What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 3Nicholas Randall

Film Industry Audience FeedbackThe Film Industry spend so much time and money either test screening films and finding out what the audience liked through the market research.To find out a target audience they require people from different areas of the country that are different ages and gender. They will then get the audience to complete a task, For Example this could be to fill in a questionnaire, this will give the filmmakers an idea of what their target audience is. Film-makers may also use Pearl and Dean Business to find other films of the similar genre to find what type of audience went to watch their film. We used this when finding our target audience.Doing a test screening with the correct target audience allows a fresh pair of eyes to view the film, and as they haven’t been in the process of making the film, they will be able to see if any parts of the film needs to be removed or added and if anything should be changed. This can help the film to be as successful as possible.

Our Target AudienceTo find out our target audience we gathered a few films that was similar to our film in terms of genre and narrative. These films were The Hunger Games, Skyfall and The Avengers.

The AvengersSkyfall

The Hunger Games

Source: www.business.pearlanddean.com

Our Target AudienceFrom looking at similar films to ours, we found out that are target market was mainly people aged 15-24. Although there was a higher number of males compared to females in this research we gathered, but the results were close in The Hunger Games (Our main source, as the film is very similar), but in other sources the percentage was spread out, meaning that we are unable just to say that our target market is males. But a higher number of males may watch our film instead.

Source: www.business.pearlanddean.com

When did we ask for feedback?We asked for feedback once we had put our shots into the timeline in the correct order. We didn’t focus on the sound or special effects, but we just wanted to see the rough order of our teaser trailer. Once we had our rough cut we asked for some feedback, which we found really useful. We got this feedback on a sheet, that highlighted how good or bad the microelements were (on a table), and then there was a section to leave things that were good on the rough cut and things that could be improved. I then took this sheet and put all the information into a table, so I could place it in my Blog as well as share the information within our group.

Once we gained this feedback we worked on the teaser trailer, as well as the poster and magazine cover and once we was nearly finished with all 3 products we asked for more feedback on all 3 products. This left us with just enough time to correct the small issues that was raised within the feedback. This feedback was gained through YouTube, where our audience would write what we did well as well as what we could improve.

Feedback – Rough CutWe asked our target audience for feedback on our rough cut. We didn’t focus on sound or special effects, we just focused on the order of the teaser trailer. We asked our audience to mark our micro-elements (Camera, Sound, Mise En Scene and Editing) from “Very Poor to Excellent”. We also asked for comments on our strengths and weaknesses of our teaser trailer. Overall we gained either Excellent or Good for our micro elements. Our main strengths gathered from our feedback are the use of camera angles/ movements, editing style and the good use of split screen. The main improvements that we got from our feedback was that we could have used different music to suit a teaser trailer and to also suit the narrative of the film. The middle of the teaser trailer was a bit slow and our teaser trailer could be shorter. The final improvement was to make the plot of the film easier to understand.

How did we improve?Our feedback session was useful as the audience saw improvements that could be made, which we didn’t really see to start off with. This ‘fresh set of eyes’ to the teaser trailer helps us find improvements to our teaser trailer.Our first improvement was the music, this was pointed out the most, and would require the most time to get it right. We then researched many other teaser trailers and listened to the music, we then had a brief idea of what we wanted our teaser trailer to sound like. We used the loops in Garageband to create our soundtrack for our teaser trailer. We also added ‘boom’ sound effects before a black screen, which is what we saw in many teaser trailers. We also decided to add a voice over as it was said in our feedback that the plot wasn’t very clear, a voiceover should fix that. We also made the middle of our teaser trailer much faster in pace, which overall made our teaser trailer a lot shorter than it originally was. By increasing the pace made the teaser trailer actually feel like a teaser trailer and gave a sense of what the film is like.

Music we created in Garageband with loops

Feedback – Nearly Completed

This time we gained feedback for all three of our products (Teaser Trailer, Poster and Magazine Cover). This time we asked our audience to comment on our Teaser Trailer on YouTube, where they could suggest more improvements but also say what we got right. Overall our audience liked our good use of sound, as well as the voice over, as it was effective and helped to tell the story. We had a variety of camera shots and all the shots were in focus, which the audience really liked. For the poster and Magazine Cover, the audience liked how we created a brand identity through the use of colours and the fonts we used for the titles. We used the same font throughout our products, we also increased the size of the ‘V’ in our title to make it stand out and to create a brand that will be recognizable. The audience thought our teaser trailer had a good storyline and fits well with the genre. The only improvements that were said was to improve the fonts in our teaser trailer (At the end of the teaser), and to make the overall length of our teaser trailer shorter.

How did we improve? – DurationThis Feedback session helped us to see what we got right, as well as changing a few little bits that would improve all three of our products. The main issue that was brought up was that our teaser trailer was too long. We researched at the start of this project that we wanted our teaser trailer to be around 1minute 20seconds. Before this feedback session our teaser trailer was around 1minute 50seconds. Which seemed a bit too long from what we saw in our research. We made changes like making the fight scene a bit faster, to cut down the shots. We also found a few shots that could be cut down, as they were too long, and had a couple of seconds that was useless to the teaser trailer. So we decided to cut all this down to increase the pace of the teaser trailer, but to also make our teaser trailer much shorter, which was picked up on in our feedback session.

How did we improve? - The other improvement to make was to change the titles at the end of the teaser trailer that said “COMING SOON”. After looking at these titles again, we agreed with the feedback and we changed the titles to fit with the genre and to also make it feel like a big blockbuster teaser trailer. We looked at the Hunger Games end titles and got inspiration from them, as their titles are central and look like something from Hollywood. Our end titles before were small and didn’t fit the genre of the teaser trailer, but we have never seen anything like this in a teaser trailer, so we decided to change it. We used final cut pro x to change the font of the title to something more dramatic, with a animation of the titles that we saw on the Hunger Games teaser trailer (where the titles zoom in and out). We changed the colour of the titles to fit the narrative of our teaser trailer to make it fit our film.

The Hunger Games end titles

Other FeedbackWe was also given feedback outside of these feedback sessions, which also helped us improve our final products. One of these comments was to change our poster, as it was too similar to our magazine cover. We changed the background of our poster, as before it was the same as the magazine cover. Although we still wasn’t happy with this, so we experimented with Photoshop and we finally made a new poster, which looked different to our magazine cover but also had the same brand identity as the magazine cover and the teaser trailer. We changed the position and size of the characters and we overlaid a fire photo and a photo of leaves, we then changed the opacity the make the characters viewable.

Before Feedback After Feedback

ConclusionOverall we used the feedback that was given to us by our audience, and we used it to fully transform our teaser trailer into something that you would see in Hollywood. Having the audience feedback has given us another ‘fresh set of eyes’ to evaluate our work and to find improvements that was not initially seen to us at first. We have acted on this feedback and it has made our teaser trailer, poster and magazine cover much stronger.