Evaluation Q3 (first draft)

 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

A key component throughout this entire coursework was the feedback in which I gathered from my target demographic. I needed to understand how to cater for their needs and I did this by finding out what they wanted through different forms of research. It has helped me develop and improve my products to ensure the end result will attain the professional quality my audience expect from me.

 In the early stages of my coursework I used the site Survey Monkey.com to create a simple questionnaire that would help me figure out my desired target audience-ultimately affecting my decision on which age restriction my film would be and what they like within the genre of my film. I decided on an 18 age restriction as it allowed me to be more flexible with the topics brought up in the film such as drugs and violence which are major conventions of this genre. The majority of people that took my questionnaire where 17-18, this is the main reason i went for an 18 age restriction. Talking to teenagers in my school from around the ages of 14-18 about ages restrictions taught me that the 18 certificate is actually more appealing to allot of teenagers under 18 than a 15 or 12 rated film and makes them want to watch it even more. There seems to be a kind of thrill behind watching a film you shouldn't be watching. Just because a film has an 18 age restriction it does not mean that the audience will be over 18, it will in fact most likely be from 14 to 25, Film company's know this !

 I asked questions such as what puts you off watching a film from the trailer, most people selected bad story line or unrealistic. Questions like this allow me to focus on pleasing the audience because i knew that i had to make the story line as appealing as possible and would need to be portrayed as realistic which is something i have really focused on and feel that i have achieved. Another important question was, What appeals to you most in a film trailer. The most popular answer selected was, Capture the mood of the film with out giving away the plot. Interestingly the second most popular choice was, A mysterious film trailer. This made me consider creating more of a tease trailer but instead i focused on capturing the mood of the film by carefully paying attention to the settings and the main character without giving away any of the plot. These two questions are just two examples of questions that allowed me to sculpture an audience profile that acted as a guideline when I considered which conventions to break, use and develop.

 For the research into my poster and magazine I wanted qualitative response and so I approached a selection of students who gave their opinions on the templates which I had created. The black and white colour scheme seemed to gain a positive response however people favoured the yellow background behind the black and white colour scheme because of its connotations and eye catching effects. I asked a total of 30 students from my six form, mainly media studies students so i could gain a strong and reliable response. I recorded peoples votes for the favourite template in a tally chart and then made a bar graph to visualise the results. This allowed me to use audience feedback as a decision Maker rather than my self because a film poster needs to be appealing to the audience not me.

 when completing my first draft of my trailer i showed it to my class mates which i did not gain much usefulness out off because they couldn't give me much feedback, They seemed to like what i had made and couldn't recommend anything to improve. However feedback from my teacher helped allot as he was able to give me guidelines for improvement. As a result of my teacher feedback i made a second voice over that comes in towards the end as he felt there was not enough audio to give clues of what the films about. Other minor bits of feedback where also given to make the trailer stronger such as added sound when inter titles came in and to shorten certain shots. 

As a whole i have learnt allot from engaging with the audience and getting there feedback. Audience feedback has been vital in my products as it has allowed them to develop over time and make my products become more appealing.

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