During the duration of my coursework I learnt that audience feedback was crucial in the development of my product. It helped me learn from my mistakes, it also helped to improve areas of my work, which without having feedback from my peers I wouldn’t of been encouraged to do in the first place. Not only did I get constructive criticism from my target audience of 18 to 24 year olds but also I received feedback from people who had previously of A2 media. This not only helped me to see the do’s and don’t from people that could relate to what I was doing, but also it was crucial because it helped me to stick even closer to the conventions of horror that were crucial if my work was actually to be representative of a real world media product.
Firstly one of initial things we did to involve our target audience was to have them help us choose the name of our film. This was important because I was having difficulty choosing a name. We gave them multiple choices to choose from. To help us we used social media, in this case facebook. Using facebook helped me learn what my target audience wanted best and whether their opinions correlated well with mine. When giving them the choice of film titles I thought I liked “the creep” best out of all of the selection, and when my peers chose this, my opinion was validated. So therefore I learnt here that I was doing well in trying to conjure up things that would appeal to my target audience.
In terms of editing my audience feedback was crucial in enhancing my work. I screened the first draft of my trailer to one of my friends and she stated she found it difficult to follow the narrative of the story. She also had problems in terms of continuality. As she thought that the changes in clothing were not intentional and therefore she thought it was a mistake on my park. However the changes in clothing of one of my characters were planned carefully in pre production and therefore I could justify it. So after this feedback I took the decision to research existing film trailers to see what conventions they use to make things more clear. One of the examples of this was Halloween which included a voice over that helped to set the scene and told the audience what the story would be about. So instead of using a voice over which I thought would be to time consuming I used more superimposes in the trailer so that everything would be much more coherent. For example some lines included things like “now his next victim has been chosen” and “day by day it stalks its victims”. The last example is the best because the line makes it clear that the character is being stalked by the creeper over a period of time. And therefore it made it an easier viewing experience for my audience. Another criticism is that people thought that although I did a good job at adding a flicker to the trailer, that there wasn’t enough of it for it to achieve the desired effect. So to improve this I added almost double the amount of flickers in the trailer. Another criticism was about the blood. Some of my audience believed the blood wasn’t striking enough because it looked almost light red in colour. So instead of reshooting the scene which would of been incredibly time consuming, i decided to colour correct the scene. And so I brightened the colour and added a artificial glow that made everything stand out, and it helped make the blood more dark in tone, and I was especially happy the way this turned out.
Not all my feedback was negative. I posted my first draft onto YouTube and asked some people in to comment on it. Some of my audience liked some of the colour filters that I used as well as the 2 types of music, the slow sombre piano music, and the violent suspenseful violin noise. My audience also liked the way I added the release date of the movie on Halloween. They said that it
To add some more weight to my audience feedback I asked a previous A2 student to look at my second draft and to assess what was good and to help me with what to improve. After watching it one of the most important things he suggested was that I editing the music to make it more coherent and so that it flowed better, because he argued that I although he thought the concept of using 2 songs worked it needed to an improvement. So I ultimately learnt that by using someone who had experience in what i was doing that It was the little details that were crucial if my product was to be most conventional that it can be.
For my first ancillary task which was my teaser poster I first made a draft and then I asked a couple of people in my common room about what they liked and what I could improve. The first impressions were very positive because in general people like they way I added a graphite effect on Photoshop and how it made the poster look cool and realistic. They also loved the close up shot because they thought it was the most intimidating and thought provoking. However some people in the common room suggested some minor changes like for instance I had used the word Halloween twice in both the tagline and at the top of the poster, and they suggested that this was slightly distracting. Another minor detail that was criticised was my spelling, which of course was easy to correct. When I had made these minor corrections I asked more people in my common room to participate and asked them to describe my work in one word so that I could use it and make a wordle. Almost all of the feedback was positive, as people said things like “ Wierd”, “convention”, and “creepy” wich in esscene is the reaction I wanted to have because such words showed that my teaser poster was fulfilling the conventions of the horror genre.
For my last ancillary task my magazine poster I followed a similar pattern. I first planned out what I thought would appeal to my target audience trying to ensure that the feedback would be as positive as possible . So I use all the things I learnt from feeback on the teaser poster and incorporated them onto the front cover. To do this I first chose a holistic colour theme that mirrored my teaser poster, especially because the poster got very positive feedback on that aspect in particular. So red white and black were all used. I also tried to imitate the layout of the teaser poster. So for example the fonts In both ancillary tasks were both quite similar. As well as the positioning of my villain the creeper was right in the centre to because in reaction to the fact my target audience thought a close up shot was the most conventional thing to use. However I learnt from my audience feedback on my first draft was that people the level of professionalism, in particular the little details. For example not all of the text started on the same side. Therefore It made some of the text look really lopsided. Another problem was that some of the font was not aligned properly. So what I learnt from the feedback here that was crucial is that with my target audience being young, they still wanted all aspects of my work to be of the highest quality.
In conclusion I feel that the way I tried to involve my audience in the development of my film trailer was very effective because they were involved in almost every step, and every decision I made was in reaction to what they wanted and this worked beautifully in my main task. However If I could do the task again I could definitely improve the audience involvement in both ancillary tasks. I could have asked more people in the common room about the designs, especially whether they thought it was important whether both ancillary tasks connected together or whether they wanted them to be completely independent. I also could of gotten more audience feedback in pre production phase. So for example having people comment on my storyboards, and potential locations would of made my work an even more intimate experience for the demographic that I wanted to attract. Another thing I could of possibly of improved was asking people who were not from my intended target audience, just to see whether their ideas correlate with mine, and more interestingly with the 16 to 24 age group. So getting adults perspectives on things could of added an extra dimension of my work, as possibly I alienated other demographics a bit too much.
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