also popular with our target audience.

• As well as this, we also really wanted the views of someone who had actual experience in the film industry, in which Film’s Cool gave us the perfect opportunity to get some feedback from industry professionals like Mat Wakeham and Hugh Spurghling.

Social Networking Sites: FaceBookDue to the fact FaceBook would be very popular with

members of our target audience, we saw the website as a perfect opportunity to get some much needed feedback for our actual target audience. As you can see the feedback received was very positive, with 20 people ‘liking’ our trailer, as well as various positive comments including one saying that “I can really recognise the genre as horror” and another “this is really good, really clever how you have put this together, good story”. This was very beneficial as in the feedback we had previously received, one of the main things pointed out was that the story of our movie was hard to figure out from looking at the trailer. So the fact we have now received feedback from our target audience, telling us that the genre and story is now easily recognisable is very relieving and highlights the importance of using social networking sites, in this modern era where digital media has grown massively in importance, in order to further our product and also to help interact with our target audience, in order to receive feedback and tips on how we should make a trailer/ movie that fits in with their needs.

Video Sharing Websites: YouTubeAnother website we knew would be popular with

our target audience was ‘YouTube’, and so we took it upon ourselves to also upload our trailer to YouTube, in order to see what kind of response we would see on there. Although we didn’t promote our trailer on YouTube as much as we had done on FaceBook, we have still managed to receive one like and no dislikes so far, and with our trailer only being up for less than a week we see this as being very positive. We also managed to accumulate 150 views in less than 24 hours, and it has been steadily increasing since highlighting how well received our trailer has been with our target audience. Video Sharing websites like YouTube have proved to be a very effective way in gaining publicity towards your product (trailer), with a lot of peoples work going viral and even going into production just solely due to the good response it has received on YouTube, this is why I believe using YouTube for feedback was a excellent decision, as it not only allows us to receive feedback, it also makes our trailer available to a wider range of people, therefore giving our movie more publicity.

YouTube (Continued)If you look to the left you can see the viewing stats for our

trailer taken from YouTube, what’s most intriguing about this is that it shows that people have actually been searching in ‘A2 media studies: the examined’ on YouTube in order to try and find our trailer, which shows that not only our people watching it from the link we have placed on FaceBook, but there is also a certain few people who have perhaps head good things about our trailer and so are searching for it on YouTube, highlighting the positive feedback we seem to be getting from our audience, who seem to be mostly very happy with the plot and horror aspect of our trailer.

Also if you look at the gender and age of our audience, not only is it popular with our target audience of males and females aged 15-25. It seems to also be very popular with older females aged 45-54, as well as some of a younger age 13-15. We have been told by those people that this is because they feel our theme of Success vs. Failure, and the general concept of ‘how far would go to succeed?’ Is a universal theme/ concept that all people can identify and relate with, and so because of that they have said that even though they think it’s clear that our movie is not mainly targeted at them, they still feel that they’re able to really relate to it and so find it very compelling to watch.Our trailer even has views from people living in America!

Industry ProfessionalsBeing a part of ‘Film’s Cool’ has benefitted us greatly, as we

have been able to receive advice from industry professionals, the picture on the left shows some of the advice they gave us after seeing our trailer (this was before we edited it and posted it on FaceBook again). They made it very clear that although they believed we had the recipe for a really good and effective trailer, which they believed could even be made into a real trailer due to our story, they still felt that the story and themes of our movie wasn’t being made clear in our trailer, which as a result was really letting down our trailer as we could’ve produced something much better. They got a piece of paper (left) and wrote down some tips they had which they felt would help improve our final product, these tips included showing; ‘a decision to cheat’, ‘bullying’, ‘girl killing herself’, ‘shot of a clock’, as well as some other tips. Hearing this advice we decided to film some more shots with this advice in mind, which I personally feel, and from looking at the feedback we’ve received on FaceBook and YouTube, has helped enhance the quality of our trailers greatly, and has done now done exactly what they’ve told us to do, tell the story and themes of our movie well. For this I am very grateful towards those industry professionals at Film’s cool who have given us some superb feedback which has helped us greatly.

OVERALL…

Overall, I feel the feedback given to us has helped us greatly in producing our trailer. With the advice of industry professionals in mind, we have been able to construct a trailer that really fits in well with the needs and wants of our target audience due to the fact we have used conventions of horror movies in our trailer to excellent use, and also told the story, themes and emotional hook of our movie well. This was all confirmed in the audience feedback we were given by our target audience and secondary audience on YouTube and FaceBook, who confirmed that the story and themes of our movie came across well, and that from the trailer they would definitely want to watch our movie, which was very good news for us to hear, as it confirms that we have managed to produce a product that fits in well with our target audiences wants and needs.