Audience Feedback

When creating a film and the trailer - poster and magazine cover for it - one of the most important things to consider is how it will appeal to the target audience. As or project was for us to create a poster, trailer and magazine cover for our film we felt that getting feedback for ours products was also very important to help us improve and make them appealing to the target audience.

Getting FeedbackIn order to get feedback for the three products we had created we decided to use social media sites as well as a questionnaire. We posted the poster, trailer and magazine cover on our Facebook, Twitters and Instagrams, we chose to use these social media sites as they enable people to comment on the products very easily and will allow a lot of people to see them. On these websites we created a captions for the uploads, asking people to leave any feedback in comments.

For the questionnaire I decided to keep it very simple; I asked people to simply write two things they liked about the products and one thing they dislike about them. I thought that this simple questionnaire would be easy for people to leave feedback in but would get the feedback we wanted.

Poster FeedbackIn order to get feedback for our films poster one of us posted it on to our Facebook and then the other two shared it; this meant that all of our contacts on Facebook would be able to like/comment on the poster.

On Facebook our poster got a really good response; getting 30 "likes" and 12 comments.

Poster FeedbackThese were some of the comments we received on the posters Facebook post:

This was the most detailed response we got from the feedback on Facebook. As we hadn’t stated on the post what the film was about or that it was a found footage film, this comment was very useful in letting us know that people still had a good idea of the genre of it. One of the pieces of feedback that was mentioned on this comment, that was also mentioned on a couple of the others was that the character in the background could be highlighted more in order to make it stand out which is something I am going to make an adjustment to.

One of the aspects of the poster that we had thought about a lot in the production was the typography; we got several comments on the post saying that they liked the typography. This good feedback on the typography was really helpful because we were still slightly unsure of it.

Quite a lot of the feedback we received for the poster suggested that people could recognise a link between our poster and the posters for films “[Rec]” and “The Blair Witch Project”. It was really good to hear that people could make these connections as these are two of the films we studied as inspiration as they were of a similar genre.

Poster Feedback

Like – The way the poster looks like its being seen through the camera really suits the style of film.Like – The blurred font and graphics on the poster also suit the genre and look really effective.Improvement – It would look more scary if it was slightly “gloomier” or darker.

Like – The characters eye contact from character really draws you in to the poster. Like – The simple composition of the poster is also very effective.Improvement – The 5 star review is slightly covering her forehead, it would look better if it was elsewhere.

Like – The bruising and cuts on the characters face show that she has been battered and look very realistic. They also add to the “horror” look of the film.Like – I think the characters eyes are piercing and the eye contact makes these really prominent.Improvement – I think that the battery symbol is overpowering, it could be slightly smaller.

Like – I really like the blurred effect on the frame and graphics, it really adds to the horror look of the film. Like – The text/credit section along the bottom looks very professional.Improvement – I think that the character in the poster could look more scared, this would make the film appear more scary.

As well as the Facebook feedback we also got some people to answer our simple questionnaires, this is some of the feedback we received:

Poster FeedbackI think that these questionnaires worked very effectively as the feedback we received was very constructive and has given us a few small things that I can change on the poster to improve it to make it more appealing to the poster.

Some of the changes I am going to make to the poster based on this feedback are reducing the brightness of the image slightly to make it appear more “gloomy” as one of the comments suggested I should. I am also going to look at moving the star rating on the top of the poster to a different place so that they are not covering the characters forehead. Finally I may also experiment with making the battery slightly smaller so that it is less “overpowering”.

Poster ImprovementsThe first improvement I tried was to reduce the size of the battery in the corner as some of the feedback we received said that it was “overpowering”. I experimented with the battery at different sizes, however, after experimenting with this I decided that the battery at the size we already had it looked the best as it is most in proportion with the rest of the camcorder style graphics on the screen.

Poster ImprovementsOne of the other suggested improvements for the poster was to make it look “gloomier”. To try and create this look I first added a black and white filter to the poster and then reduced the opacity of it; this gave the poster a slightly lower saturation of colour. I then added a brightness and contrast layer and increased the contrast and brightness slightly; this increased the darkness of the shadows in the image giving it that “gloomier” look but by adjusting the brightness slightly it meant that the details in the characters face could still be seen. I think this was a really good suggestion for improvement and the adjustments I made look very effective so I will be keeping it like this.

Poster ImprovementsThe final thing that I decided to look at changing was the positioning of the star rating at the top of the poster as some of the feedback we had suggested that the positioning of it was distracting. I experimented with moving the stars and “Total Film” around butI felt that the topcentre of the posterwas were it lookedbest as it makes theposter appear morebalanced than in any of the other positions on the page.

Trailer FeedbackIn order to get feedback on for our trailer we posted our trailer to Facebook and Twitter, we then all “shared” the posts so that all of our contacts could see it. We chose to use this social networking site as they gave people to easily leave comments and likes for us on them.

Our poster also got good feedback on these social networking sites, however it did not receive as much feedback as the poster did. On Facebook it received 3 “likes” and 1 comment and on Twitter it received 1 “favourite” and 3 comments.

Trailer FeedbackThese were some of the comments we received on the Twitter post of the trailer:

The feedback we received on the Trailer’s social media posts were less constructive. The only constructive piece that we received was “needs more death”. I later questioned the person who left this comment asking him about exactly what he meant; he suggested that we should add a scene of death to make the trailer appear more “scary” and “tense”.

Trailer Feedback

Like – I think the use of screams throughout the trailer were effective as they were really dramatic.Like – The white hand on the screen at the end looks really good, to make them even more effective you could add some blood or bruises on these hands. Improvement – Something you could do to improve the trailer is to add some more dark/night time shots as they are very commonly used in horror films.

Like – I think that the filming of the scenery near the beginning is very artistic and works really well.Like – The short cuts of the “villainous” character throughout the poster are really spooky.Improvement – It could use some more shots of the characters talking at the beginning to introduce them more and explain what the film is about.

Like – The short length of the clips adds to the suspense and give the trailer a fast pace. Like – I think that the sound effects use throughout the trailer are very effective and really add to the atmosphere, especially at the when the villainous character runs towards the camera.Improvement – An improvement that I would suggest is that you could add a louder soundtrack of music in the background as it would make it more dramatic.

As well as the social network feedback we also got some people to answer our simple questionnaires, this is some of the feedback we received:

Trailer ImprovementsWe received quite a lot of feedback on our trailer and most of it was really positive. As with the poster, the feedback we got from using the questionnaires have given us some very useful and constructive feedback that we can use to make the necessary improvements and adjustments to it so that it appeals to the target audience. Some of these improvements are; adding in more dark/night time shots, more shots of the characters talking about what the film is about and increasing the volume of the soundtrack.

As Jemma made the trailer she looked at the feedback we received and experimenting with making any improvements that she thought was necessary.

Trailer FeedbackOne of the comments we got on our trailer was that it needed more dark/night time shots so we decided to try and make this adjustment to the trailer by filming some more and adding them in. We found it very difficult to get many good shots in the dark as lighting the characters was difficult to achieve with the resources we had. However, after Jemma spent some time playing around with adding in some of the dark/night time shots, we decided that although these evened out the trailer – as the shots of the “villain” are in the dark – they didn’t quite have the same pace and meant that the trailer as a whole lost it’s pace.

Trailer FeedbackAnother of the comments we received as feedback was that the trailer could use a small section of footage at the beginning that introduced the audience to the characters and what the film was about a bit more. We filmed some other clips of this and Jemmaexperimented with incorporating them into the beginning of our trailer. However, we are really pleased with how the beginning of the trailer works already and, similarly to the night time shots, we felt this new “introduction” slowed the pace of the trailer and was less effective.

Magazine Cover FeedbackTo get audience feedback for our magazine cover we posted it on Instagram, this is a social networking site that specialises in the sharing of images. We chose to use Instagram as we have not used this app to gain feedback but have used it to collect images for other parts of our coursework. It worked really well to help us gain feedback as, similarly to Facebook and Twitter, it allows people to “like” and leave comments on the posts.

On Instagram our magazine cover received 6 “likes” and a few comments:

Magazine Cover Feedback

Like – I think that the editing of the faint hand on the screen looks really effective and gives the magazine cover a real horror look.Like – I think the presentation of the magazine is really well done and it looks like a real magazine.Improvement – An improvement I would suggest is that the right hand side of the page is slightly empty and could use something on it.

Like – I really like the way the image has been edited so that it is really dark and a bit blurred, it makes it look very scary. Like – I like the way the magazine cover has a similar look to the poster and trailer; it links them together really well.Improvement – The text along the left side of the page is not equally spaced.

Like – I like the photograph used, the silhouettes gives it a sense of mystery and makes it look very scary.Like – I think the title is really easily noticeable and looks very similar to the one used on the poster and trailer.Improvement – I think that the battery either needs to be a bit smaller or not there at all as it looks strange behind the “FILM”.

As well as the social network feedback we also got some people to answer our simple questionnaires, this is some of the feedback we received:

Magazine Cover FeedbackAlthough for our Magazine cover we received less feedback than we did for the other two texts we produced, the feedback that we did get was very helpful. We are going to use this feedback to improve our Magazine cover to try to make it appeal more to the target audience.

As Fenella created the Magazine Cover in the first place she is going to make the improvements. Some of these changes that she is going to look at making are based on the feedback of adding something else to the right hand side of the page, making sure the text along the left of the page is evenly spaced and moving/resizing the battery symbol in the top right hand corner.

Magazine Cover Improvements

One of the first adjustments we made to the magazine cover was experimenting with adding something else to the right and side of the page to balance it out slightly. Firstly Fenella came up with a new “plug” to use on the cover, after taking another look at existing magazine covers we decided to use “On-Set Exclusive with Mark Wahlberg as we discovered that using a “star” on the cover is a good way to attract audience attention. Fenella positioned this text so that the “On-Set Exclusive” was above the other part and slightly bigger, she did this as the “On-Set Exclusive”s use of the word exclusive makes it sound important to the audience.

Magazine Cover Improvements

We also experimented with adding a background behind the main part of this plug as it draws the audience attention to it more by making it stand out from the background. Another thing that Fenella tried with this plug was using a slightly different font to the one she used on the other plugs as we noticed that a lot of magazines. We chose a font that was quite similar to the one that is used for the “FILM” in the masthead, therefore it draws the audiences attention more.

We thought that this other plug balanced out the page more but also distracted from the main cover image so we decided not to use it.

Feedback and ImprovementsIn general, we found the feedback that we received for the texts that we created for this project very useful for helping us improve our texts. Also, we were really impressed with the amount of feedback we got and thought that it appeared as though our poster, trailer and magazine cover were all very popular.

I think that the methods of getting this feedback, by using a simple questionnaire and posting the texts to our social networking sites worked really well together as the questionnaires gave us more detailed feedback whereas the use of social networking sites gave us a wide reach.