Evaluation Part 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• After taking some initial sample scenes we had quite a bit of audience feedback from our media class (aged 17-18, the youth audience) which is our primary target audience. They suggested we took more footage to help establish the narrative as it wasnt clear as the preferred reading and they said after watching our first shots that they didnt really understand what the narrative actually was. From this i learnt that even though we were producing a film trailer we still needed enough shots to establish a narrative, so that the audience were able to get a feel for what the story was actually about from just watching a trailer.

• After we went to re-shoot we had some more audience feedback, at the beginning of our trailer we have some long shots of social events, one of these social events was the group of girls talking in a bedroom, with focus on two of the characters, Catie (Sarah) and Lisa (Hannah). The audience feedback was to break this clip up and have some of the fast shots inbetween in where Ben (Ben C) is walking into the garden. From this we learnt how to build up the suspense throughout the film trailer and to break the clip up as it was a fairly long clip and would probably get slightly boring after a while but with these fast shots inbetween it gives the clip a bit of an edge, something different.

This is the shot of the girls talking in the bedroom before we split the clip up.

• During the second half of our trailer we have quite a few killings and then the film trailer ends with the killer stood behind Catie (Sarah) and then a shot of Catie's reaction. The audience feedback to this was to possibly copy the killing scenes and cut them so they were really fast shots and then place them inbetween the two end shots. When we did this, it was very effective and worked well. From this audience feedback i learnt that through a film trailer  you have to establish the genre of the film well so by the end of the trailer the audience know what the genre of the film is. This also helped to put the audience in suspense as they don't know if Catie (Sarah) will eventually be killed or not and you are unsure of how the trailer will end.
• After we had taken the footage for our last killing of Catie's good friend Lisa (Hannah) we had some very useful audience feedback, The feedback was that the shots were too dark and it was hard to establish what was in the actual shot, we had placed dvds and remote controls on the floor to show the audience that the girl was watching a film, we made sure that there was a combination of girly films and horror films. Some more feedback was about some of the clutter that was in the corner of the shot as we were unable to move it. The audience thought that it might attarct the audiences attention away from the character and what was actually going on in the scene. From this audience feedback i have learnt that when taking footage, lighting plays a vital part and sometimes you may need more light than you actually think, also that the locations should be as simple and clear as possible to enable that the main focus is on the action taking place.

This is some of the footage of Lisa's (Hannah) killing. We used the first shot instead of the second due to the set being too cluttered, which we thought may distract the audience's attention away from Lisa (Hannah).

• 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 some audience feedback which was that it would be a good idea to incorporate some more pictures and blend them in with our main image. After some discussions we thought it would be a good idea to 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 have learnt that to make an effective poster you should incorporate a few different images and that you need to establish some sort of narrative to the audience through the poster.

Original Image:

• We originally had two reviews on our poster, one was from 'The Star' and the other one was from '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. Therefore we used 'Fangoria' . From this audience feedback i have learnt that the reviews on your poster don't always have to be from well known newspapers or magazines, they should be from newspapers or magazines that are somehow linked into the genre of your films as at the end of the day, the people who are reading those magazines or newspapers are the people who are more likely to want to watch yoru film.

Final Poster :

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  The original image for our magazine front cover was of three of the main characters, Catie (Sarah), Ben (Ben C) and Lewis (Ben I). The image was the three characters stood together, smiling. We had this idea from the Sky magazines however due to the fact that our film is a low budget horror film and after some audience feedback saying that considering the film is the genre of horror, the characters look very happy, we decided to change the image and use a still from the trailer. We decided to use a still when the camera pans upwards to Ben's (Ben C) face after he receives a text. 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. From this audience feedback i have learnt that you should always ensure you have enough light in your set 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 for our magazine front cover which we took using a digital camera and then developed it to eventually end up with our final magazine product.