Evaluation Question Three

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the process of planning our horror trailer and ancillary tasks, the audience feedback I received has been insightful, and was the foundation in developing my ideas, and reflecting on them to use in all three tasks. Without audience feedback, it would have be very difficult to create a trailer that was effective and appealing to my chosen target audience. It would have also been difficult to create a poster and a magazine that looked professional and eye catching to my target audience; 15 year olds. But more importantly I developed feedback before and after my products were created, in which all feedback was useful. I have learnt what products attract public chatter and what product are going out of business.  

 

My pre-production survey, I felt was predominant in the planning stages, and has taught me a lot about what my target audience’s preferences are. For example, I have learnt that not everybody enjoys watching horror films, yet they know what makes a good one effective. I also learnt that the most favoured horror of the younger generation is a psychological horror. Along with this, I found that not many people of my target audience buys horror magazines. I have learnt that this type of feedback is valuable in obtaining a good project, and to attract the right audience, you have to gain opinions right from the beginning of the process. By not leaving this to the last minute, it has helped me thoroughly plan in the right direction to get things correct first time.

Throughout the process of creating my main task and my two ancillary tasks, I consistently gained feedback from friends, teachers and family members along the way. Although my target audience was aimed at 15 year olds, this allowed me to gain a range of views and ideas that could potentially benefit my projects. Most of which were of a young age, and allowed me to see what young people wanted to see in a horror trailer, magazine and poster. I think that without this feedback I would never have been able to create a poster, or a magazine cover that looked professional and shop quality like mine, along with a trailer that works effectively and portrays the psychological horror genre well. This has taught me that collecting critical feedback along the way is very beneficial for a successful outcome. Gaining feedback along the way has also helped me to improve my main project and two ancillary tasks to a high standard. I have learnt it is useful to take in critical feedback and turn it into a positive.

After completion of my project, I gained feedback in two ways from my trailer. This consisted of YouTube feedback and classroom feedback produced into pie charts on PowerPoint. The feedback received on YouTube taught me what went well and what we could improve on. For example we were said to be successful in the build-up of tension, however our quality differs throughout the trailer. From this feedback, I have learnt that if I was to ever do it again, we should stick to the same media technology to keep the quality of shots the same, along with creating a good tense plot.

The classroom feedback has been useful in reviewing our success of creating a horror trailer. The pie charts below were created using PowerPoint and show what a class of 15 year olds thought about our trailer.

Most people have said they could feel the build up of tension, whereas some said it could have been better. I am impressed with these responses because overall it gave the impression of a horror film. Some gave a little extra and said "yes, especially with the music' and 'yes, the ghost parts were the most tense parts'

From this feedback, I can clearly see how the ghost scenes along with the knife scenes were favoured, and really did the trailer justice in comparing it to the horror genre. However, I have learnt that if I was to do it again, I would take more time and careful consideration into finding a more suitable music track. Lighting mostly consisted of low key lighting, so I would perhaps break the conventions slightly and experiment with a range of lighting effects.

From the results above, we can see that just over 3/4 of people could grasp the sub genre. This indicates we successfully achieved the psychological elements to a horror. The minority of responses received that thought it was a Slasher film said 'the knives give it a Slasher theme'. This is understandable as knives were a popular theme in our trailer and slightly gave the impression of a gruesome film. If I was to do the whole trailer again, I think I have learnt to stick completely to the conventions of a supernatural film. This saves the confusion of the younger audiences.  

Fortunately, most of the class understood our plot well and liked it. There were a few that said they got hints but weren't too sure what to think about it or where it was leading to. From this I have learnt that people view media differently to others and portray things differently. This cannot be helped so overall I am happy with these results.

To begin with my aim was to aim for 15 year olds plus, and even from receiving this feedback, I have continued to stick to the plan. I have learnt that this age group prefer the ideas I have displayed. A quarter said it should be for 12+ from viewing the trailer, however we didn't want to give too much away in the trailer, which left it less scary than what the film could potentially offer.

Overall, I wanted to know if they would watch this film in cinemas, because that is the whole idea of a good trailer. I am pleased that most said they would watch it, which indicates we successfully created a horror trailer that intrigues the audiences.

Overall, I am really pleased with the feedback I received independently and as a group. Most were really positive, however the negative feedback I received was down to little things like lighting and quality, which were sometimes out of our control. Or other negative opinions were because they weren’t really interested in horror or knew little about the correct conventions in the genre. I feel that I have learnt how to construct a film trailer from the feedback received, as they have helped me see different views and create different ideas that I would never have come across without the feedback.  The main thing I have learnt from receiving lots of feedback has to be that everybody reads media texts differently, therefore deep research is needed when constructing a plot. For example, some people thought the ghost was just an old women, and some thought they were hallucinating. While others believed it was a slasher horror due to the amount of knives shown rather than a psychological horror.