Jessica King

Audience feedback is extremely important in understanding the audience from the production stage onwards. This is crucial in ensuring the film is met well by the audience in order to increase profits when the film is released. There are many different ways in which to gain this. One way is online through social networking sites such as Facebook or through YouTube as this is where we have posted our trailer. Social media has made it easy to gain feedback from a wider and larger audience which could help in increasing viewers and consequently profits. Using the internet is a quick and cheap method, this makes it suited to our low budget independent film. It is also instant therefore respondents are not required to spend a large amount of time which often increases the response rate. This feedback is far more positive and constructive than the results from the surveys. This may be because there is a more informal nature to responses through social media so respondents are more likely to be relaxed, honest and chatty. As highlighted in the surveys, the blue font we used was not received well and did not seem to fit the overall tone of the trailer. Therefore this is something we would change before releasing our film.

Another medium in which to gain feedback and constructive criticisms is through interim feedback. This I have been provided with by my teachers and other group member throughout the project. It’s a really effective way to receive an opinion that you can act on swiftly. For example; during editing, we chose two separate pieces of music that did not work well together and it was hard to create a smooth transition between the two. So our teacher suggested a new piece of music and showed us an effective way to bridge the transition. This sounded loads better and is an example of how interim feedback had a positive impact on our trailer. A third way of gaining audience feedback is through surveys. Although this requires time and effort from the respondents, it is a great way to receive both quantitative and qualitative data through a mixture of open and closed questions. Qualitative data is great for producing numerical results that can be easily compared thus conclusions are easily drawn. However, questions can be manipulated in order to produce the desired results especially as we would like our trailer to appear to be received well. Qualitative data generates much more opinion based and interpretative results. They are harder to draw solid conclusions from but in this case it is a great way to gain a variety of thoughts and suggestions on our trailer. We have created a survey that our class completed after watching our trailer.

Results: Unfortunately, the majority of our focus group said they would not go and watch our film. This was for a variety of reasons; mainly the perceived lack of complexity in the storyline. However those who said they would see it said it seemed “intriguing”, “interesting” and “different” which suggests the indie audience we were aiming for. This graph shows that more males would go to see our film than females which suggests we should market our film in a more masculine way in order to secure that demographic. Or perhaps promoting in a more feminine light, maybe emphasizing the love aspect, would be beneficial in broadening our audience.

Results: An area that was raised by several respondents to improve upon was the font. It was said not to “fit the comic book style”. This is an aspect I would work on if I were to do this again as it is important to create cohesion within the trailer and stick to the overall feel of the film. Originally we tried to steer clear of clichéd, obvious comic style writing and go for something a little more post modern and eye catching. This was evidently not received well by our focus group. On a more positive note, 64% of our respondents agreed our trailer would appeal mostly to an indie audience because of the alternative aspects. This is good as it means marketing the film through Little White Lies magazine was a suitable choice and will reach the desired audience.

On the whole, our feedback indicates that perhaps the representation of our characters and narrative needs to be made clearer and more enticing. This constructive criticism will allow us to improve upon our trailer, entailing a more appropriate and reachable target market. This could maybe be achieved through altering the plot or introducing the antagonist into the trailer. However the music was enjoyed by the audience, they thought it went really well with the action and appreciated the effects on the graphic stills and with the cartoon love hearts. As these were the most ambitious and postmodern elements of our trailer, I am really pleased they worked well. Despite this, the audience is also being reached through our ancillary products; magazine cover and poster. An indie audience is far more likely to respond to this type of promotion as, with the magazine, it is more interactive and enables more information and quirky facts about the film(ing) to be accessed.