Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout the course of our project, we've relied on audience feedback a few times. The best example of this pre-production can be found on our respective 'Audience Feedback' pages on our blogs. Here we used an online questionnaire in order to get an idea of what sort of content to involve in our film. Since then, we've received feedback on different things at different stages of production. Perhaps the most important of all this was the invaluable feedback we got once we had actually finished the film because we could then compare the comments post-production and the comments pre-production to evaluate how well we'd achieved our targets from the original questionnaire. We've tried to keep to our target audience for all the feedback throughout our project but, for instance with the ancillaries, we found it was be beneficial to see if our products could transcend our intended audience to reach a wider crowd. All of this can be found below:
Starting from just before the end of our production, however, we had our rough cut feedback. This from only from our teachers but they let us know a few ways they thought we could improve our basic premise from the rough cut we gave them (featured below). This was our most basic of edits as you can obviously see but the idea was to get a grasp of what types of sounds we could use at certain points and get the early construct of our car chase (the hardest scene to edit). Our teachers let us know that it would perhaps be better if we went forward without the shots of the antagonist during the chase in our full film which was something we took on board and left out at our final production. Not only this but they also informed us that our last scene was perhaps a bit too drawn out and could do with a few shots taken out which was also something we took on board. It was helpful to get this information during the editing process that we could make sure we were on the right track as we went along and so that we wouldn't have to go back and make major changes to our final production at the end.
Moving on, then. For our final portion of audience feedback, we created a short written questionnaire that we decided to give out to a few people from our target audience. We wanted to get a rough idea of what they thought about our film and our ancillaries but also if they thought the final products all went well together. That was our main focus really: to ensure that our audience (or those beyond it) could identify our film from either our article or poster and then, as a secondary objective, we wanted the two ancillary products to act as marketing tools to make people want to see our film. Below are the filled out questionnaires we received and what we drew from the feedback. Bare in mind also that we tried to make sure the people we were using for our feedback were not Media students so that we could get a more unbiased set of results.
The Default Questionnaire
Alex Browning Response
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(I'm very conscious that some of the survey responses are either quite hard to read because of illegible handwriting or the writing being too small so I will transcribe them below just in case although some of them are easily readable.)
Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "I was a little confused as to why he [David] was trying to steal the bag and who from."
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "The car chase and the music were typical of an action film."
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Did you enjoy our film? "It wasn't too bad, I don't feel I lost 5 minutes of my life!" [A good thing]
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "No because there's not enough action in the poster."
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How could we improve our poster? "Advertise the action aspect of your film more."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "I way prefer the themed one, looks much easier to read."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "The wording is confusing and maybe gives away too much story in the article."
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How could we improve our article? "(Use the other one) Blend the picture into the background better."
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Yeah, but maybe put some more action props/scenes in though."
Chris Long Response
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Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "It was quite confusing and I wasn't sure what was going on."
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "The car chase scene."
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Did you enjoy our film? "Very much so!"
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "Possibly but likely no." [Chris doesn't often look at movie posters]
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How could we improve our poster? "Don't include 'from the makers of' because I don't know those films so it doesn't appeal to me."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "Theme-based as it fits into the demographic of the film better than the simplistic one."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "It makes me intrigued and want to know more about the film."
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How could we improve our article? "Don't reuse images on the same part of the article." [In reference to the reusing of the image of David]
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Perhaps someone could be lurking in the darkness like a Dr Who 'Ood' in the poster!" [Post-survey Chris informed me he could see the link between the 3 pieces quite easily]
Jake Banyard Response
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Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "I found it quite confusing.."
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "The car chase and the music."
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Did you enjoy our film? "Yes."
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "Yes it's intriguing."
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How could we improve our poster? "Make the title stand out more and use brighter colours."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "Themed because it's more aesthetically pleasing."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "Yes."
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How could we improve our article? "More themed approach like the other article."
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Title on the poster reveals it's an action poster but article looks like travel advertisement."
Connor Wright Response (he didn't want his photo used)
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Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "David betrays his gang after a rival gang attacks his poker game." [Connor had an idea of our film because he's a close friend and followed our production during filming so perhaps biased response here.]
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "The car chase and weapons present."
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Did you enjoy our film? "It was a little hard to follow but the action was good."
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "Yes it looks spooky."
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How could we improve our poster? "I don't think it can be improved. Maybe have the car bigger."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "Simple because it stands out more to me."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "The article is very eloquent and it does make me want to see the film."
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How could we improve our article? "Perhaps could have done with a verdict."
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Article is a bit too bright but besides that, they go together well."
Rowan Hardman Response
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Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "Yes for the most part however the relationship between David and the gang was confusing."
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "The car chase scene."
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Did you enjoy our film? "Yes I would recommend it to my friends :)"
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "Yes, I want to find out more about 'what he has got'."
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How could we improve our poster? "Have the car slightly closer [bigger] so that it takes more of the focus of the poster."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "Theme-based as it's more capturing in terms of the design."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "It's neither well nor poorly written but the poster makes me want to see the film more [than the article]."
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How could we improve our article? "Change the picture as it looks like a GoOutdoors backpack commercial!"
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Quite well however the picture for the article could be improved."
Luke Labouchardiere Response
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Would you be able to explain the plot from our film? "It was hard to follow."
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What told you it was an action film (Conventions etc)? "Car chases and music choices."
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Did you enjoy our film? "It was alright." [Doesn't particularly like action films in general.]
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Would you have gone and watched our film based off of the poster? "Maybe." [Not so talkative!]
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How could we improve our poster? "It's a bit too dark. I like the road marking text."
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Do you prefer the simplistic article design or the more theme-based one? Why? "I prefer the themed one because it's more visually unique."
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Is the article well-written and does it compel you to watch the film? "Yes, it's very informative."
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How could we improve our article? "There's too much empty space, use the other poster [article*]."
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Do you think our ancillary projects overall matched the theme and genre of our film? "Yes it's very action-y!"
From these results, we found the most obvious bit of feedback to be that we should have gone with our other article as our final product. It was clear from the feedback that people liked the themed background and the text bounced off the screen as opposed to the boring black on white text on our actual article. A few people actually pointed out that perhaps the image should have been smaller too which was something we actually thought about whilst making the article design. We didn't even realise we'd used the same image twice as Chris pointed out in our article!
The feedback for our poster seemed to be universally positive in terms of the raw look of it although a lot of people said we could have done with making the car a larger focus or include something else to show that it's an action film. I think Connor's comment of saying "it looks spooky" shows that perhaps we needed something else in it to display an action sequence because the atmosphere appears to have come off incorrectly.
Lastly, the vast majority of the people we gave the survey to enjoyed the film from an action standpoint but found the plot to be lacking. This is something we knew all along during planning and production; we settled on trying to make the best action we could possibly make but we really slacked on a cohesive and strong storyline. I think we underestimated the importance of a good story in short films so, whilst our film seems to be generally quite enjoyable, it's lacking that cutting edge that could take it to being a great film. Despite this, we were happy with the feedback as many of the comments were anticipated and we actually ended up getting more positive comments than we expected!
Finally, we thought it would be beneficial to get someone from outside our intended audience range to see if our products could transcend our targeted demographic to reach a wider-scale audience. The following is an interview with Matt's mother whom is above the age of 35, quite high above the target audience for The Mediator:
Interestingly enough, the feedback was much the same. Matt's mother (her name is Bev) found the story quite difficult to follow and found the whole concept of the bag quite confusing but she generally enjoyed the production as a piece of film as opposed to it being an engaging narrative. However, she was able to easily identify the genre conventions which is also something we found when giving our survey out to people too. In much the same way as the other parts of our audience feedback, Bev liked our poster a lot but recommended that we could do with the focus being on the car more of by having another car to show the chase. This was a common theme that we noticed and, if we were to redesign the poster, we would definitely include either both cars or have a split shot with David in the other shot. Likewise, we would definitely take the advice that we should have used our other article design as the final product as Bev and the others said.
As a final note, we learned a lot over the course of our project from that of what our audiences gave as feedback and from our teachers. It was an important part of our planning for sure and it definitely gave us some perspective when it came to evaluating our final products. I feel that by getting general feedback from our peers, it helped us get a truer outlook on how our final products turned out.