Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?By Jason Lloyd

Audience ResearchBefore Starting our television documentary, we asked a sample of 37 students to fill out a questionnaire on their thoughts towards a mobile phone documentary as well as many mobile phone related questions. This questionnaire was very eye opening as it highlighted statistics that we couldn’t believe were true such as: “74% of the sampled 37 claimed they owned their first mobile phone between the age of 7 – 13 years old”, basically outlining that owning a smartphone is such a normality in this modern era, that obviously our documentary was aiming at young audience, but of course an older generation who have also experienced the craze. 62% of the sampled 37 also stated they would want to see a documentary on mobile phones which of course gave us the go ahead knowing it would be a popular viewing. We also found out what conventions the audience wanted by conducting a recorded interview which we uploaded to sound cloud. The interview highlighted that the audience expected to see Vox Pops, A range of movile phone devices, Expert interviews, music and especially plenty of statistics.

Documentary Questions

Firstly we asked whether “On a scale of 1-5 how much did you enjoy the documentary?” The General consensus in the room was that the documentary had a lot of good ideas but took a while to get going. An idea that did come up was as turning the documentary back to front so that it started more interesting. We personally thought that making the documentary more interesting towards the end was more useful.

Documentary Questions We then asked whether the voiceover was clear and informative. Due to most of our documentary being very clear after a lot of time spent changing the sound levels, one issue that was brought up was the expert interview with Jay Singh. The audience believed that his interview wasn’t very loud, however this wasn’t the case before we exported the documentary from Final cut express. We put this issue down to an exportation problem so realistically their was nothing we could do.

Documentary Questions When asking how professional did our documentary look, we got varied responses. Most people agreed that we used a large range of different camera shots and techniques to present the documentary however, people complained that we didn’t shoot enough hand held shots to create a more realistic documentary. We thought this point was extremely valid, however our aim was to shoot most of the footage with the use of a tripod because it conformed to expository type of documentary we were trying to create. Everyone stated that the use of the pull focus was a good feature to include.

Documentary Questions This question was where we expected more negative responses when asking if the audience felt they learnt something new. Its quite hard to cover anything new in such a mainstream subject where most the population have been brainwashed with information on mobile phones. However, the audience did state that they would of said no until they saw the small montage of shocking facts we included using the typewriter. We were very happy with this feedback due to the fact it was quite hard finding facts that weren’t

Documentary Questions Did the interview contribute to the documentary? I personally thought that everyone would reply yes to this however some people felt that the Vox pops weren’t that serious or depth enough to be classed as a decent contribution. I argued that Vox pops were different to interviews however the audience stated that they judged this as a whole. I definitely think that the vox pops had to be short and informal in order to get such a range of responses.

Documentary Questions Were there enough shots to keep you interested? I personally thought that we could of included more however the audience felt we covered a range of shots. I didn’t entirely agree with this feedback due to the fact a lot of the audience thought the documentary wasn’t professional yet I would of said both this questions tie into each other. This made me doubt whether we chose the right audience.

Radio trailer Questions

On a scale on 1 – 5, how much did you enjoy the radio trailer? I personally thought that the radio trailer was the best out of the 3 products we produced. I thought that the research that we conducted was excellent and the audience also stated that they found it extremely catchy which also always important in a short radio trailer.

Radio Trailer Questions Did the music contribute to the trailer?

We felt we put the music together well as it took quite a lot of time to get the right beat. This was obviously recognisable in the audience due to only 1 person believing that that music didn’t work well. The only criticism we felt was including a ringtone at the start of the radio trailer. We used this in the documentary so it felt a bit repetitive.

Radio Trailer Questions

When asking whether the snippets included were appropriate, a few people stated that the snippets gave away a bit too much of the documentary. I had to agree with this statement due to the fact we probably should of not included as many Vox Pops as we did. This was an improvement that we could definitely make.

Magazine Article Questions

“Out of 5, how much did you enjoy the double page spread?”

This was important as we spent a lot of time debating the colour scheme. We asked our selves whether we should go for a Radio times magazine theme but we felt that it would be too bland for our type of subject matter. The audience felt that our use of bright, vibrant colours such as lava red and white was an excellent choice that immediately grabbed their attention. This was exactly the purpose so we were extremely happy with this feedback.

Magazine Article Questions Were the images used appropriate? This was the only answer that all the audience agreed on. It was quite an easy choice to choose the imagery due to the fact that the most magazines we looked at all used snippets from their documentary. It would be pointless to use anything else because that would mean advertising something that’s not ours.

Magazine Article Questions Out of 5, how professional does our double page spread look?

The audience we were aiming at all ranged between the age of 17 -18 meaning that this answer was probably bias. However our main target audience was a younger audience so it was more important to get their view. A criticism they had was that their wasn’t a 4th column included, meaning you weren’t able to read the information in the middle of the page. This was why no one rated above 4.

Evaluation

Gaining audience feedback was very important in all our products because it gave us advice of how to improve certain things that only an unbiased viewer would be able to pick up on. All in al, we felt that the comments we received were good for all 3 products, however their were many improvements we could of made such as, taking more shots using the hand held technique, including less snippets within the radio trailer which we totally agreed with as well as the most negative feedback which was of the columns within the double page spread. This research was crucial in discovering how well we did so it was relieving to get positive feedback.