Evaluation 3 - What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Audience feedback was very important when making my magazine, poster and film trailer. To receive this feedback I made sure I asked my own target audience, and not someone else who would not fit the characteristics. My target audience had to be interested in film noir, they had to be aged between 15 and 30, and they could be of any sex. I chose to talk to my class mate Ryan about my film, because he simply fitted these characteristics. I created a voxpop to store this information on my blog. By choosing to use a voxpop, I was able to watch the video back over as many times as I wanted without having to read anything. I could also skip to different questions in the video, to hear the answers.

Above, is a picture of Ryan. He is 19 years of age and enjoys watching film noir films, aslong as they include aspects of action within them. He enjoys watching action films because of the suspense created and the constant drama created throughout the film. It did not matter whether my target audience choice was male or female, because my target audience is actually both. However on this occasion, I chose Ryan because he said he did like the theme of film noir. Film noir could be seen as old fashioned, however because of films like ‘Drive’, we can now see how film noir is included in more modernised films. This is the type of film Ryan would like to watch, because of the way film noir is modernised, and also the amount of action is high.

The questions I asked Ryan were recorded on my blog, just in case I wanted to ask these questions again, or just in case I wanted to re read over the information asked. I found it easy to make a voxpop because I could use the smaller flip cameras. This made it easy for me because I simply had to click one button, and I could watch over the film there and then to make sure he answered the question clearly, by using useful information. A voxpop was easy to upload to my blog, because of the way I could use the USB extension which was attached to the flip camera itself.

Above, I have screen shotted the vox pop vidoes. This is to show you how easy it was to upload these videos from the flip camera. I could then watch the individual clips, in order to decide which ones would be usedful to me. I made sure that I made individual videos for each question. This then meant that if either one of us made a mistake, we could simply delete that video, and retake it to make it perfect. Even though it seems that Ryan answered the questions spontaneously, we did speak about his answers before I filmed him. This allowed me to make sure he had a good amount of feedback, in order for me to act upon it.

Audience feedback allowed me to see the mistakes I had made, that I had missed. It allowed me to check over spelling and to make sure that everything was in place correctly. Along with this, I was able to see what other people thought of my magazine, poster and trailer. By receiving this feedback, I could take on other peoples ideas, and maybe consider changing things. As I was asking members of my target audience, I knew that if I changed things to suit one persons needs, it would probably apply to the other members of the target audience (as they like the same things). By listening to this feedback, I was able to make sure my final products came out at the best standard for what I was intending to create.

Above, is a video of feedback we received from other people in the target audience. These are people in our class. We showed them our plans for the film trailer we are going to make, and they responded by telling us their thoughts. They gave me a very wide variety of constructive feedback, as they commented on what they liked and disliked about my trailer plan. It seemed that Ryan (left) thought that the trailer would much more like a horror movie if we had the 'hand over Susanna's mouth' idea. Therefore, we took this part out and changed it for a scene where Susanna is tied up. This meant that the audience were left to think about what would happen to her, rather then allowing them to see her get physically hurt. I took this advice on board and made my film trailer as an improved version because of this. 

I found it easy to create this video as I just had to film my class mates speaking about my film trailer. This was the first time they had seen the plan for my film trailer. I thought it would be a good idea to film them as soon as they saw it because it makes it easier for me to see their immediate reaction.

I found out that there was a lot of things my target audience liked about my film trailer. This therefore meant that I would leave these aspects in, and create the film trailer as I had planned. This feedback was received before we started filming. The students are watching and animated storyboard on the screen at the front of the classroom. Because of this, it meant that I did not have to change things on the filmed clips, because we had not started filming them. It meant that I did not have to totally rearrange my trailer, because the trailer was not made. I think this is a good thing because it saved me a lot of time compared to how long it would have took if I had already made the trailer.

Me and Steph had a fair idea of what we would like our trailer to be like, and that is what made it easy to create this story board. As the storyboard is on my blog, it meant that I could look back over it, and find the bits which they commented on. I will be keeping the storyboard on my bog because it is a very defined contrast between the film trailer and the storyboard itself. This is because of the dramatic changes we have made to the storyboard.