Question 3:

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Film PosterThe first place me and my group turned to when we took on the task of an audience questionnaire was SurveyMonkey.com, because not only does it allow you to view all of the answers to your survey in detail, but it’s also free. We set up a survey asking viewers the themes they most liked in the police/crime thrillers they’d watched, and one of the most popular answers we got was “good vs evil” (see fig.1). The audience of our survey were mostly male (see fig.2), and, from the statistics of the following questions, the trend seemed to be that males were more fond of these types of films than females, so I decided to try and market my poster either for male audiences or gender neutral. I incorporated the theme of good vs evil into my poster with the looming shadow in the foreground. The character’s face is frowning, which, I think, makes their conflict clear. I market more stereotypically towards males in this poster with the lack of colour and gritty title text.

<Figure 1

Figure 2>

Film Magazine CoverSurveyMonkey.com was also useful for me in designing my magazine cover. It was obvious from the answers to our questionnaire (if not common sense) that our audience would most likely be female, so I decided to play what I know, make the marketing more equal, and chose a young female demographic for my magazine. I used a Megan Foxx cover of Empire magazine as my inspiration, and so I simply flipped the genders to create a male-starring cover that would appeal to females. In this way, I aimed to sell the actor instead of the character, and this followed the results of my survey by making my marketing campaign more relatable – several respondents in the survey said that they liked films that had relatable characters and storylines (see fig.3).

Figure 3>

We used SurveyMonkey to identify our target audience. This was an essential part of our research and planning as it gave us a specific demographic to market towards. Through this, we discovered that our audiences had mixed views of the themes of police/crime thriller films (see fig.4), however, it is evident from the feedback we got that the audience expect to see an action-based film with a lot of excitement and an element of shock (see fig.5). We had these ideas in mind already, but it was good to learn that we were basing our ideas on true findings and not outdated assumptions. To keep our target audiences pleased and keep their opinions in the open, we planned lots of fast-paced running shots and a thick plot. This, hopefully, created an interesting and enjoyable trailer for our target audience of young males.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Trailer Traits

As well as using SurveyMonkey.com, we also got lots of one-on-one feedback from our classmates and friends. We thought this was a good idea because the other media students have seen lots of trailers and know what to look for, and the our peers would be able to tell us what they’ve seen before, and what is effective in keeping their attention, as well as what makes an interesting storyline. After our first filming stage, we put together a collection of our best footage, in the vague order of how it was planned to be in the trailer, and presented it in the form of a ‘showcase’ to our classmates. We got lots of constructive feedback from them, including advice about changes we needed to make for both technical and visual aspects of the trailer, such as lighting and props. We took this advice on and tried to incorporate all of it as we continued our work, but we were unwilling to add the suggestion of a police badge to our mise-en-scene, as we thought this could make the production look more American.

“You had a good variety of shots from

different angles.”

“Your cutaways are a nice addition.”

“The bed scene was a bit too dark. It was

hard to establish what was going on because

we couldn’t see.”

“I like the way you had the same shot from

different angles.”

Showcase Feedback

We mostly showed our trailer to our classmates and relatives, though the link was also sent out to our peers to get some external opinions. We got a lot of positive feedback, especially about the variety of footage we used and how professional the shots looked. I think the music also really helped to build the mood and keep our trailer fast-paced and action-packed. It was also a great editing idea of Daniel’s to change the motion and speed of the walking shots of our two main characters towards the end of the trailer, and this, along with the change in music, also really built up the tension for the final rush to the end. A lot of people were very impressed with these points and the thought and time that went into them. This has left us chuffed, too, because it definitely feels great to finally have a culmination of all the hard work we’ve put in this year, and have it not look half bad, at that.

“The aerial shots of London set the scene really well – they look

so professional.”

“The colour changes, the black and white,

they really set the mood.”

“I felt like your opening had a bit too

much story. I was waiting to see what would happen as if I was watching a TV

show.”

“The titles at the end are your tagline!

That’s smart. Nice way to round it off.”

Final Feedback

“I’m not really liking the bounce your title does at the end. The

flicker is good, but the bounce makes it look a bit like a wedding

video!”