Evaluation Q3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience screening

We have taken a couple pictures of our questionnaire (back and front) showing the one side, which brought us quantitative data and the other side, which brought us qualitative data. This survey/questionnaire allowed us to collectively understand our target audience in more detail due to the fact that the results were as we expected. It suggested strongly that our target age range was between the 15-24 mark. It also informed us that the audience were particularly fond of many of the tropes of most crime/thriller trailers, such as the city shots and chase scenes, which suggests that we have conformed well to the conventions of most crime/thriller trailers. However, a bonus for us was that the majority of our audience commented on the fact that they liked the specific colour/tone/aesthetic of our trailer, which was something we worked hard on to make our trailer original and different from the others that have been released. Due to people's comments on the style, tone and other important tropes of the genre, we were confident that we had created a strong narrative driven crime/thriller trailer that conformed to the conventions of most, whilst adding our own but effective twist.   

Audience Survey - Audience replies to the question, 'What was your favourite part of the trailer and why?'

1. 'Shots of London and strong, clear narrative'.
2. 'High shots of Gabriel running and sliding down banister; the shorter snapshots of film with music near the end'. (montage)
3. 'The interrogation scene, high intensity'. 
4. 'Tense Music, cuts from action to romance'. 
5. 'News shot'.
6. 'Gabriel running through London, news flash, vibrant colours'. 
7. 'Montage sequence, news flash, city shots'.
8. 'Shots of buildings with clear narrative'.
9. 'shots of the city & colouring of overall trailer - nice clear aesthetic'.
10. 'Good use of colour'.
11. 'Use of London settings e.g London eye and the use of blue colour as it established tone'.

Audience Survey - Graphs and analysis

The initial piece of feedback that we took from analysing the questionnaires that were answered at our audience screening came in the form of this rather encouraging pie chart. It appears that everyone present at the screening was taken enough with the trailer that they would 'want to watch the film'. This would suggest that regardless of how well we portrayed genre, narrative, or anything else, we have produced a trailer that is an effective marketing tool.

The results of this question would suggest that our selected audience for the screening is a fairly average film audience, all watching at least one film a week. Though no one appears to be a 'film fanatic' necessarily, and this is part of our target audience, the generic film audience is a useful group to identify and analyse in terms of marketing and general appeal.

This question gives us a little more content for analysis and consideration.  It appears that our audience considers trailer-watching a valuable usage of time, with everyone disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that it is a 'waste of time'. This leads us to consider the audience that we surveyed as 'valid', as they do not disregard our medium from the very beginning, which is something of a prerequisite for a survey answerer. This is tempered slightly by the fact that a minority of those surveyed did admit to not watching a trailer before seeing the film, and so they cannot be said to be wholly on board with the principle of the trailer as a premiere means of film promotion.

Most suggested that not too much is given away by most trailers, which bodes similarly well for their reception of our trailer, which is less heavily narrative driven than some of its real media 'contemporaries'. In fact, the general consensus that watching a trailer before the film 'is helpful' is extremely encouraging for our prospects and does depict the trailer as a media that is considered an effective form of film marketing. This information has helped us a little more to pin down the trailer-viewing habits of our audience, and thus of the general population.

This information has also been very useful to us in considering audience feedback from the screening surveys.  The audience that we had had seen the most mainstream and popular of the films, perhaps predictably, and hadn't seen as many of the less popular or less exposed films. Though on its face this may seem to bode badly for our film, given that many of our influences fall into the latter category, the information is encouraging when one considers that the three most popular films are the most high-budget, set-piece, productions on the list. When this information is incorporated into our thinking, the fact that the less upscale 'Drive', one of our most important influences, is biting at the heels of the major Hollywood mainstream productions bodes very well. Regardless of our analysis of this question, as can be seen below, the trailer was a definite success with our screening audience.

Social Media

We decided to upload our trailer to Facebook, in order to gain more information about our target audience and also generate interest around our product. Due to the fact that we were learning about postmodernism, especially in relation to Web 2.0, we realised the importance of social media and how it is shaping our modern media world. Most producers nowadays use social media to promote their media package as it is extremely important in developing and creating a particular niche audience or even for reaching out to your originally targeted audience. I personally have over 800 friends on Facebook, which is a much larger and mixed audience of people from all different age ranges, which again allows for our film to reach a wider audience. 

https://www.facebook.com/max.twyman.7 (link to trailer on Facebook page)

 Instagram was also useful for uploading a short 15 second snapshot of our trailer, which would again generate excitement around our film and open up a wider audience. It helped us to again find out more about our target audience.

Vox Pops

We thought it would be prudent to ask a few individuals about our ancillary tasks, and this really helped us out in choosing our final products to put forward. As such we searched out a few people to answer some questions about the products, and filmed the results:

Conclusion

Our audience screening was the centrepiece of our feedback, and the results were mostly encouraging. The screening demonstrated a willing audience for a trailer like ours, with many favourable comments about the pace, colour, and tone of the trailer, all of which are aspects into which a lot of work has gone. The fact that we received fairly few negative answers or statistics was encouraging to say the least, and the screening allowed us to see firsthand initial reactions to the trailer. The results were also in line with the feedback that we had received on social media, where we were able to observe wider trends in audience and examine the ways in which different people perceived or reacted to the trailer. 

Our audience, both imagined and real, have really shaped the project, and one of the most prominent examples of this is in deciding which of our three designs, for both magazine and poster, to put forward as the final one. Asking individuals what they thought of each really highlighted the stronger and weaker points of every production, and shone a new light on what directions we might take. This is equally true of the trailer, and through consultation with a tangible audience, I feel that we have come away with a stronger product.