Question Three by Maria Beardall

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


From the audience feedback we received, I learnt what our intended demographic thought of our work so far, what they wanted to be improved from the work they had seen, and how clear the work was. This made it very useful and helpful to keep on the right track when making decisions such as what the is kept or changed in the film edit to have a clear narrative, what the poster includes and if the poster and review conforms with conventions. This meant we stayed on track as a group to continually self improve our work as a whole and keep bettering our standards of work. I believe once work has been consciously worked on it can be hard to know where to go with it, therefore audience feedback adds a fresh perspective which is true to the audience as it is from the view of the actual members, and helps us meet criteria to create work that can deliver.

We used different mediums to contact the target audience - by interviewing, Facebook Messenger, a class feedback session and a survey. These varying ways of connecting to the audience are effective as we can see and gather feedback in many ways, which means we have more information to work with collectively, and also means we can see data from across platforms.

Identify your target audience?

Our target audience are 16-25 year olds, predominantly females. 

Briefly explain how your products were designed to appeal to these audiences?

To appeal to the target audience, we:

FILM: Relatable and Emotional
The film focuses around two female characters, which immediately makes the audience feel more relatable to the characters and more attracted to the appeal of the film - most audience members will relate simply from the gender being the same and seemingly mirrored, as well as more than likely having a sister of their own - they can place themselves in the shoes of the characters and create more of an emotional attachment to the characters through this. The age of the sisters being 16-18 also creates a relatable factor as they can imagine being the age the characters are or can relate to certain experiences due to not being far off their age, which makes the film far more interesting and relatable to watch as they can identify even more so. The activities can also relate - getting ready for school, being in school, going out are all typical activities many of the audience members will empathise with and understand, which will keep them more intrigued as its realistic.

POSTER: Relatable and Colouring
The poster has a large print of the two sisters on the front, one having a fun time in Brighton, and one having them resting next to each other on looking Brighton beach as they sit near the pier. This can spark an interest and appeal for the audience as there is enigma created in both and the audience will also be attracted to the bright colours of the poster and the slow, sad tones seen in the body language or manipulation of the sisters will create an interest and the connotation will 'pull at the heartstrings' of the sentimental audience as they feel a connection from the character and audience closeness in presumable similarities. The colouring will be the main pull in and the closeness seen in both posters as it will display a well filmed short film and also display typical scenes of affection which will be noted by the audience and make them feel an incline to watch.

REVIEW: Narrative and Unique
The review is more narrative based and describes, in a secretive yet educated way, what will happen in the film, and sets an emotive and empathetic bar for the film itself and creates a well structured picture to the film. The review audience is aimed more at males who are slightly older and have keen film interests, which means the appeal may be less, but still creates appeal through narrative and technology based ideas such as never done before hybrid of genres and taboo subjects being openly themed such as mental illness, therefore the educated discussion of what makes our film unique and edgy will draw an audience in to see the work and appreciate it for its appeal as a piece of work.

FILM

Audience Feedback on Film in Early Stages:

In the early stages of making our main task, the short film, after we had just finished filming we wanted to be assured the footage we would take forward to edit would be satisfactory. We wanted to know that the work was clear and made sense - therefore we selected raw clips from the scenes (both at different ends of the narrative), to see if they could link the development in the story clearly just from very little image. If it had positive feedback we would know to continue forward, and if not we could immediately work on re filming and improving our work.

I interviewed Harriet, aged 17 and Will, also aged 17. I asked them the following questions:

'What do you believe to be happening in the first clip? Does everything seem well to you? How do you think the girls feel?

What appears to be happening in the second clip? Does it seem odd following the first clip? How do you think the narrative progressed to this point?

Do the two clips intrigue you? Would you want to watch this?'

 This was the feedback I received:

(Harriet)

- seems like they're having fun in first clip

- second is complete opposite

- obvious she is alone

- dark and gloomy

- she now isn't having a good time

- I want to know how she got from the first to last clip

(Will)

- first clip seems like girls are having fun day out

- I believe they are happy

- second clip contrasts first

- darker tone

- only one girl, when there was two before

- narrative has progressed from a nice day out to sinister tones

- find the clips intriguing and want to know what happens

As we learnt from this feedback, both participants have noticed and mentioned the contrast in the clips, and how the first scene is intended to be 'fun', light and happy with a carefree tone, whereas the second tone is 'darker' in tone and they both additionally expressed their interest in what has happened for the narrative to develop - this showed us that we were on the right track, and had filmed key and interesting scenes, shots and included appropriate locations and mise en scene in the frame.

We didn't film extra scenes as the audience feedback was positive and gave us the confidence to go ahead with the clips we had in the editing stage without re filming anything, as we believed the initial clips themselves would be enough to add clarity to the narrative and keep the audience engaged.

Audience Feedback on (Film Post Production):

(first edit)

After watching our film back in class, with other knowledgeable Media students, we gave each other feedback represented as groups, and had a discussion also to add to this.

We asked for constructive criticism - what we did well and what we needed to improve. Here is the feedback we received in the comments section on our blog:

Overall we learnt:

- concept was good, interesting

- soundtrack was appropriate

- clear

- variations of location and shot sizes

- beginning was too long, some parts unnecessary

- volume of work needed to be adjusted

- beach scene audio needed to be adjusted

- establishing shots for Brighton need to be switched around/changed

- typo in credits to be fixed

As a group, we really liked that we had constructive criticism from Media students as they understood the project better than most other audience individuals would, as they are also working towards the same goal and know what gets marks and what can make the films a higher quality. It also helped as we all have a passion and higher knowledge for films, which meant extensive intellect can be applied from this feedback to help conform to the genre.

We learnt from the feedback that the narrative had stayed clear during the edit, the soundtrack was appropriate (at AS we had major issues and set backs with the soundtrack, therefore this time we made it essential to get it correct and done earlier this time round), and that the location variation was liked by the audience. This meant we had kept the film narratively clear and the reveal of the misleading narrative was clear and made sense - there was no confusion expressed from the class to what had happened. We also could take from this that the genre conventions were correct, and that we had made it interesting to watch as we added depth to the planning of where we would film. It also meant we had no continuity or white balance issues - filming and the most part of editing had gone to plan.

We realised that we would need to re edit the film to toothcomb through some work; the main issues voiced being that it was too long and included shots that weren't needed for the narrative to be understood, and that the build up was too long and took away from the ending of the film, which we of course immediately wanted to correct as we wanted a smooth build up to intensify and shock the audience at the end, which was spotted we hadn't fully achieved - thankfully it was a minor error that could be fixed with ease. The other key issues pinpointed were the audio - it had been too loud when shown to the class, something we hadn't pre foreseen, which we could also easily change. The other issue with audio was the beach scene - the audio didn't flow, and sounded painfully unnatural and took away from the film.

We had a day planned to re edit, with the conscious effort to appease the audience feedback to make the film of a higher standard.

(second edit)

In the re edit, this is what we changed to improve the film (based on the audience feedback):

- extended establishing shot at beginning with a fade in from black
- majorly cut bedroom scene down, added in more transitions
- removed the hazlewick sign shot as unneeded
- adjusted the sound in tracking shots so it's quieter
- added cross dissolves when walking
- made teacher voice louder to be heard more clearly
- made first close up shorter to make nervous body language clearer and less boring
- taken away unneeded pan
- made Ashlee's voice message louder so it's clearer
- fade to black between hallway and Brighton scene to establish change of setting
- lowered the Brighton soundtrack so it's quieter
- changed cross dissolve transitions to jump cuts on POV phone shots on ride
- removed many establishing shots of Brighton
- made the dialogue louder/flow better, and cut down beach scene to make this work and make scene less boring
- removed walking to the beach as unneeded
- added cross dissolve transitions to beach shots
- corrected the typo in the credits
- last shot fades to black to finish the whole film

This method of collecting data was useful as we had a mass of data, which made it extremely clear with what we needed to improve, and also as the source of the data is a class of Media students, it made it extremely effective to take on board what they said as they could speak more technically - something most audiences can't give us - and also meant as the criteria of the short films as a whole was universally known it made it easier to communicate and establish what was done well and what needed improving, and made it easier professionally to take on board ideas as they were from advanced students who have previous and current knowledge surrounding the field.

This meant we understood what we needed to do in a simple, professional, intellectual way and made the process straight forward and extremely effective as we could clearly see, from the feedback, what we needed to improve and that it correlated with what others had said as we had such a vast amount of feedback.

POSTER

Audience Feedback on Poster in Early Stages:

To begin with, I chose this, unedited picture to use for my poster:

I made this mock up of the poster before we made poster drafts (not my own image, just to display my idea:

This was then the poster I used to have audience feedback on:

As part of our poster task, we all had to create separate film posters. The only decision made together was the choice of who gets which picture, and then after being briefed for what we needed, we went about editing our individual posters for what we would like to see the posters have.

We decided, as me and another member of the group are keen Photography students, and we also hadn't seen one another's work, and were also the correct age for the audience feedback, that we would use our Media group chat on Facebook Messenger to review each other's posters with positive comments and suggestions for improvements, as we all had the task of moving forward with only two final posters made from our group, we thought as we were the producers of the posters it would be appropriate for us to feedback on the work.

We asked each other to analyse the posters we had made, excluding analysing our own, and write features we liked and also what could be worked upon if we were to take it forward. I asked:

'what's a good aspect of my picture?
what would you like to take from this to our group poster?
what could be improved?'

They replied:

(Jess)

- the font and the colour works well
- stands out
- image matches appropriately

- want to use the reviews

- make the billing block smaller
- change the size of the font for the title

(Tasha)

- used a very spacious picture
- included lots of key information such as film festival logos and reviews

- use the reviews and sources
- use the colour of the title

- have less text on the poster as overwhelming

This group feedback was useful to communicate and have between us as we collaborated on what we wanted from our work as a whole, what could possibly be seen as the 'perfect' poster, and we decided from this what key features we wanted (the titling and film reviews were seen as key, important features), and that we wanted to express the closeness in the relationship of the two characters in the pictures we had chosen before hand. We also wanted a spacious poster that wasn't too 'busy' for the eyes - so that the audience could easily see what we wanted to communicate to them without it overloading the A3 page. We realised that colouring was very important for us to set the tone and create meaning that we could communicate through the poster using that.

Therefore, as I felt as if my poster was at a dead end as the picture was quite inconvenient for placement of text, I spent extra time creating a new poster after the feedback had set in my head what we generally wanted from the poster, acting as a Media production group and also fellow consumers.

I used a new image, edited it on Photoshop, and created this:

After initially discussing the poster after revealing it for the first time, the concept was highly liked, yet to make it more clear I needed to space out the lettering to make it obvious the title was two words and not one, and remove the star rating as it wasn't typical for a short film poster.

I, however, listened to what my fellow group members had previously said about colour, spacing, the close relationship between the two female characters and the film reviews and logos to be kept.

I then made an improved version:

Again, after revealing this poster, and deciding my other would be discarded and the new poster would be one of the final posters to be used, we discussed again what could improve this poster. We decided it needed to be lighter to see the film reviews and billing block - which would make it clear, and that the blue titling didn't fit as it had no correlation with any other colour, so to make a contrast behind the yellow carousel background, it was changed to white. The billing block background was darkened to see it clearly, and social media logos were added as a new feature of the poster to link in other relevant and appropriate advertising methods.

This was the final draft made for my original poster:

This taught me as a marketer to have many draft stages as the work can be continually improved until it is clear and pleasing, and also that even if you 'jump ships' with poster ideas, the audience feedback can still be used and is relevant to create a piece that has been requested or influenced by the feedback; as even though I changed posters I could still use the feedback in my second poster as it was still applicable and relevant.

REVIEW:

Audience Feedback on Review:

For our review, I created a Google survey, from here, and wrote questions regarding the conventions, the layout, if it was effective, and what could be improved. I emailed responses to my participants (peers in the relevant target audience) in the survey, and received analytics I can work with and present easily in a convenient format that works well to analyse the data in a substantial way. (I attached the file of the review and other LWL's reviews for context and to use to answer the question.)

What we learnt from the feedback is that we had effectively followed the conventions of the LWL reviews and had done so effectively as it was said to be '100% professional' in terms of how the terminology sounded in the text, and also '100% would want to read the review', had they not been prompted. It was '66.7% similar to other LWL's reviews', and was '100% appropriate as a film review'. The written work was said to be non biased, and concentrated on a mixture of the director, actors and the narrative, all of which are topics meant to be included. The review was said to make '100% of the audience surveyed want to watch the film after', which shows it had a positive impact and opened another audience for us. There were little or no changes that had been said to be made.

Therefore, we learnt is that our review is appropriately conventional, is similar to other LWL's reviews, and held key information as well as promoting the film in a positive light. This meant we saw no further work should be taken on our work as it had feedback that clearly indicated there wasn't work needed to be done on our review as it met our criteria to conform, hold key information and present our film in an honest yet accurate depiction.

This has taught me that using surveys can collect a mass of data in a neat, organised and easy to read way which can be shown easily to clearly see and draw points from.

As a whole, I believe that using audience feedback is very effective and beneficial as it means that clarity can be seen in work whilst it is being made and the constant improvement of the work can get the work to the highest standard, as well as being relevant and key to the task at hand - as well as it being helpful as it is from the demographic we wish to market to, which makes it extremely important as it includes the wishes and views of the audience and has been an eye opener to what we have needed to do to our work to make it more appropriate.