Q3) What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

In order for a professional media product to truly be a success it must take into account a certain group of people; the target demographic, as this tight knit group will be responsible for majority of the film product’s success. Therefore procedures must be carried out to cater to the audience via Qualitative (some Quantitative) audience feedback. ‘The Return’ heavily relied upon the audience feedback as its three ancillary products were influenced by the feedback that I obtained as shown in the ‘Qualitative Audience Feedback’ document displayed on the blog. It was essential for me to comprehend, fully understand and learn from my audience feedback in order to cater to them, as the demographic is ‘niche’ therefore ‘The Return’ could not afford to lose its already limited source of profit or film success.

One of the first steps in understanding and learning from my audience was in the primary Research phase, in which I utilised a website called QuestionPro.com. This allowed me gain quantitative data on my audience and their preferences within the Slasher genre. I discovered via my online distributed survey that my sample were predominantly Horror/Slasher film fans which validates their answers as representative of the Slasher demographic. In addition I discovered that they felt Red, White & Black were the best 3 colour palette choice which were representing and conveying the Slasher genre, and this had a direct effect on all of my three main ancillary tasks as this 3 colour scheme was consistently maintained throughout the poster, magazine cover and film trailer. The decision to utilise a knife as the weapon of choice for the Villain Ruby was also a factor influenced by my Audience Feedback as they felt this was conventional and preferred the knife over a chainsaw, firearm or an axe etc. Other decisions such as filming locations, intertextual  references and form of marketing were all effected by this Quantitative data as I learned what exactly my audience expects and discovered how exactly to cater and target those needs as a result of carrying out this survey. This level of understanding of expectations and conventions enabled me to subvert or follow conventions within the Slasher genre, this clearly demonstrates just how vital the understanding and comprehension of your audience is and how much the Quantitative Audience Survey has assisted me in the production of ‘The Return’.

In the construction and planning phases I required detailed and more intricate ‘wordy’ responses hence why Qualitative Audience Feedback was utilised. I obtained detailed information on my magazine and poster templates. Regarding the poster I discovered, via my audience, that my poster should incorporate simplistic elements, narrative references, dark colours to convey genre and generally inform the audience about ‘The Return’. I also learnt that the magazine cover that ‘The Return’ will feature on should be expected and conventional and not out of place as highlighted by my audience hence the decision to choose Fangoria as the magazine to feature on and not Empire or Little White Lies due to genre suitability and realistically, whether the actual magazine company would publish their magazine with my content. In addition I also discovered that the magazine should feature a formulaic and conventional layout as this was preferred by my demographic and was the most identifiable layout by my sample. Both the magazine and poster qualitative feedback learnt had a direct impact on the final product of both the poster and magazine. Again this reinforces the importance of the qualitative feedback obtained as this moulded my final products significantly.

Moving on to my Qualitative Audience Feedback obtained for my trailer; I gained this information by gathering 12 participants, 6 boys and 6 girls to experience an exclusive screening of the trailer. They each had a piece of paper to write their views on. I explained that they will be evaluating the trailer and giving their honest opinion on the positive and negative elements of the trailer. If a negative element was identified the sample were instructed to explain how they personally believe this can be improved. I found similar findings in my Qualitative Feedback Questionnaire online which was distributed on Facebook & Twitter. This was carried out because despite my sample size I felt that that 12 participants was not sufficient for empirical findings.  The questions asked are as follows;

1)    What elements of this trailer bear resemblance or how does it differ from other trailers you’ve seen? (preferably within the Horror genre)

2)  Using the trailer you’ve viewed, what exactly is the premise of The Return?

3) What segments or parts of ‘The Return’ trailer did you find most scary?

4) What were the worst and best elements of the trailer?

5) How could we improve these negative elements?

Using this questionnaire I learnt that ‘The Return’ was very conventional compared to other trailers the sample had witnessed e.g. “The trailer’s pacing gets really fast towards the end and the violence increases, I have seen many trailers outside of the Horror category and they are similar to this one because of the general structure of it”.  “The end card at the end with all the essential information about the film is a convention I see quite frequently when seeing trailers”. It was answers such as these that were detailed and as a result opened me and my group to insight on the evaluation of the trailer. It also told me that ‘The Return’ trailer was successful in being a conventional trailer as highlighted by my sample as the conventional aspects was the intended format of the trailer so the audience could easily identify ‘The Return’.

 

On the second question I learned that ‘The Return’ was effective in displaying the narrative to viewer as shown in my sample’s answers. They found that “The mother was clearly shown and the villain was obviously attached to girl in some way as her Mum was stroking her picture indicating she is gone or lost”. This tells me that the juxtaposition of Ruby’s mother and her photo with the use of a close up shot to capture the depressed and despaired emotions was successful as shown in the quote above with the narrative clearly explained despite a lack of dialogue needed to do so. Also other elements of the narrative identified were “Each member of the group at the party scene are being systematically killed one by one, the villain’s sister knows the impending doom that is about to be unleashed upon herself and her friends”. This level of understanding of the narrative shows me that the usage of shots and juxtaposing and montage editing has effectively worked as my sample were easily able to comprehend the narrative in remarkable detail without any spoilers regarding the ending of the film’s narrative.

Regarding the most frightful elements of the trailer my sample believe that this was mostly due to the usage of shots and composition along with jump cuts to frightful shots e.g. Jump cut from Car Crash of Alex and Jason to Ruby making direct address with the viewer. “Near the end there was a part where the girl was looking left and right and then the villain appeared on her left out of nowhere standing silently, I think that was effective along with the parts where Trey was hiding and screamed and Ruby was right behind him”. This is very good as majority of the intended ‘frights’ were relying upon the usage of shots and composition such as the scenes in the trailer described above. The reason why such reliance is present is that due to budgetary restrictions; therefore one of the most effective tools to use and potentially scare the audience with was with the use of shots and composition along with sharp bursts of sound, these elements are prominent within ‘The Return’ trailer.

Moving onto the fourth question the best or positive elements were the factors described above such as the usage of sound, shots and composition. Also the sample showed a preference for the utilisation of editing and sound such “I like the natural feel of each shot, it passes to the next in a very smooth and undisturbed flow and the camera trick when the filter is replicating a camera, that was very well done.”, this is describing the what I now perceive as ‘successful’ usage of fade in and fade out editing techniques along with filter changes in the party scene to emulate a camera flash, I have learned from this that good usage of editing can engross the viewer more within the verisimilitude of the trailer or ‘The Return;. However I learned much more from the ‘worst’ elements of the trailer highlighted by my audience. “It’s good but for a horror film I think it needs more blood and gore” and a more articulate respondent stated “actual violence was good with the knives and the neck snapping etc. but the actual blood needs to be increased otherwise it feels like, from a purely visual perspective, a thriller more so than a slasher”. This discovery of ‘The Return’ is vital as this participant is clearly outlining how exactly we can improve ‘The Return’ and stating how genre inconsistency in the tone of the trailer can be solved via an increased amount of blood. This also solves the answer to the fifth question also as this explains the methodology as to how it can be improved. Areas to improve upon were “The lighting in some shots are far too dark, specifically when the group of friends are being chased in the woods and when Ruby is ringing the doorbell of her sister’s house” and “The actors are sometimes making eye contact with the camera and when they were being killed none of the actors actually looked distressed or fearful in any shape or form”. The lack of blood, acting problems, lighting and eye contact were the only negatives identified by my sample which is encouraging and implies that ‘The Return’ has achieved a level of professionalism excluding the one negative that needed improvement. This may be a result of the sample knowing me and therefore demand characteristics are in play with the sample giving ‘preferable’ answers, a more random sample may have given a more true criticism of ‘The Return’trailer trailer.

 In conclusion I believe that I have learnt a significant amount of fundamental and vital information, majority of which are responsible or have influenced the alterations and characterising factors within the three main ancillary tasks of the poster, magazine and trailer. Using documents e.g. Qualitative and Quantitative audience surveys I effectively gathered my audiences opinions and successfully integrated their feedback into my media products and thus catered to them as a target demographic.