What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Early footage screening
I had a two-staged approach to audience feedback. Firstly I screened some early footage of our trailer to the class. The students in my class gave me some feedback on different aspects of my trailer. The majority of the class thought that my early footage clips weren't suitable for the horror genre as they were filmed in the light. However they thought that my setting in a field with windy, slightly rainy weather was good. Most students thought that the Mise en Scene was over-all good. My main character at this point was a girl, with pale make-up on and a white dress. From the audience's feedback I gathered that they thought this was a good start and that my character could develop immensely if the right setting was put together accordingly, although they did think that a male character would fit better for being the "evil" character in a horror. I took this idea into account and started to develop my ideas. The class thought my storyline was ok and could be developed to become much more horror genre-like, but as this was early days I took this as constructive criticism. On the whole, the class thought my starting plan was a good one but wasn't great. This didn't come as a shock to me as I was a complete beginner in film making and took all of their feedback into consideration and decided to change my plan completely and to change the story into one I thought would fit the horror genre and please the audience much more than my original idea. My main "evil" character changed to a man around the age of 35 and I introduced another character which would be the "victim", a young girl. The setting changed to a dark, eerie alleyway and then the trailer would continue on into the house of the victim. This first screening really helped me to see what the audience wanted from a horror trailer and facilitated the development of my narrative and characterization. Even though my feedback wasn't postive, short-term wise, the impact was positive long-term as it gave me a chance to re-think my ideas and come up with better ones.

Completed trailer screening  
When I felt I had completed the trailer, I showed it to another audience. 4 people to be exact, 2 of which were in the age slot of our target audience, and 2 of which weren't. I expected their reactions to be very different to one anothers as the age difference has an impact on how you take in certain media texts, especially a horror film trailer as it depends very much on what the audience finds scary. I gave them each a questionnaire to fill out when they had watched the screening. (Questionnaire is on the blog) This questionnaire wasn't only to find out if my trailer was a success, it was to find out if my target audience in particular, decoded a preffered reading to my main media text and I had suceeded at my job as an encoder too. This feedback also helped me to find correlations between social stratification and reaction to the trailer. 
The results were fantastic, my target audience feedback came out mostly preferred with my non target audience feedback coming back mostly aberrant. This was expected and helped me to see that I had succeeded in creating a trailer for a particular audience.

People react to media texts in different and sometimes unpredictable ways. I made sure my final trailer screening was done in a darkened room so that my trailer could be watched with full effect. However, if the trailer was watched in a different condition it may change the typical gratification a person might get from watching the video. Sometimes, giving your audience a questionnaire to do before a screening can cause them to feel differently about it and cause their original thoughts of the trailer to change without them noticing. I took this into account and gave my audience the questionnaire after they had watched the trailer. This ensured their original readings of my media texts weren't interferred with and the feedback I gained was completely accurate.

Overall, audience feedback, particularly the early screening, helped me to form my ideas and helped me to develop my trailer so it was of a standard which was accepted and thought of as good by my target audience. In a way, audience feedback helped me to create my trailer as it initiated the change of plan.


Final trailer screening 1 - non target audience

I devised a small questionnaire and showed my final film trailer to two people, one male and one female, both of which are over the age of 40. Now since this age is not one of our target audience I hope to see a slight difference in the answers given when compared to the answers given by the people I give it to who are in our target audience age slot.

Questionnaire:

Do you think the effects we have applied to the clips are effective?
Very effective 1                  2                   3                  4  Not effective     
 
Do you think the music fits in well with the scenes?
Fits very well 1                  2                   3                  4  Doesn't fit

Do you think the ending of the trailer is effective?
Very effective 1                  2                   3                  4  Not effective

Would you go and see this film?
 Absolutely 1                  2                   3                  4  No, it's not my thing

What age certificate do you think this film has?

U(universal)          PG(parental guidance)          12A(12 with adult)          15(over 15)          18(over 18)



These were the outcomes, remembering this showing was to an audience which was way out of our target audience area:

Final trailer screening 2- target audience

I devised a small questionnaire and showed my final film trailer to two people, one male and one female, both of which are aged 18. Now since this age is one of our target audience I hope to see a slight difference in the answers given when compared to the answers given by the people I give it to who are not in our target audience age slot.

Questionnaire:

Do you think the effects we have applied to the clips are effective?
Very effective 1                  2                   3                  4  Not effective    
 
Do you think the music fits in well with the scenes?
Fits very well 1                  2                   3                  4  Doesn't fit

Do you think the ending of the trailer is effective?
Very effective 1                  2                   3                  4  Not effective
Would you go and see this film?
 Absolutely 1                  2                   3                  4  No, it's not my thing

What age certificate do you think this film has?

U(universal)          PG(parental guidance)          12A(12 with adult)          15(over 15)          18(over 18)



These were the outcomes:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The majority of media texts have what we call Generic Textual Features. These include:

• Narrative- similar plots and structures, predictable situations, sequences, episodes, obstacles, conflicts and resolutions
• Characterization - similar types of characters, roles, personal qualities, motivations, goals, behaviour
• Basic themes- topics, subject matter
• Setting- geographical and historical
• Iconography- a familiar stock of images or motifs, the connotations of which have become fixed; primarily but not necessarily visual, including decor, costume and objects, certain 'typecast' performers, familiar patterns of dialogue

My main product and my ancillary texts will use, develop and challenge these codes and conventions (Generic textual features) of media texts.

My main product, which is my film trailer, has a similar narrative to most horror films. I hope to have portrayed this with the clips in the trailer without having given away too much of the story. The basic storyline is that a psycho has his eyes on a young girl and he then sneaks into her house to attempt a murder. The solution is not revealed in the trailer but going along with a narrative thats similar to existing films the solution is that the victim "beats" the psycho at his own game and there is a happy(ish) ending. The characters are similar and have analogous roles with personal qualities that you may be able to identify in existing horror films. With the young girl victim, and the older man "psycho", this film fits in very well with many narratives and themes of other films such as:

Prom night trailer

These narratives and themes seem to go down well according to the reaction of films such as prom night and audience's like the theme of girl victim and man psycho. If there was a woman psycho, the effect wouldnt be the same. However, I have developed the characterization generic textual feature and expanded the male psycho character into one that is paranormal. I think this will be exceptionally effective as the thought of him being physically dangerous (using a knife etc) will be ignited with the thought of him being paranormal too. According to my audience feedback, the paranormal is something a majoirty people are afraid of because it is unknown whether these things are true or not. In this sense my trailer does challenge some forms and conventions of real media products as the story differs and therefore has a slightly different storyline to most existing films. The setting of my trailer is very similar to real media products that exist already. It is set in a dark alleyway at first, and then continues on inside a small house where various paranormal activity goes on and where the 'menace' will sneak in. The setting is mostly dark or edited to make seem more eerie and to have an extra tense atmosphere. My main product doesn't necessarily challenge or develop any forms of real media products in the sense of setting, but uses many of them. Iconography wise, my trailer develops some aspects of real media products. In my trailer I have a scene of complete darkness but I have added a voice over of someone crying and pleading for someone to leave them alone. I think that this is a good feature to have in a horror trailer as darkness is something that is known to scare people, and with the added voiceover of a victim, this could increase the tensity that this scene may have already had. A familiar prop that I used was a knife. This fits in and uses forms and conventions of real media products, an example of an existing film using a knife is Child's Play.
My trailer uses codes and conventions of trailers. Our trailer starts off with a dark shot of the victim walking, but we have edited it so it flashes into negative at two points during this scene. This is similar to the paranormal activity trailer that i've researched in my Codes and conventions. The background music that i've used is also chilling, yet fairly quiet at the beginning as sometimes silence and quiet noises can be the scariest when used at the right points in a trailer. By building up the tension with the background music, the images seem much more effective. We also start our trailer off with the company name that produced the film, this happens in all trailers at some point. Another textual feature we used was the use of text throughout the trailer to explain some background information and to get the audience thinking about our film. An example of this is "Who will be next?" could get the audience thinking and wanting to know what happens in the rest of the film. Like in the trailer for Insidious, we continue the trailer with shots from the film and flashing images with a tense background soundtrack.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During my research stage I mainly used the internet to look up different things. A well known website I used was youtube .  I used youtube to find and watch existing film trailers and this helped me to understand the types of features a film trailer has. Actually being able to watch film trailers helped me a lot because it gave me inspiration and ideas for my own trailer whereas without this site it would have taken a lot longer to come up with ideas. I also used iTunes to research different soundtracks that went with existing film. I looked at the avatar album and then also found some other various soundtracks through searching around this software. Using iTunes gave me ideas for what music I would use for my trailer as I was able to hear what types of music existing horror/scifi/thriller films/etc had used. I also used the internet to research magazine covers and posters using google images. Lastly I used microsoft word to produce a questionnaire which I then handed out to people within our target audience age and this helped me to understand what the target audience thought about various things within a horror trailer. This helped me and my team to understand what aspects to put into the trailer and which things not to put in. During my planning stage I used various technologies for each of my products. For my main product is was mostly using the film camera and using the editing software which was Premiere Elements.8 and it looks like this:

 

It took time getting used to the film camera and so we made a practice film with it so we could learn how all the features on the camera worked, we then edited this film using Premier Elements.8 so we had a trial run of how to use this software too. Using the film camera to help plan our trailer was really useful as we could test out our ideas and see how they would turn out on the camera. It also gave us a chance to see how well the camera worked in different lights and helped us to plan our different trailer shots. However, using the film camera did have it's limitations, sometimes camera files would strangely go missing when uploaded to the computer or some files from the camera would not upload to the computer and so sometimes we had to film them again which was fairly frustrating for my team as it was very time consuming. Using Premier Elements.8 to help plan our trailer was a really easy way of seeing what effects we could add to the different shots and helped us to really picture how our trailer was going to pan out. However there were also some limitations when using this software, as we were beginners with this software we had to have a lot of help from our teacher and couldnt get on with using this software at times without being in a lesson with them. Another limitation with this software was that it kept crashing and deleting some files we used in trailer. This was extremely wearisome and we got very frustrated with the software as it was losing us valuable time,

unneccessarily. Two technologies I used to help me plan and construct my ancillary texts was photoshop and a Canon EOS 7D (camera). I have used photoshop many times before and so there weren't many limitations on using this software. Having photoshop available at home really helped my planning and construction as I could edit my photos for my magazine cover and poster to see what effects looked really good and what effects affected the audience best. Using photoshop also helped me plan my layouts as I could easily see what looked good and what didnt look right. It also was easy to construct the final product as I had played around with a few photos beforehand and so I knew all the different features of photoshop fairly well. My dad used to be a photographer, so using a big camera like the Canon EOS 7D was fairly easy and he taught me all the different features of it and I was able to do a few mock photoshoots nice and easy to help me see how the camera worked, and then it was very simple to use this camera for my final products. There were no real limiations when using the camera as I had my dad on hand to help me use it. For my evaluation stage, I used an interactive whiteboard to screen some scenes of our trailer and constructed a small questionnaire for some audience feedback. There weren't many limitations with this as it was a quick and easy process apart from it took a few minutes to get the sound working. Lastly I used blogger to contain all my notes and processes for this project, there weren't many limitations to this, it was easy to get used to, however if the internet were to go down and fail, I would not have been able to use blogger.

Early screening questionnaire

When we had filmed our clips for the trailer, we screened them to 10 people and handed out a questionnaire for them to fill out in order for us to gain feedback.

Questionnaire:

1.     Age: Please circle appropriate age range

14-17      18-22      23-28      29+

2.     Gender/Sex: Please circle M F

3.     How often do you go to the cinema?

Twice a week            Once a week            Once a fortnight            Once a month            Rarely            Never

Trailer:

4.     How effectively did you feel the trailer communicated the type of film being promoted?

Circle appropriate number

Very effectively                        1            2            3            4            Not very effectively

5.     How easy was it to understand what film genre the trailer was promoting?

Circle appropriate number

Very easy                        1            2            3            4            Not very easy

6.     How easy was it to understand the basic storyline of the film the trailer was promoting?

Circle appropriate number

Very easy                        1            2            3            4            Not very easy

7.     How effective were the various settings?

Circle appropriate number

Very effective                        1            2            3            4            Not very effective

8.     How effective was the use of music

Circle appropriate number

Very effective                        1            2            3            4            Not very effective

Clips:

9.     How effective was clip 1?

Circle appropriate number

Very effective                        1            2            3            4            Not very effective

10.  How effective was that clip sequence?

Circle appropriate number

Very effective                        1            2            3            4            Not very effective

Using the feedback I created some graphs to make it clear how the answers came out:

Question 1:

Question 2:



Question 3: 

Question 4: 

Question 5:

Question 6:

Question 7:

Question 8: 

Question 9: 

This was expected as the clips are very simple at this time!

Question 10:

Most of the answers that we got were of preferred readings and we were very happy with this. Question 9 didn't come as a shock to us as we understood how simple our clips were at this stage. Hopefully when our trailer is fully finished we will get better feedback for this question.