What have you learnt through Audience Feedback?
Audience feedback has been a vital component in our media production, allowing consumers of our product to express their views and suggestions, in order for us to create a teaser trailer, fitting the needs of our target market.The first evidence of audience feedback came from our blog page. By creating a POLL, asking audiences to vote for their favourite title for our film trailer, this enabled us to go with the majority vote. It was clear from the start that the name 'ANON' was favoured. With 57% of the vote, we felt it necessary to listen to our audience and choose the name ANON. Prior to this we had chosen the name 'VI VI VI', symbolising the devil and therefore having a satanic reference, however after coming up with the name ANON and deciding to use a poll to decide on the name, we saw it clear that this was the MORE APPROPRIATE and BETTER SUITED name.
ANON can stand for and symbolise a majority of ideas, presented in our film trailer. Firstly anon is short for anonymity; meaning unknown or a hidden identity. We felt that this was the main reason why audiences chose 'ANON' as our main killer is masked, with a hidden identity. ANONYMITY is also linked to being an individual and standing up for what you believe it. We learnt that this was obviously a key and clear theme in our trailer which audiences picked up on, therefore leading to their vote decision.
The second display of audience feedback was presented to us from our final film poster.As we had a variety of poster designs, we thought it best to gain the audience's feedback, as they are the consumers of our product and therefore the people in which the poster needs to attract. To gain our audience feedback we decided place the posters in a place which would get the most feedback - outside the school common room. We decided a TALLY CHART would be the easiest and quickest way to vote for the final poster design.
After 3 days it was clear that with the MAJORITY VOTE, the blue masked ANON poster was the clear winner. This poster was conventional to the Horror genre, as it clearly contained the mask killers face, however we subverted the genre by adding a blue hue, thus incorporating the viral, technological element of our film trailer.
We learnt that the audiences liked the fact that we had TRANSGRESSED some of the Horror CODES AND CONVENTIONS by not using red; therefore showing that the unique, technological twist to our film was a clear attraction to our audience and a key component to our film poster.
It was also evident that audiences preferred a SIMPLER, CLEARER image, rather than the landscape poster, with the static imagery. This was the least popular choice, therefore highlighting that the killer's mask and iconic brand symbol was a key selling point and eye catching image, therefore giving our poster it's OWN IDENTITY and thus the reason for choosing the blue, masked poster.
When completing our first draft of our film trailer, we decided to use SOCIAL NETWORKING to gain audience feedback. FACEBOOK and YOUTUBE were chosen in order to grasp a varied opinion of our trailer.
It was clear from the comments that the theme of our trailer was clear, however the audiences expected a higher element of GORE, in order to connote to the codes and conventions of a Horror film. I was also clear that parts of the FINAL GIRL THEORY would be good to show in our trailer, where one of the victims shown is a young, naive, helpless girl. This would capture the audience's emotion and draw them into the storyline, therefore persuading them to wish to see the whole film:
A QUESTIONNAIRE was written and sent to various aged-ranged audiences to gain feedback on our first draft.
The results showed that our trailer fitted the conventions of a Horror very well, as 100% of the people agreed on this category. Another question in which the audiences proved very helpful on was commenting on how best to improve our trailer. It seemed that a TORTURE SCENE incorporating a girl, using a violent method of torture could be an extra scene to incorporate into our trailer. It seemed that results were similar to those obtained on Facebook, thus providing us with a clear idea and concept to enhance our trailer further. It was reassuring to know that the major themes in which we chose to be present in our trailer (horror, industrial feel, technology and religion) were ideas picked up by audiences. We learnt that our trailer had a clear concept and it just needed more connotations to the codes and conventions of a Horror to make the trailer complete.
How the AS course is relevant to our final portfolio
The audience feedback collected in our AS film opening gave us INSPIRATION and ideas into how best to collect information for our A2 product. For AS we had chosen to use Questionnaires via Surveymonkey and social networking sites - Youtube and Facebook. These proved useful and vital ways in which to collect information from audiences and so were used again in our A2 project. We decided to further enhance our audience feedback by using a poll vote and tally chart. These were simple and easy eays to collate audience preferences into our film title and poster design.
From the various feedback collected from our audience responses to our trailer, there were a number of changes which were made, thanks to the information gathered from Youtube, Facebook, our questionnaire, tally chart collection and voting via Blogger.
1) Added a scene with a higher element of gore - finger nail being ripped off
2) Incorporated an element of the Final Girl theory with a hostage scene of a young, helpless teenage girl
3) Added a close up shot of the hanging noose
4) Overlayed a shouting sound over the brand being burnt onto the victim's skin
5) Kept the poster simple and clear by choosing the blue masked killer poster
6) Chose the name ANON, complying with the results shown by our audience feedback
6) Chose the name ANON, complying with the results shown by our audience feedback
A variety of changes and decisions have been based and relied heavily on our audience feedback. The group has learnt how SIMPLICITY CAN SOMETIMES BE MORE EFFECTIVE, such as with our film poster, and by choosing a genre such as Horror, a higher element of GORE is welcomed in a trailer, therefore connoting further to the codes and conventions. We have learnt to listen to the audience's feedback and work towards a trailer which meets all users needs and expectations, as well as our own.
