Evaluation Part 3

 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order for me to have completed my main project and ancillary texts I had to complete a number of primary research to allow me to gain feedback and establish my target audience. This has enabled me to identify my target audience as predominantly female and between the ages of 15-26.

The first way I gained audience feedback for pre- production was in completing a questionnaire I asked 50 people to fill out my questionnaires, people from a number of age ranges and both genders. However before I could complete the survey I did secondary research into different types of film genres, this lead to me being able to establish which film genre I feel I could produce well and to a professional standard. Therefore in my questionnaire I could gain from the age and gender which people most preferred horror films. I also asked what type of narrative my audience would prefer in order to identify which narrative for my horror film trailer would best appeal to my target audience.  

After I completed my questionnaire and analysed it and concluded that my project will be horror and my target audience is 15-26, I then carried out a focus group in order to see what codes and conventions of existing real media products best appeal to my audience. I asked 5 people in my target audience and had 4 discussion points around the two film campaigns I showed them. From doing this I learned to use dark saturation on my print and website campaigns and for my trailer flash in and out from different points of the film to lure my audience in.  Therefore from this type of audience feedback I have learned that the best codes and conventions of existing horror campaigns, and that the best way to lure an audience in to a horror film is not to give too much of what happens away because in horror films the fear of unknown is important for it to be successful. This is because it creates enigma codes and allows the audience to try and work out the plot keeping them engaged.  

Audience feedback during production has also helped me to develop my campaign because I was able to ask members of my audience as I was creating the poster, website and trailer what they think about certain aspects of this. However this was only quick questions as I was designing. I asked my family and people in my class what they thought of my choice of typography and so their feedback helped this to develop.

I also asked about the sound effects used in my trailer, which ones worked best or not, therefore I now feel I have chosen the most suiting sound effects for my trailer. On my poster I also asked what captions would work best to lure my audience in therefore I came up with the ‘COME JOIN US’ as almost my tagline for my campaign. In choosing the title for the trailer I asked my target audience if they liked the name ‘THE A ASSOCIATION’ and if they could come up with other names. However most said that the name A Association did appeal to them as a film name and sadly no one could come up with a better name so ‘THE A ASSOCIATION’ it is.

Now that I have completed my project I still needed to gain post production audience feedback in order to see how successful my film campaign was or not. I conducted a focus group were I showed 4 audience members my trailer, poster and websites (this is outlined in evaluation part 2). My focus group all agreed that my typography looked very professional and they liked the sound effects used on my trailer, they said this really set up the atmosphere of the trailer. They also said that the whole campaign linked well together and showed the codes and conventions of horror, with dark saturation and plenty of enigma codes to lure them in. They all said that the scream at the end of the trailer lured them in to wanting to know what happens to the girls. Also they liked that they did not know who the villains were and so this was a reason as to why they would want to see the film because they want to find out who they are and why they were the white masks.

Therefore overall from looking at all my audience feedback I can summarise that my project does comply and connote the horror genre to my target audience and is successful at luring them into wanting to watch the rest of the film. However if the sound on my trailer had not always stopped working I could have spent more time developing my poster in order for it to stand out more for my target audience. However despite this set back I feel i managed my production time well and was only behind schedule at the beginning because we had a problem with the college MACs and had to go into part of my contingency to allow me to complete the editing on my trailer.