1. What have you learned from
your audience feedback?
Evaluation Question 3
Nicholas Randall
2. Film Industry Audience Feedback
The Film Industry spend so much time and money either test screening films
and finding out what the audience liked through the market research.
To find out a target audience they require people from different areas of the
country that are different ages and gender. They will then get the audience to
fill in a questionnaire, this will give the filmmakers an idea of what their target
audience is.
Doing a test screening with the correct target audience allows a fresh pair of
eyes to view the film, and as they haven’t been in the process of making the
film, they will be able to see if any parts of the film needs to be removed or
added and if anything should be changed. This can help the film to be as
successful as possible.
3. Our Target Audience
To find out our target audience we gathered a few films that was similar to
our film in terms of genre and narrative. These films were The Hunger Games,
Skyfall and The Avengers.
The AvengersSkyfall
The Hunger Games
4. Our Target Audience
From looking at similar films to ours, we found out that are target
market was mainly people aged 15-24. Although there was a higher
number of males compared to females in this research we gathered,
but the results were close in The Hunger Games (Our main source,
as the film is very similar), but in other sources the percentage was
spread out, meaning that we are unable just to say that our target
market is males. But a higher number of males may watch our film
instead.
5. When did we ask for feedback?
We asked for feedback once we had put our shots into the timeline in the correct order. We didn’t
focus on the sound or special effects, but we just wanted to see the rough order of our teaser
trailer. Once we had our rough cut we asked for some feedback, which we found really useful. We
got this feedback on a sheet, that highlighted how good or bad the microelements were (on a
table), and then there was a section to leave things that were good on the rough cut and things
that could be improved.
Once we gained this feedback we worked on the teaser trailer, as well as the poster and magazine
cover and once we was nearly finished with all 3 products we asked for more feedback on all 3
products. This left us with just enough time to correct the small issues that was raised within the
feedback. This feedback was gained through YouTube, where our audience would comment on
our video with what we did well and what we could improve.
6. Feedback – Rough Cut
We asked our target audience for feedback on our rough cut. We
didn’t focus on sound or special effects, we just focused on the order
of the teaser trailer. We asked our audience to mark our micro-
elements (Camera, Sound, Mise En Scene and Editing) from “Very Poor
to Excellent”. We also asked for comments on our strengths and
weaknesses of our teaser trailer. Overall we gained either Excellent or
Good for our micro elements. Our main strengths gathered from our
feedback are the use of camera angles/ movements, editing style and
the good use of split screen. The main improvements that we got from
our feedback was that we could have used different music to suit a
teaser trailer and to also suit the narrative of the film. The middle of
the teaser trailer was a bit slow and our teaser trailer could be shorter.
The final improvement was to make the plot of the film easier to
understand.
7. How did we improve?
Our feedback session was useful as the audience saw improvements that could be
made, which we didn’t really see to start off with. This ‘fresh set of eyes’ to the teaser
trailer helps us find improvements to our teaser trailer.
Our first improvement was the music, this was pointed out the most, and would require
the most time to get it right. We then researched many other teaser trailers and
listened to the music, we then had a brief idea of what we wanted our teaser trailer to
sound like. We used the loops in Garageband to create our soundtrack for our teaser
trailer. We also added ‘boom’ sound effects before a black screen, which is what we
saw in many teaser trailers. We also decided to add a voice over as it was said in our
feedback that the plot wasn’t very clear, a voiceover should fix that. We also made the
middle of our teaser trailer much faster in pace, which overall made our teaser trailer a
lot shorter than it originally was. By increasing the pace made the teaser trailer actually
feel like a teaser trailer and gave a sense of what the film is like.
Music we created
in Garageband
with loops
8. Feedback – Nearly Completed
This time we gained feedback for all three of our products (Teaser Trailer, Poster
and Magazine Cover). This time we asked our audience to comment on our
Teaser Trailer on YouTube, where they could suggest more improvements but
also say what we got right. Overall our audience liked our good use of sound, as
well as the voice over, as it was effective and helped to tell the story. We had a
variety of camera shots and all the shots were in focus, which the audience really
liked. For the poster and Magazine Cover, the audience liked how we created a
brand identity through the use of colours and the fonts we used for the titles.
We used the same font throughout our products, we also increased the size of
the ‘V’ in our title to make it stand out and to create a brand that will be
recognizable. The audience thought our teaser trailer had a good storyline and
fits well with the genre. The only improvements that were said was to improve
the fonts in our teaser trailer (At the end of the teaser), and to make the overall
length of our teaser trailer shorter.
9. How did we improve?
This Feedback session helped us to see what we got right, as well as changing a few little bits that would
improve all three of our products. The main issue that was brought up was that our teaser trailer was too
long. We researched at the start of this project that we wanted our teaser trailer to be around 1minute
20seconds. Before this feedback session our teaser trailer was around 1minute 50seconds. Which seemed
a bit too long from what we saw in our research. We made changes like making the fight scene a bit
faster, to cut down the shots. We also found a few shots that could be cut down, as they were too long,
and had a couple of seconds that was useless to the teaser trailer. So we decided to cut all this down to
increase the pace of the teaser trailer, but to also make our teaser trailer much shorter, which was picked
up on in our feedback session. The other improvement to make was to change the titles at the end of the
teaser trailer that said “COMING SOON”. After looking at these titles again, we agreed with the feedback
and we changed the titles to fit with the genre and to also make it feel like a big blockbuster teaser trailer.
We looked at the Hunger Games end titles and got inspiration from them, as their titles are central and
look like something from Hollywood. Our end titles before were small and didn’t fit the genre of the
teaser trailer, but we have never seen anything like this in a teaser trailer, so we decided to change it. We
used final cut pro x to change the font of the title to something more dramatic, with a animation of the
titles that we saw on the Hunger Games teaser trailer (where the titles zoom in and out). We changed the
colour of the titles to fit the narrative of our teaser trailer to make it fit our film.
The Hunger Games end titles
10. Other Feedback
We was also given feedback outside of these feedback sessions, which also
helped us improve our final products. One of these comments was to change
our poster, as it was too similar to our magazine cover. We changed the
background of our poster, as before it was the same as the magazine cover.
Although we still wasn’t happy with this, so we experimented with Photoshop
and we finally made a new poster, which looked different to our magazine
cover but also had the same brand identity as the magazine cover and the
teaser trailer. We changed the position and size of the characters and we
overlaid a fire photo and a photo of leaves, we then changed the opacity the
make the characters viewable.
Before Feedback After Feedback
11. Conclusion
Overall we used the feedback that was given to us by our
audience, and we used it to fully transform our teaser trailer into
something that you would see in Hollywood. Having the audience
feedback has given us another ‘fresh set of eyes’ to evaluate our
work and to find improvements that was not initially seen to us
at first. We have acted on this feedback and it has made our
teaser trailer, poster and magazine cover much stronger.
