What have you learned from your audience Feedback ?
For our A2 media coursework we produced a teaser trailer of the supernatural/psychological genre as well as a poster and magazine. Audience feedback is important because it enables us to know what the target audience liked, where exactly we went wrong and suggestions of areas of improvement if we were to do it again. Also, it’s important to know what the aimed audience thinks of the product. Our planned target audience was both male and female aged 15+. Therefore we used different forms of media methods to collect feedback to see what our target audience thought of our overall finished product.
Who Are Our Target AudiencE ?
Before we were able to conduct our audience feedback it was important to actually remind ourselves of who our target audience is and weather or not our products appealed to them. In the pre-production stage we decided that our target audience would be young adults aged between 15-21 and we would target both genders. When conducting audience research for our evaluation stage we found that mostly females were watching the trailer and they were mostly in the age range that we'd wanted them to be. On the other hand, very few males were eager to watch our trailer and in fact only older males were inclined to view the trailer. Looking at these results about our demographic it seems as though we've only appealed to half of our target audience and haven't managed to actually attract the people we wanted to watch the film or be interested in our finished products. Using statistics from our YouTube video we found that our audience is mostly in the United Kingdom rather than anywhere else in the world. We were hoping our video would be somewhat viral and perhaps reach people around the world especially in this digital age.
Below are existing movie posters from the supernatural genre that we adopted for our own film. We hoped we could reach this cult status and regardless of the genre we could attract our target audience and other viewers who are maybe not fans but will having watched our trailer. Movies such as Nightmare on elm street and The Collector would be appealing to a mass audience ,rather than a niche group of supernatural fanatics, due to their big budgets but since we're a small and new production company then we have to appeal to those who actually enjoy watching the horror movie that we've made. As a group we noticed that our target audience 15-21 weren't the ones who watched our film but rather older viewers. The movies below also aimed to target the same young adults we did but they had more of a success rate than us because of their ability to market whilst we had to depend on social networking sites.
A re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their actual death in reality. Released 30th April 2010
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A man who escapes from the vicious grips of the serial killer known as
"The Collector" is blackmailed to rescue an innocent girl from the
killer's booby-trapped warehouse. Released 30th November 2012
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In the future, a wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12-hour period in which any and all crime is legalized. Released 7th June 2013
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Teaser Trailer FeedbacK
To investigate what our target audience thought about our teaser trailer in relation to our genre choice, narrative, and actors used and production we decided to form a questionnaire that was appropriate to what we wanted to get responses with. The questionnaire contained 10 questions. It was applicable to ask the questionnaire to individuals who are similar to the demographic who watch horror films meaning that their opinion could represent a number of people in their age bracket who like watching films.The questionnaire results were analysed early on in the project meaning that the results of our three media products were influenced to a certain degree by my questionnaire results.
Initial Trailer ReactionS
Before I could delve into the questionnaire I had to ask my audience what their initial thoughts about the trailer were. By doing this I would be getting their thoughts instantly and these would hopefully be honest opinions that they had developed whilst watching for the first time. Below you will find some screen grabs that I got from my audience using Whatsapp. The social networking site Whatsapp is were most of my audience is situated therefore it made sense to contact them there and ask for their opinion.
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The initial reactions that we received were actually quite positive. Most of our audience members commented on the sound pointing out that it created 'suspense' and added 'tension' to the trailer which is essential to making the movie appear scary. The sound effects received positive comments with many saying that they found it effective and terrifying enough. There was,however, an overwhelming positive response to the visuals of the trailer which mean people thought was unique to any other existing trailer. The narrative was clear to many of our viewers and scenes such as 'Hail The Cult' were very popular among the target audience. A small amount of audience members commented on the acting and said that they didn't think it wasn't very good which then makes the trailer less scary.
10 Questions - Whatsapp
Q1 What do you feel are successful elements of the teaser trailer?
Q2 Do you feel the narrative is addressed well?
Q3 Do you understand the narrative and what’s involved and when watching the teaser trailer?
Q4 Do you think the teaser trailer is similar to existing horror trailers?
Q5 Do you think the ending is terrifying?
Q6 What horror sub-genre would you describe our teaser trailer?
Q7 Do the captions in the teaser trailer make you have a better understanding of the narrative?
Q8 Does the pacing of the trailer help create the tension to the trailer?
Q9 Was the sound of our trailer effective enough to build tension and fear?
Q10 Does the teaser trailer make you want to go and watch the film?
Overall 90% of our target audience wanted to watch the teaser trailer which is fantastic because it suggests that the trailer was successful. People did offer suggestions as to what we would've done to improve the trailer as a whole which the main and only one was to improve the acting skills in the trailer. The ending was very popular. A few people wanted to see more variation in the shots and more gore to be seen just for a little more edge. Some of our audience weren't horror fans and but still wanted to see the movie in the cinema as it looked interesting to them. the horror fans said they loved it as its not the basic horror movie that you can predict what happends next so they said that they felt interested and the sound topped it off.
Audience ReactioN
We asked this female on her views on our trailer The Cult as both male and female is our target audience so it was only right to ask both the genders
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We asked this male on his views on our trailer The Cult as both male and female is our target audience so it was only right to ask both the genders
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add subtitles to separate text contexts
To investigate what our target audience thought about our teaser trailer in relation to our genre choice, narrative, and actors used and production we decided to form a questionnaire that was appropriate to what we wanted to get responses with. The questionnaire contained 10 questions. It was applicable to ask the questionnaire to individuals who are similar to the demographic who watch horror films meaning that their opinion could represent a number of people in their age bracket who like watching films.The questionnaire results were analysed early on in the project meaning that the results of our three media products were influenced to a certain degree by my questionnaire results.
10 questions into power point and upload them to below and delete the questions above
Facebook FeedbacK
On Facebook I was able to communicate with my target audience. Facebook is the biggest social networking site and I was able to utilise it in order to get audience feedback. However, due to the fact that this website has real people I've had to conceal their identities in order to maintain their privacy. Nonetheless my audience has still given me the much needed feedback that I required and all of it was positive which is really great. On Facebook we also messaged our audience in order to get an more in-depth understanding of what exactly they liked about the poster.
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What people liked most about this trailer is the image of the antagonist which they mostly commented was 'eye grabbing' and captured their attention. Some even compared the poster to the nightmare on elms street which is reasonable since the poster has a slasher feel to it as the antagonist is hidden almost in the main image of the poster. A few of our audience members thought that the colour scheme of the magazine is different and not like the rest of horror movies that they see which is breaking convention as we intended to do.
This participant had seen the trailer before hand and was able to link the poster with the trailer and really give hardcore feedback on the poster and how it compliments the trailer The Cult and talked about the colour scheme which for Catacombs Studios the poster colour scheme was our main thought for attraction as its uncommon in horror posters.
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The overall responses I would say were positive and rarely critical of the work that we did which is wonderful because it means the poster was popular with our target audiences. What did strike us as unusual was the amount of people who did understand what genre this film was. If we were to do this again i wouldn't know what we should have done to top our poster that we had created, we had fun breaking the convention of the horror genre in the terms on the colour scheme and also features in the trailer too so changing the poster to common conventions wouldn't have attracted the audience as much as it would have been like an ordinary poster that our target audience would have seen over and over again, which is what we didn't want, so I am pleased that our thought were correct to break these conventions
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Interview With The Stars
in t his section I am interviewing one of our main stars in the trailer The Cult, asking him questions on his experience being in the trailer as well as being part of the team Catacombs Studios and multiple question on the poster as well highlighting the significance of the breaking convention in the terms of the colour scheme and the unique image lay out.
To investigate what our target audience thought about our teaser trailer in relation to our genre choice, narrative, and actors used and production we decided to form a questionnaire that was appropriate to what we wanted to get responses with. The questionnaire contained 10 questions. It was applicable to ask the questionnaire to individuals who are similar to the demographic who watch horror films meaning that their opinion could represent a number of people in their age bracket who like watching films.The questionnaire results were analysed early on in the project meaning that the results of our three media products were influenced to a certain degree by my questionnaire results.
Written Survey ResultS
In this section of our Audience research we were able to use written surveys in order to communicate with the target audience on a personal level. written surveys was really helpful and on it I could create my own custom survey The audience were mostly positive there wasn't an overwhelming amount of criticism but actually a range in answers that we hadn't received from any other question. Using this we were able so see roughly where our magazine stands with the other two products
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Overall EvaluatoN
Trailer - Our Target Audience was able to give us positives and areas of improvement. There was a mainly praises for our trialer, which suggests that we did very well in terms of our trailer. The main positives highlighted were that the shots are focused and the effects work well. The captions and the last shot gained a positive reaction from the audience and the sound did add fear and tension to the audience. The areas of improvement were able to give us information about what the audience didn't like or thought could have been more effective. The target audience thought that our acting let the trailer down a bit as it didn't look too realistic as a trailer would normally and because of that the trailer did loose a bit of the scare factor. These were small things that we can adjust hopefully. People were mostly complimentary of our work, citing the good shots and iconic sound as a way to make an effective trailer. The iconic sound would be pivotal when it comes to synergy and trademarking. If the sound does indeed become iconic then we will be able to appeal to variety of audiences, even those who don't watch horror. Some audience members felt happy that the trailer was in non chronological order as they said i was more exciting from the others they have watched and indeed does build tension as it goes back and forth but not to a point of confusion.
Poster - Our poster was well-received again which is wonderful. We were able to take advantage of social networking sites such as Facebook in order to communicate with the target audience. Facebook ,the largest social networking site at the moment, was able to supply us with different methods of communication and collecting data. Sometimes we would use messenger in order to get direct answers for the questionnaire and other times we would use the public-posts in order to get a varied and open-ended response. From the responses the audience was very engaged with the poster and believed it was a real poster before they realized the true outcome which is pleasing to know we had don the poster to professional level
Magazine - The magazine was perhaps not our most popular product but it managed to garner a largely positive response as the previous products did. What most audience members point out was the Colour Scheme and the Main image as the things they liked most about the magazine which is wonderful. The main image was popular as many on the questionnaire said 'Yes' to it been eye-catching and creative. The other good thing that people liked was the bloody effect which of course looked scary and haunting.
Poster - Our poster was well-received again which is wonderful. We were able to take advantage of social networking sites such as Facebook in order to communicate with the target audience. Facebook ,the largest social networking site at the moment, was able to supply us with different methods of communication and collecting data. Sometimes we would use messenger in order to get direct answers for the questionnaire and other times we would use the public-posts in order to get a varied and open-ended response. From the responses the audience was very engaged with the poster and believed it was a real poster before they realized the true outcome which is pleasing to know we had don the poster to professional level
Magazine - The magazine was perhaps not our most popular product but it managed to garner a largely positive response as the previous products did. What most audience members point out was the Colour Scheme and the Main image as the things they liked most about the magazine which is wonderful. The main image was popular as many on the questionnaire said 'Yes' to it been eye-catching and creative. The other good thing that people liked was the bloody effect which of course looked scary and haunting.
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