What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience research?

I have tried to be as open and broad minded with audience research as I could have been.

Target audience and audience research

Audience research plays a vital part when producing a media form as you are directly trying to hit an audience and this is an important factor to a successful media form. We decided right from the beginning of the project that our target audience would be the younger sector of people e.g. 17-25 as this seems to be the main focus for horror films, after looking more into depth on a google search.


Even if I do not personally agree with the question with a high percentage such as: “What do you like most in a horror trailer?” The highest percentage answer was voice over. Which even though a voice over is considered to be a good trailer convention, I felt our trailer would much rather suit a more peaceful tone to create impact. But as the target audience felt this was appropriate for our teaser trailer, our group took this into account within our teaser trailer. Before planning our teaser trailer me and the group sat down and watched some previously made horror trailers to gain inspiration. We tried to watch top rated trailers so we became more familiar with what people enjoyed seeing and what we felt looked effective. I feel our biggest influence was ‘The Shining’ trailer. Despite, contextually, being completely different we liked the abnormal brightness and calm feel to it at the beginning and having studied this film in class we had a great deal of understanding on it. The trailer appears to be split in two halves: The first where the character Jack appears a normal bloke and the second being when he becomes possessed whilst staying in the hotel. Our group really liked the idea of having two parts to the trailer but ours would be split due to time changing. We liked that even when Jack became possessed the trailer still remained calm and we felt this approach left us feeling on edge as it became more psychological in a sense. We asked a few people in our class what they thought of this concept, and after explaining the effect we desired to achieve they become fonder of the idea. Our group wanted to create something different from the stereotypical horror trailer e.g. the setting being in a forest or in a haunted house and then a series of events occur resulting in a violent and bloody struggle, resulting in death. We wanted more mystery to our teaser trailer an example of this could be in the first half at the end we see the female protagonist floating in the water, it then cuts to black our intentions of this approach is that the audience does not know if she is dead and if she was going to be in the second half as perhaps a spirit. I have taken advantage of new technology whilst creating my audience research; I have used Facebook to help generate a fair amount of my audience research as my friends on Facebook meet my target audience. I feel this is a good way to get audience research as I know my peers will give me honest, critical advice and criticism is something which will make our teaser trailer stronger. I have not always stuck to the same questions for this research: I have asked random questions on factors I am worried about, such as our groups initial inter-titles- I felt they were weak and after discussing about them with people from our target audience, it became apparent we should change them.

 

I have tried to ask equally from male to female peers as even though Males, according to demographics, watch, know and tend to enjoy horror films better due to the violence and in some films; gore. I wanted varied results to determine what I put in our groups teaser trailer to help to meet the needs of a varied audience as much as possible. As a group at college we went around the premises and asked people who we did not know to ensure we got honest advice and not what we wanted to hear. We asked around eighteen people all of their ages ranging between sixteen and twenty four to answer some simple questions on what to include within our teaser trailer. These questions ranged from asking what gender they were, to how often they watch horror films and what type of horror setting they would like to say within our teaser trailer. I feel we took all of this audience research into account, even if there were some factors we did not entirely agree with but we felt we needed to meet our target audience’s needs rather than our own.

Initial responses on our teaser trailer and the horror conventions

Everyone watched each other’s rough cut of their teaser trailer and gave each other critical and honest advice on how their trailer could be improved. This was a very effective way for our group to gain audience feedback and critical advice as the class was within our target audience, so it was very interesting to find out what we could improve. Distributors often set up test screening for their media product and get their target audience to watch and give advice of components they would prefer or bits they really like.

Character: We had the issue of overcoming the problem of having two main female protagonists but however we got positive feedback on it being very clear who the female protagonist would be if we were to make the film. The only negative feedback we got from this was we needed more extreme close ups in the second half of our teaser trailer as we had them in the first and not so much in the second so therefore the audience was relating more with the female protagonist in the first half. We wanted to create the idea of a ‘final girl’ an important horror convention often used. When we asked the initial screening audience if we had created this we got a positive response and they did feel like we had created this impact especially due to the cliff hanger at the end. Objectifying women and ‘the male gaze’ is a common flaw within media forms, we did not want to have that impression in our trailer, we wanted the main female protagonist to hold the power.

Inter titles: We received the majority of the negative feedback on our inter titles which personally, I was pleased with as I was not a fan of them. Our peers did not like the ‘water’ effect background nor did they like the tone as they thought it was too bright, something I had suggested to our group and we had tried to overcome that problem. From that piece of criticism, we decided to change our inter titles to look more simple so we changed them too black, which also contributed to the ‘scary’ look as black is a colour commonly associated with horror films.

Voice over: Another piece of criticism we received was the original voice over which we had slowed down to make a deeper more horror- liked sounding voice. The effect had not been what we had hoped for, so we re-recorded this as a result of the criticism, and changed what we had initially said as they did have some criticism.

Camera work: We received positive feedback about our interesting choice of angles an example of this could be the close ups of the eyes under the water and the close up of the hand and white dress floating in the water; we were told these were very effective shots. The only criticism we received about our camera work was that we needed a close up of the main female protagonist in the second half as the audience did not feel they related and could relate to this main protagonist as well as the other one. I feel we covered interesting aspects with our camerawork after receiving structural criticism on a few areas we then took this on to help meet our target audience’s needs.

Mise-en-scene: Setting and lighting: Setting caused a few problems within the initial screening; the majority of the class really liked the bathroom setting as this is something which occurs in horror films quite a lot. They liked the way we had filmed it in an ‘arty’ way and the bright ‘innocent’ looking lighting which added to the shock factor. However, around 40% of the class were not overly keen on the settings in the second half, but many admitted it was only because of the lighting. We took this in to account and darkened the lighting to make it look more like a cliché horror setting . I really liked the setting in the first half, I feel the lighting connotes a more innocent, peaceful outlook which is something we wished to create. I was not sure on the setting in the second half, whilst planning our shots we were going to initially shoot in an attic but due to restrictions this made it extremely awkward. We settled for the drama store room closet which did look good, but I had a different idea of what I wanted in my head.

Editing: We received mainly positive responses on the way we had edited our teaser trailer. We wanted a ‘neat’ looking trailer so we edited the whole thing in a similar way. E.g. fades to black and inter titles being in the same place. The audience received our use of font well but we were told it would look a bit better if it was a bit smaller, which is something we experimented with and decided that it did look good. The ‘arctic productions’ production slide got a lot of positive response due to the template and the colours we chose to use, but again we were told if it the tones were darker it would look better. We were cut between two fast cuts of bits of film from the previous half to place in the second half, we wasn’t sure on what speed to use for these so when we asked the audience they said they preferred the slightly slower one as it looked more clear as the other one was too fast to register, we took this into account and felt that this result did look a lot better.

Music: We received positive responses about our choice of music as the audience felt it fitted nicely and the build ups and bridges of the music were in the right places. As our teaser trailer was focused on a music box, we decided to place music box sounding music within our trailer- the audience felt this sounded creepy and fitted nicely with us wanting to have a peaceful horror teaser trailer.

Why feedback and audience research is so important to distributors

Feedback is an extremely important part to creating a successful media product. For films: distributors create a ‘build up’ to their products by researching in depth to their chosen area of media. For example, if they wanted to release a comedy film they would research into what films of this genre are successful and take inspiration from this. They then would create advertisements such as posters and teaser trailers to create impact, like we did in class. Test screenings of the rough cut are done and then the audience usually has to fill in a questionnaire to let them know what they feel. The distributors will take this into account whilst producing the final cut. We did this in class, and I and my group found this a very effective way of producing a decent media form as criticism is the key to having a successful outcome.