Evaluation question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


After taking some initial sample scenes we had substantial audience feedback from our media class. We chose to use our media class for audience feedback as they fit in well to the traget audience, which was youth both male and female, so felt audience feedback from them would be the most effectively helpful. They suggested more footage to be taken to help establish the narrative as it wasnt always clear as the preferred reading after watching the sample scene. From this i discovered even though we were producing a film trailer it would still need a sustantial number of shots all of which including coverage to help ditinguish the narrative more clearly. After our re-shoot we obtained more audience feedback, such as at the beginning of our trailer we filmed some long shots of social events, w edecided to shoot one of the social events to be the group of girls talking in a bedroom, with focus on two of the characters, Catie (Sarah) and Lisa (Hannah) having a personal conversation which helped to establish the narrative of the film more clearly, as well as creating a situation for the audience to feel emapathy for the central protagonist.






The audience feedback was to break this clip up and have some of the quicker, shorter shots inbetween in where Ben (Ben C) is walking into the garden, to spy on Catie. From this we learnt how to create more tension and suspense throughout the film trailer, also to break the clip up using the razor tool, as it was a fairly long clip and would get boring and monotomous for the audience to watch in one, but with these fast shots inamongst it gave the clip a bit of an edge, creating something different whilst sticking to common codes and conventions of teaser trailers. The clips below and above this paragraph are the two shots we cut up and merged together intermitently as a result of audience feedback.







During the second half of our trailer we have three main killings,the film trailer then ends with the killer stood behind Catie (Sarah) with a knife followed by a shot of Catie's reaction. The audience feedback to this change was possibly to copy the killing scenes and cut them so they were really fast short montage shots and then place them inbetween the two end shots. After activley taking the decision to do this, we found it worked very effectivley. From the audience feedback i learnt that through a film trailer the genre and breif plot must be established of the film, so that the audience are well informed but not too much so that they dont want to watch the film to find out the ending, this kept the audience in suspense as they don't know if Catie(Sarah) will eventually be killed or not as the trailer ends on a cliffhanger. (below are two of killings before being cut)




After taking the few shots of our last killing of Caties best friend Lisa (Hannah) we had some very useful audience feedback, The feedback was that the shots were too a littledark and the scene too cluttered which may divert the audiences attention away from the main focus (character) in shot, however that it was a good intertextual link to have DVD's on the floor where Lisa was watching tv from the film 'Scream' as Drew Barrymore famously confess's to her killer shes going to watch a scray movie which prophetically seals her fate of death, our re-creation of this therefore was having the DVD's on the floor whilst alreay watching tv in the dark, which also made her look more vulnerable. From this audience feedback i've learnt when taking footage, lighting plays a vital part especially in horror films and sometimes you may need more light than you actually think, also that the locations should be as simple and clear as possible which helps to enable the main focus is on the desired action taking place. Lisas killing is shown below (before it was cut)





After we screened our rough cut to other pupils who are the same age of our primary target audience (which is the youth audience), we decided to take some more footage to establish that Ben (Ben Crossley) was one of the clear suspects as a killer, as feedback was that this was essential in the trailer to engrain into the audiences heads that Bens the killer meaning, that when the twist of him not being the killer was revealed it would be an even bigger twist surprise to the audience. (the shot to establish Ben as the prime suspect is below)

We went through various stages with our poster. We started off with a main image which, after adding the billing block, reviews and BBFC rating we recived audience feedback that communicated it would be a good idea to incorporate some more pictures and blend them in with our main image. After some consideration we thought we should add small pictures of each of the six main characters in the corner of the poster just to establish to the audience who the main characters are. From this audience feedback i've realised to produce an effective poster it should incorporate a number of different images and that you need to establish some sort of narrative to the audience through the poster, but still be kept quite simple so nt to get cluttered.

We originally had two reviews on our poster, both of which were from tabloid newspapers, which were 'The Star' and the 'The Sun'. The audience feedback on these reviews was that because our film was to be a low budget film we should probably include a review from a magazine that was involved with low budget films, it would also target a wider audience as not only tabloid reader were likly to trust our film to be good but also film magazines as well, therefore appearing more reliable to the audience. As a result we used 'Fangoria'. This audience feedback showed me it as well as using a mainstream established company as a reviewer it also good to link it specifically to the genre somehow, as people who read those sorts of magazines etc are more likley to be interested in our film than general public.
To incorporate this idea we included films such as ‘The Shining’ and ‘Psycho’ which are both famous horror films, and also used another horror film magazine; ‘Fangoria’ as one of the reviewers, these small but significant extra factors helped tremendously to establish this was a magazine about horror films, and was a descent one as it talked about reliable film and reviewer names.

The first time we attempted our magazine we took inspiration from film magazines such as ‘Sky’, which is why our original image for our magazine front cover was of three of the main characters, Catie (Sarah), Ben (Ben C) and Lewis (Ben I), stood smiling together as if they were on a promotional photoshoot. However because our film is a low budget horror film; after recieving some audience feedback that considering the film is the genre of horror, the characters look very happy, so we decided to use an image from the trailer as a still. Which was of Ben the; suspected killer as we panned up to his face in a hoody, after he receives a text, meaning his facial expressions would be quite creepy.

After we placed this on the magazine front cover we received some more audience feedback and they said that the picture was too dark as was the magazine front cover. After some discussions we went away and re-took the image with a digital camera, making sure we had enough light, by taking it on an early winter morning which also ensured that there was a blue tinted sky behind him which is a convention of horror films, and also helped to illuminate the image a little further, attracting customers further to it. From this audience feedback I’ve learnt that lighting is a very important factor as it can make people feel a certain way or come to a different conclusion even the establishment of film genre, especially as what you see on your camera may be completely different to what you see on your computer screen. I have also learnt that you should associate the genre of your film to the magazine (E.G. If the genre of your film is horror, advertise it in a horror film magazine)

This is the original image used for our final magazine which we manipulated using the programme Photoshop, and took using a digital camera