Evaluation Question 3

 

Why is audience feedback important in the media? 

Throughout out “Advanced Production”, obtaining feedback from audience/peers has been something that i’ve used the whole way through my Media coursework. The feed back as helped me to understand where I have gone wrong and what I need to do to improve. As a result, this has enabled me to perfect my work to the best of my ability. I had applied the same concept of getting peoples opinions with our short film and both ancillary texts (Poster and Little White Lies review).

Understanding audience behaviours has allowed us as a group to come up with an appropriate certificate rating for our short film (most of information has been mentioned in previous posts). The certificate rating we went for was 12a, which is seen as THE most popular age rating certificate filmmakers try to get into, they will do what it takes to get into that age category. The simple reason is because the 12a certificate has the biggest target audience. This is because, not only that the BBFC advise you to be 12 to watch the film but due to the “a”(adult) it means that parents can take their children below the age of 12 to watch that particular film, therefore generate more revenue for the film.  Audience feedback for the film industry is even more essential, block buster films like Star Wars, Hunger Games and Harry Potter all go through a series of audience feedback for example, they would look at what the critics have said seen as they have direct access to the film before the general public, filmmakers would use focus groups, public consultations and many more. The film industry must take audience feedback seriously because if they don’t then they are in for an upset when the film is released, as they have not taken into account what their desired audience has said. It also requires heavy investment in the techniques they used to get audience feedback.

The demographics for my overall target audience are ages 12-25 but the film is targeted at teenagers, therefore the main target audience are ages 14-18. This is because we thought that at this age they would be able to cope with the typical horror film and not be scared after viewing it.

The social class levels for our short film would range between D to B. This is professional jobs such as teachers, police officers or admin staff. Then semi and unskilled manual jobs for instance manufacturing, production line jobs or cleaning etc.

In terms of the income level, we wanted our short film to appeal to middle class and working class people. From the research that i found, it said that the majority of UK’s population is middle class and working class. Their income levels range between £22,000-£45,000. Therefore, they are more wiling to go out and watch our short film.

It is important to focus on demographics but when it comes to marketing our short film to desired target audiences I had to carefully consider their psychographics as it divides the market into social class, lifestyle, personality and characteristics. The Scourge is a mainstream short film but it also appeals to explorers. These are people who seek discovery, energy, individualism, adventure and experience – typically young teenagers. This is in relation to our short film as it is fast paced, energetic and builds suspense, leading to the jump scare scene and it matches my desired target audience.

In relation to the uses and gratifications theory, it states that audiences play and active role in getting pleasure out of viewing different forms of media. One reason they might watch “The Scourge” is because of escapism. It temporarily allows the audience to forget about mundane life. This means the audience will be hooked with The Scourges interesting story line.

Feedback on my poster 

(Here is the link to my questionnaire that i created – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeH7f0WD7cAQf907jncZ3eAVBSrN8_MRZ4356EbU2cYu8NOtw/viewform)

One of the software’s that I had used in order to get audience feedback was Google forums. With this software you can plan events, make a survey or poll, give students a quiz, or collect other information in an easy way. The method that I had decided to use into order to get feedback was through social media. When I created the survey I had sent it out to at least 15 people who are apart of my desired target audience. Getting this feedback it vital as it would enable me to improve my final media product. Here are some of  my findings:

The feedback to me as an individual and our group was very useful because it allowed me to find out what other people thought of my poster, what was good about it, what isn’t good about it and what could be improved. By taking on board the feedback, it would help me to make my poster more visually pleasing thus attracting a wider audience.

Q1 – The first question was (how much does the font match the context of the poster?) there was a mixture of responses ranging from a score of 6 – 10, which is really good as it implies that i had used the right font in order to match the genre. The mean (average) score for that everyone submitted is (8.7).

Q2 – The second question was (what genre do you think the film is?); just by looking at the poster of the film. 84.6% said that the genre was horror and 15.4% said that they thought it looked like a thriller film. These results are really good because at least my poster accurately conveys the codes and conventions of a horror poster, despite 15% of people said it was a thriller which isn’t too bad because the two genres are very similar. At least no one thought that it was a comedy or a romance film :).

Q3 – The next question is (what was good about the poster?). Just to summarise, one of the main positive about the poster was the design. A lot of people that conducted the questionnaire praised the design (disintegration) this is my main strength. Another thing that was good about my poster was the use of colour. I had purposely used the colour red as it it very bight and it stands out “Scourge“. The colour red also has a plethora of connotations, which are fear, danger and blood. Another person had said that the tagline was cleverly used as it would make them want to watch the film “FEAR IS ONLY AN ILLUSION” (reasoning behind the tagline and the design is on my prezi for my Q2). (https://prezi.com/aiq1xti1rkqk/evaluation-question-2-how-effective-is-the-combination-of/)

Q4 – I had also received quite a lot of things that were bad about the poster. “the background picture doesn’t match the horror theme” , “The background picture could have looked more scary” , “use of lighting in the background could have been more darker”. However, there were a few people who said that there was nothing bad about the poster which is good :). On the whole, one of the main downfalls of my poster was the background. I could have made picture of the house look a little bit more spooky, this could have easily been done if I had used the colour grading tool on photoshop to change the contrast and brightness to have a darker effect.

Q5 – Finally, the last question that the audience had given feedback was “What do you think could have been improved?”. I had a mixture of responses, here are some of the things my target audience said: “More of a hint as to what the film is about” , “better layout on the poster” , “improve the background pic of the house” , “add more detail in the black boarder at the bottom”.

Once we had finished filming we thought that it would really cool to see how some of the younger students in our school would react to our short film. So what done was that we had a camera set up in the room to film the students reaction, in doing this it was good to hear some of their feedback and complements. Here is the video (6:20 reaction part and feedback): 

As a part of this evaluation question I also interviewed a few people who were in my target group and who would be in my desired target audience, here is the video:

Lastly, I also had some audience feedback on my review…. here is an example of one person: