Evaluation task 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In this post I will be presenting the audience feedback that we got, both for the first draft and the second draft of our product. The audience feedback that we gained for our first draft was taken after we viewed the trailer to a number of classmates, before they then gave us feedback and suggested areas for improvement. We also presented the trailer to a professional who produces trailers - and he also gave us suggestions for improvement. I will present this feedback, as well as the changes we made to the trailer in correspondence to the feedback. Then lastly, I will present a pie chart which shows the audience feedback from the final draft. This audience feedback is a simple rating out of 5 among 10 people that fit into the target audience of our product.

As presented on my blog earlier in the year, this is the audience feedback that we gained both from our classmates and the trailers professional:

Positives:

• The overlapping voiceovers of news reports while the newspaper articles were being presented on screen
• Good music and sound choices
• The end of the trailer was very good and fitted the genre well - leaving questions on what happens to the main character in the narrative

Negatives:

• Some shots were too long and therefore need to be cut down
• Some of the titles were too far apart - meaning that the audience forgot information being presented to them
• The first shot of the radio was poor as you could tell it was a school setting

After receiving this feedback from our first draft, we made the following changes:

Firstly, we cut some of the shots down on Final Cut Pro in order to improve the flow and speed of the trailer as it is a typical convention of thriller genre trailers that the shots and cuts are faced paced. We also then needed to bring the titles closer together - for example; 'YOU - CAN'T - RUN - FOREVER'. Between each of these words there were shots of the trailer and these went on for a little too long, meaning the audience forgot what the titles said by the time the next one came along. We cut some of these shots down using the blade tool or removed some for the shots in order to reduce the amount of time between the titles. We also needed to re-film the radio shot using the Panasonic HD camera in order to make it look more like it is in a home setting - as it is meant to be the main character who is listening to the radio, and we hadn't properly considered mise-en-scene when filming it the first time around. Although it wasn't mentioned by the class, it was also apparent to me that some of the titles need fades as they appear and disappear off the screen too quickly and in an unappealing way.

Below is evidence of these changes:  

Above is the shot of the radio - which had to be changed as you can tell it was not in a home setting

However, this shot is the one we used after w had re-filmed it which you can tell is clearly in a home setting

This screenshot presents how I used the blade tool on Final Cut Pro to make some of the shots before title screens shorter - in order to improve the flow and speed of the trailer.

These two images present how I used a fade effect, to make the text disappear off the screen in a more appealing way.

 Now, I will present the audience feedback we gained after the final draft was presented to 10 people I know that fit into our target audience. We wanted to gain this information to see if our product had improved since the first daft, by getting the opinion of 10 people that fit the target audience. Below is a pie chart presenting this information:

I asked 10 people that I know who fit the target audience for our product (18-25 year old males) to rate the quality of the trailer for it's final draft, compared to real-life products on a rating of 1-5 (1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest). As you can see from the pie chart, 5 of the people that we asked gave us a 4/5 rating, making it the most popular rating. 3 people said 5/5 and 2 people said 3/5 - nobody gave us a 1 or 2 out of 5. This is a positive reaction from the audience and we are happy with the result. This presents the positive alterations we made to our trailer as people were a lot more satisfied with the second result. Half of the people we asked gave it a 4/5 rating, and a further 3 more people gave it a 5/5 rating which we are very pleased with. 

What have I learnt from audience feedback?

The audience feedback that our trailer gained was very helpful in creating the second draft. Having an audience outside of our production group was very helpful as it allowed us to see feedback from a different point of view. We might've liked something from our product that looked good to us, however the audience viewed it and didn't like it - this would encourage us to change it. One example being the shot of the radio in our trailer seen below.

This shot was one that we had identified as a potential issue with our trailer however we decided against changing it until we received audience feedback. When we presented the trailer to our classmates they also identified this as something that needs to be changed, as mise-en-scene was not considered enough when filming this. It was pointed out that it doesn't look like a home setting, and this encouraged us to re-film it. I learnt from audience feedback that it is always useful to get a second opinion. We may have liked our product a lot because we managed to see it develop over the weeks we spent editing it, however as the audience views it, they may not share the same opinion when they compare it to other finished products. That's why it is always very important to get audience feedback on a  first draft before making adjustments to a final draft.

Another example of something the audience spotted was that some shots were far too long for a trailer. To us, the shots seemed as if they were of a good pace, however the audience didn't share this opinion and they pointed out that they were too long compared to real-life products. This again helped us notice that our product wasn't ready to be published as a final draft yet because some of the shots were on the screen for too long. This is something we wouldn't have spotted without audience feedback. It was also made apparent to us that the time between titles that appeared on the screen in the trailer were too long - this meant they forgot what information was being presented to them by the time the next title came up. Again, this is something we wouldn't have spotted as we knew which titles were going to come up next as we had watched the trailer plenty of times over. However, for an audience that is watching the trailer for the first time; it was different for them. 

Overall, I feel as if the use of audience feedback was very helpful in the production of our trailer. Audience feedback helped us pick out areas for improvement in our trailer that we hadn't of spotted ourselves - this made for a better end result. I have learnt therefore that audience feedback is crucial in the making of a trailer, especially when the audience is one of the target audience as you can make it more appealing to the right type of people. I have also learnt from audience feedback that it is always important to get a second opinion of people who are not involved in the production of the trailer as they will be honest, and will be more helpful in picking out areas for improvement that we had failed to spot.