What have you learned from audience feedback?

 Audience feedback is important because films and media products are made simply for audiences and people’s entertainment and to impress them with their products so they can watch more or invest more of a certain media product.  It is very important to get feedback from the audience to know what the audience wants and what they are interested in. This will therefore help the film makers to know what the audience wants and then target a type of audience which will then capture the audiences attention and therefore they will go and see the film. In addition, it will also help film makers know what genre has a wide audience and this will help the film makers, make and create a film for a genre or a sub-genre to make the audience interested, then they would watch it and this will then help the film make a huge box office figure.  It is also important to get audience feedback because it helps to get a different perspective and a different view of the film. This is positive as the film would be fresh and new to someone’s eyes and this would allow the audience to pick out the strengths and weaknesses of the film easily. Whether it would be the editing, the storyline, the acting, mise-en-scene (setting, costumes, props, lighting), continuity etc.This is important as the film makers will know what the strengths were to include it in their films in the future as it may impress the audience again. Also, they would know what not to include in the film, it will also help the film makers improve their films in the future and make a better, more improved film.

 There are different types of feedback such as –  Box office  Critical reception/reviews  Questionnaire/ surveys  Test audiences  Website tally  Focus group of target audience  Forums  Peer assessment screenings  Social network sites

 The types of feedback I used to get audience feedback were –  Peer assessment screening  Test audiences  Social networking sites

 I used peer assessment screenings to help get some audience feedback. As a class, we watched each others films and my class were the first people to see our film. This was a peer assessment as everyone in our class was our peer and they were assessing and examining our film. After the class watched our film, they gave me and my group some feedback, they gave us the positives and what they found was good with our film and then they told us the negative aspects and parts of our film and how we could improve on those things. They also gave us additional advice and things we could include or work on. The peer assessment was very helpful as they spotted things that my group and I could not spot or identify when editing and looking over the film. We also got a different perspective and different views from our peers and this allowed us to get a taste of what audiences would think and this then helped us to know what we could work and improve on. After the peer assessment we were given the chance to go t the editing suite and edit our film and improve it. This allowed us to take on board the information our peers gave us and apply them to our film in order to make it the best of our abilities.  Our negative aspects of our film was that the voice over at the end was very quiet compared to the background music which made it very hard for our peers to understand what the character was saying in the voice over. We then lowered down the background music and made the volume of the voice over higher. Another thing was the ellipsis of ‘10 years later’ was quite fast and people would not be able to read it as it came up quite fast. We then slowed the ellipsis down a few seconds in order for it to be readable and to allow the audience to catch what it says. Also when the character ‘Rosaline’ put the gun down on the picture, the gun sounded very light weight and sounded like the gun was plastic, which is was. But this was bad because it was unrealistic and we wanted the gun to sound like it was supposed to be a real gun and sound heavy. Ella (media technician/helper) then helped us to deepen the sound in order to make the gun sound heavy and large when the character ‘Rosaline’ places it on the table. The poker scene with our group members Ashley and Junaid, was too long and seemed like it dragged, we then shortened it down as much as we can to make the scene short and snappy.  Overall, this type of feedback was good as it allowed us to identify the flaws within our film and then improve it in order to perfect our film in order to make it crisp and somewhat flawless.

 Another type of feedback my group and I carried out was that we got people to be a test audience and just watch our film and to give us their opinion/s and feedback on our film. My group and I got teachers, friends and family to watch our film and to tell us what they thought about it. This was effective as I showed my friends and family who are fans of action, violent, thriller and noir films. This then helped us to see if they enjoyed the film and to see if they thought it matched up to their favourite thriller/noir/action films. I was impressed and glad when they said it reminded them of The Godfather as the mise-en-scene reminded them of that film. Also, they said that the female assassin who wants to seek revenge reminded them of Kill Bill, this was good as this film was one of our inspirations. We also wanted to get feedback from our friends and family as we wanted a non-professional view on our film as we did not want a professional view because teachers or students who do media are likely to pick out detailed and technical aspects of our film and comment on them, whereas, friends and family are most likely not to make technical criticism on our film. Their views and opinions will most likely be on the surface and not to deep in detail. This will therefore give us a range of feedback which we would want because it would help us get different views from different people, whether it is professional or unprofessional.

 Social networking sites are a great way of getting feedback and peoples opinions on media products. My group and I thought it would be quite effective to post our film on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. We thought this would be effective because it would be a good way to get feedback, opinions and information from people. This is because there are ranges of different audiences on social networking websites and this would give us a range of information and feedback. This will then allow has to take their opinions, views and feedback in to account and consideration. We shared our film on Twitter and Facebook via YouTube as our media technician/helper Ella, uploaded our film to YouTube for us and this allowed us to post and share our film on social networks. We got different comments and feedback from people. Many people thought the film was very good an most of the feedback was positive and complimentary. Some of the comments were just improvements we could have made. Another thing about social networking is that it allows us to distribute and advertise our film on different formats.

 For our poster we gave out questionnaires in order to know what poster was best and what poster would be the most effective in promoting our film. I made 3 poster ideas and I gave my posters to people and had the same questionnaire for each poster and they filled the questionnaire out. I then analysed the information and I based my decision on what poster to design on the questionnaires. This shows that I took other peoples views and opinions in to account which would then most likely catch the audiences attention and if the audience have watched the film and see my poster I have created, they would know it is for the film ‘Rosaline’.  For my review I made my first draft and gave it to my teacher and she read over it and marked my review and gave me some feedback on it. This allowed me to improve my review and make it professional as my teacher would have experience on how to write an effective review. I then asked my friends to read over my review to see if it made sense, if there were any spelling or grammar mistakes or if I needed to add anything. As I got more people to give me feedback on my review the more I had the chance to improve it to make my review the best of my ability.