How did you attract/address

your audience

Evaluation #5

Fateh Khaled 8703

• In order to address my target audience I shared a link of the opening title sequence draft and individually addressed people via Facebook Chat. I used feedback from my target audience to make sure that the film addressed any issues they had. Feedback was done on a continual basis to ensure that at each and every stage we considered the audiences opinions. For example, in the opening shot where the two officers were engaging in a conversation, the audience replied that "There was far too much background noise such as traffic from the nearby road, this meant it was really difficult to hear the dialogue clearly".

• After speaking to my group about this feedback we

agreed that this was one of the main flaws within our

project and so as a group we decided to re-record the

dialogue in a music studio on Garageband (software for

Apple Macs) to eradicate the background noise. Doing

this had further repercussions as it meant we then had to

create Foley of the officers footsteps and the car door

slamming. Further Foley was added in light of this

feedback such as the tapping of the shoulder and the gun

cocking back.

• Further feedback from Facebook was that one of the scenes was far too long; this scene was where the officer was looking through the drawers for some clues and evidence.

• This was confirmed by the BAFTA nominated film editor Mike Harrowes (IMDB Link - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366037/)

who gave us feedback on our sequence via a Skype call. Mike was editing a thriller for the BBC at this time so his feedback was particularly poignant. The length of this scene meant that the pace and rhythm of our piece slowed sown and the audience lost interest. The scene to which I am referring is where the officer is looking through the drawers in order to gain some evidence of the 'assassin'. As a result, whilst I edited the rough cut, I decided to shorten the take so that the point was still made but in half the time.

Feedback

As you can see, after

linking Luke the

opening title sequence

draft that I edited; he

said that the scene

where I was searching

through for evidence

was far too long.

• Feedback from our second rough cut came from our peers

(both media and non media students). These students are of

the same demographic as our target audience. The students

who are not studying media for A Level confirmed that they

thought it was an opening title sequence when asked the

question 'Do you think this is an opening title sequence, a

short film or a trailer', this is because of the credits and the

length of the film but also because it “didn't give too much

of the game away". Media students responded more

critically due to their ability to textually analyse films. Their

response was that if we added a few transitions between

clips the opening title sequence would be more visually

stimulating rather than having basic cuts back to back.

• As a result we added a cross dissolve between the extreme

close up of me as I look up to the scene where I was looking

through the drawers. These transitions meant that I could

remove some footage that was initially required

because it provided a visual short cut showing the passing

of time. In this case the visual implication was that we had

to spend more time looking through the owners belongings.

Listening to our audience has helped us create a stronger

final piece.

• As well as this I filmed another Q&A session (Question

& Answer), similarly within these Q&A sessions I asked

questions such as 'what genre do you think this opening

title sequence is?', 'would you go to the cinema to watch

this?‘ and other questions relevant to the opening title

sequence. After responding to the questions the

participants agreed that they thought it was a genre

thriller. They also said that they would go to the cinema

to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens to

the officer due to the huge enigma. We also asked other

questions in the Q&A video which will be linked below

on Blogger.

• Using new media to gain audience feedback has been vital in addressing our target audience and altering our film accordingly, because of this I also used Twitter to engage my audience and ask further questions at the third stage of our edit.

• On Twitter I asked various questions to do about the enigma, credits and the layering of the sound. In terms of enigma, the audience said that they really liked the cliffhanger at the end and it left a lot of mystery , they also said that they really wanted to know what happens next in terms of storyline, and does the character survive or not.

• With regard to the credits, the audience said they really liked the way the typography moved with the characters. However, they said that the text that used was quite basic and that we should have explored further possibilities that might reflect the genre of the film better. As well as this they said that the white font merges with the background at times and so can be difficult to read.

Narrative Feedback Sound Feedback

Twitter Feedback

Typography Feedback

• Feedback regarding the sound suggests that the audience really liked the special effects and music selected. Many commented that it made the film feel more realistic due to sounding three dimensional. Also the use of music running all the way through the background made the title sequence more engaging as it kept the audience at the edge of their seat. Multi-layering sound and creating our own Foley was very useful, we wanted to make various sound effects that you couldn't hear in the original rough cut due to background noise and the sound itself not being loud enough, this was very helpful and I am happy with the final outcome of sound in our project. We also exaggerated some key sounds in our film helped to create a greater sense of narrative, enigma and genre such as the footsteps and the gun cocking back. These hyperbolic sound effects are a convention of thriller films.

• Furthermore in terms of sound, initially we had a

different soundtrack however after receiving feedback the

audience had stated that it didn't match the genre of

thriller but instead creating a more action adventure

feeling. After receiving this specific feedback as a group

we decided that we should change the soundtrack, so

instead we resourced the soundtrack which fits the thriller

genre more. Both soundtracks are posted below in a

soundcloud format.