WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

QUESTIONNAIRE Firstly, once we had finished our teaser trailer, I constructed

a questionnaire for people to answer once they had finished watching the trailer

I wanted to ask a variety of different people to watch my trailer and answer my questionnaire because not only did I want to know what my target audience thought about the trailer, but I also wanted to see what older and younger people thought of it and also both males and females too.

I distrubuted my questionnaires out to different classes in different years in the school so that there was a variety of ages and sexes and I also asked the teachers of those classes to do the same. I also asked people outside of the school to complete the questionnaire too so that I had a varied amount of people

When the questionnaires were completed, I had about 20/25 questionnaires returned to me and so I spent a couple of hours looking through the questionnaires with my trailer in front of me too so that I could read through the feedback and the constructive criticism and then watch my trailer back and really emphasise on the sections on my trailer that had been given feedback on, so I could see what I had needed to improve.

In the slide above are two images of my questionnaire, the front page and the back.

On my questionnaire, the questions were1) Are you male or female?2) How old are you?3) What is your favourite genre of film?4) What would you rate the trailer out of 5?5) Why?6) What would you do to make this trailer

better?7) Would you go and watch this film in the

cinema after watching the trailer?8) What do you think of the setting?9) What do you think of the sound? 10) Who do you think will get the boy in the

end?

The feedback from the questionnaires that I felt was most useful and that I needed to act upon so that my trailer could be improved and have an overall more professional affect were the following:

- Some people said that they felt the narrative needed to be straight away from the beginnning of the film and that there needed to be more than an establishing shot of the school to determine this.

- Also, they suggested that me and my partner re-film the end sequence where the two girls run up to the castlist because in the original footage, you couldn‘t see the actual cast list itself so they suggested that we re-film it and add more emphasis onto the cast list itself so that the audience knows what the two girls are running up to

- They also suggested that we extend some of the footage we had used as they felt it had been cut too short to the point where what was going on in the filming wasn‘t clear to the audience and it didn‘t come across as it should

- Addittionally, they said that there was one clip in the trailer where the background noise from the setting and the filming was louder than the actual music that is supposed to be playing alongside the film

- Finally, the people completing my questionnaire suggested that Greg should be encorporated more into the film so that the audience understands the sub-plot of the two girls fighting over the boy, as well as the main plot of the two girls wanting the main part in the show.

● Me and my partner then decided from this feedback that we were going to act upon what the people filling out the questionnaire had suggested so that our film would be understood more by target audience and to give the trailer overall a more professional, polished final piece.

Here, I have written out all the things I needed to improve in my trailer. I have done this so I can keep on track with what to improve and also so that I can get my improvements as close to what people suggested as possible.

This can also be used a checklist so I can tick each one off when I have completed it and improved it on my trailer.

-Here is the first improvement of my teaser trailer ticked off.

- To improve this, all I did was open up the software in which my film was embedded into and then I just turned the volume down on the clip where the background noise was too loud and I turned the volume up on the music soundtrack that is supposed to run alongside the trailer.

-Here is the second imrpovement on my list being ticked off.

- To do this, I re-added the full length clips that I had saved in My Documents that were uncut and then I added them into my film and dragged them down to the timeline.

- Once I done this, I could then but the elongated clips into the places where they should be in the trailer.

- I could then cut these clips however I wanted them to be, which I did, but I didn‘t cut them as much as I had done previously so that the clips were longer and were therefore able to establish a storyline better.

- There were 4 scenes that I re-cut in the trailer. They were all audition pieces for the school show and I chose to lengthen the young girl who was really good, and Natalie, the really bad one to emphasise the contrast between the two characters and to get across the idea that the two of them are auditioning for a role in the school show.

- I also elongated the clip of Greg auditioning for the show. I did this because I felt his presence in the trailer was not as great as it could be so I felt like the more he was in the film and the longer he auditioned for, then the more noticeable it would be tell that the two girls are fighting over him.

- Finally, I re-cut the clip of Kieran dancing and falling into the camera. I did this because initially, I had cut it too far and the audience didn‘t really understand what had gone on so the second time round I only cut the clip a tiny bit at the start so that the audience could see him begin his dance and then eventually fall into the camera, whereas before he just fell into the camera

straight away.

-Here, I am showing that I have completed 3 improvements.

- In the third improvement, me and my partner decided to re-film the end sequence of the trailer because the castlist wasn‘t visible the first time we filmed it.

- To re-film, we gathered our two main characters and we also created a cast list on Microsoft publisher so that it would be as believeable as possible.

- We then recorded them running up to the cast list from the bottom of the corridor. We also changed the setting from the time around we did to a different corridor in a different part of the school because we thought this would be more effective as you could see the look on their faces as they are running up the castlist whereas the first time we filmed it you couldn‘t see this as we filmed it from behind.

- Once we had recorded them running up to the castlist a couple of times, we took a close up of the castlist itself because we knew we wanted to cut from them running up to the castlist to the castlist itself.

- We then filmed a close up of their faces as they reached the castlist and we wanted quite a similar facial expression on both of the characters faces as we didn‘t want the audience to find out who will get the main part. In the trailer, after there has been a close up of the castlist itself, the camera will cut to this close up of the girls faces and will end on this so that the audience are curious to know who gets the main part in the show and who gets the boy in the end, therefore wanting to go and watch the film.

- Finally, we had to edit the still of the castlist on photoshop before putting it into the film software and onto the trailer because you could see names on it and that would give the whole ending of the film away so we had to blur out the names on the castlist so that the audience would be pursuaded to go and watch the film at the cinema.

In this image, I have ticked off another improvement.

This time, I wanted to improve the fact that one of the main characters, Greg isn‘t in the trailer as much as he should be considering he is important in the plot of the trailer and the whole film itself.

To make this improvement, I extended a few clips that Greg is in in the trailer to emphasise his importance in the trailer and to show that he is the most popular boy in school and the subplot that is also occuring, in which the two girls are fighting over him. The clips that I extended were the ones where he is auditioning for the school show with his guitar. I extended this because the feedback I got was that they didn‘t really understand what Greg‘s role was in the trailer and so by extending his audition clips and the amount of time he is in the trailer for, I think it will emphasise his importance and allow his character to evolve in the trailer.

-Here is my final improvement ticked off, letting myself know that I have improved on all of the audience feedback that I was given from my questionnaires.

- In this improvement, I decided that the narrative and the storyline needed to be established from the beginning of the trailer and that this establishment needed to be more substantial than just an establishing shot of the school from afar. To do this, I created an auditions poster on Microsoft Publisher advertising the auditions that would be taking place with the date and time and where they were taking place. I then put this up on the wall outside our Media room, which is on the main corridor where everyone in the school would see it. I took a still of this poster with the video camera and then transferred it to the software that my film was on. I then uploaded it to software and dragged it to the start of the trailer. I decided to put it after the establishing shot of the school but before the auditions actually start so it lets the audience know that there are auditions being advertisied and therefore they hopefully will then understand why there are auditions in my trailer and why the 2 girls are so competitive against each other which may not have been understood before.

WHAT HAVE I LEARNT? From my audience feedback, I have learnt that it is never

too late to make changes to improve my trailer. I have learnt that I can really listen to constructive criticism

and turn it into a positive in which I am able to improve my teaser trailer and make it a finished overall production.

From the audience feedback recieved, I feel I have acted on this accordingly and have really improved my media trailer from what is was before to what it is today and I am very appreciative of the audience feedback and the people who took the time out to give me feedback on my film as it has allowed me to strengthen my media skills but also has opened my eyes to how I could have improved my trailer and now hopefully I have improved it and made it look more professional and a much more highly polished and well constructed teaser trailer.

The newly filmed scenes can be seen on the re-filming post on my blog.