Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is very important when considering an ad campaign for a film as it tells the film distributors what the audience considers good or bad, so therefore helps them change things in order to make the ad campaign better. For example, if the audience see a draft of a trailer, and don't fully understand the plot or do not think the music is appropriate, they can tell the film distributors this and they can change it to make it better for when the trailer is released. This is the same with posters, if the audience see a draft of a poster for a romantic film, but the poster does not particuarly tell you straight away it is a romantic film, they can tell the distributors this and they can change it to make sure there is no confusion when the poster is released.

We gathered audience feedback for our trailer by showing the trailer to our teacher, and getting feedback off her. This was necessary for us as she has the expertise when it comes to the technology and the programs we were using, so we were able to gain editing feedback off her. This was necessary for us as we do not have this experience with the technology, so it was essential that we had the guidance there when we needed it. We also had screenings of our trailer in class, which was the main feedback we needed as the age of our class was the age of our target audience. We showed them the trailer, and then handed round a sheet on which they could write the positive and negative elements of our trailer, and what they think we could improve on. We made sure the reviews were left anonymous so our class could be completely truthful, and as there are around 20 pupils in our class, we had a large amount of audience feedback. We also reguarly showed it to our friends as we improved it to get regular feedback off them.

Feedback we recieved for our trailer:

• the plot wasn't clear - as we knew the plot, we sometimes assumed our audience did too, and left out things that told essential parts of the plot
• the music needed to be improved - we had 3 different pieces of music in our trailer, which was too many. I think we did this as we could not find a perfect soundtrack for our trailer

When we first had the screening of our trailer, some of the feedback we recieved told us the audience did not know why the teenagers went into the house, or that the house really had any relevance. We solved this by showing the house for a longer amount of time, and showing it without the light flashing, and then with someone flashing a light through the window. This told the audience that there is someone in the house. After we showed this, we showed a shot of the girls walking into the basement, to show this is why they went into the house, and we put a shot of Alice over this to suggest she is where they are heading.
A lot of the audience did not know the relevance of the little girl, as we did not show her many times throughout the trailer. They also did not know that she was a spirit, so this was confusing for them. We solved this by showing her more in the final draft of our trailer. We showed her after the flashing of the light, to hint that it was her, and after the text, to show that she is what the text is referring to: "the spirit remains". We showed her in negative too, and we often added effects to the shots such as static and fades so that she does not seem 'real', to highlight the fact she is a spirit.
We solved the problem of the soundtrack by finding a piece of music that fit perfectly to our trailer, with dramatic bits of music fitting into our trailer when images of Alice came in. This meant we only had one piece of music in our trailer until the song comes in at the end, which seems to be Alice singing it. This is what we wanted all along.

We did get positive feeback for our trailer:

• the creepy 'ring around the roses' song at the end was really eery and worked perfectly as it is a young girl singing the song and it connotos innocence, so it was very spooky in a trailer
• the use of a young girl as the feared character in the trailer was approved of as usually it is a man or 'monster' used, not a young girl. This made it seem very spooky and unnerving

Feedback for my poster and magazine cover
I reguarly asked my teacher and the other members of my group what they thought I could improve on my ancillary texts, and they gave feedback on my use of colour and effects I had used on both. My friend Emma suggested I used a different logo for my magazine cover, as mine did not look official. I took this advice and changed the logo and this improved the look of my magazine cover. I took advice from my friends on the effects I used on my poster on the image of Alice, and this improved the quality of my work.
The positive feedback I recieved was the use of the headings on my magazine cover, as I had taken inspiration from real film magazine covers and this helped me create realistic headlines that were approapriate. Both my friends and my teacher said this helped to make my cover seem real.