Target Audience Feedback

Here is the set of questions that we asked people for our audience feedback on our final product. Again, as we did the first time before creating our trailer, we asked 20 people, 10 boys and 10 girls. These questions have helped us to realise what did and didn't work well with our trailer, and if we managed to please our target audience, which is important because if they weren't happy, our film wouldn't sell.

These first two questions were important because they allowed us to see if we really had followed the conventions of a thriller, which judging by these results we have as most people seemed to think that it is a thriller film. However, some did also think it was a horror film, so perhaps we did not make it obvious enough. In our first set of questions we asked what people preferred to watch, to which most people answered horror films and close behind was thriller films. We chose to make a thriller rather than a horror because we decided that to give our film a more interesting plot, we would be better off making a thriller. However, we do have some elements of a horror film, for instance the audience don't know where the chess is coming from, nor do they know who (if anyone) is leaving it.  I think that creating a thriller worked better than a horror because it allowed us to be more imaginative and also create tense moments without giving away the story.  

 This question relates back to one of the questions that we asked people before we made the trailer as well. We asked if they preferred the main characters of the films to be either male or female. The results were equal, with both sexes having mixed opinions about whether they wanted the hero of a film to be male or female. Because of this we were able to choose what we wanted as it would not disappoint the majority of our audience. I think choosing a girl to play the main character was a good idea because it meant that we could portray her as more vulnerable than we would have been able to make a boy.

Similar to this question is the fact that we made sure our main character was of similar age to the target audience. This is because in our previous questions the majority liked the main characters to be of similar age to them because it was easier to relate. I think that choosing to have our character a similar age to our target audience works well because if the audience can relate to her, then this should enhance their experience of the film as they will be able to picture themselves in her shoes, and also, as this film is slightly scary, it will put the idea into their head that it is possible to happen to them.

These final two questions give us an overall evaluation of how well we have made our trailer. As a trailler for a horror/thriller it was important for us to build the tension in the trailer to make people want to see the film. Inevitably, some of the people who answered "No" they didn't want to see the film, were the same people who had told us that the trailer didn't build tension.

I think that in some cases I do agree with these results, as I think we could have built the tension more than what we did, however there were some parts of our trailer, for instance when there are several different clips overlaying the diegetic voice of megan on the phone. This works well because there are lots of fast and short clips which increases the tension because you feel as if it is building up to something.

We also put our trailer onto Youtube and Facebook  as another way of finding out whether our trailer suits our targeted audience. Facebook gave us more reliable feedback because the people that are connected to us through Facebook are of the age of our target audience. As you can see from this print screen, we gained mostly positive feedback, though there was some confusion to some parts of the trailer. This could however be a good thing, because it makes people want to watch the film to make sense of what they are seeing.




As a class we completed some audience feedback by looking at everyone's promotional package and writing annoymous comments and handing them back to the groups. This proved very useful, especially for us because we were getting some more detailed feedback from the age group at which our film was aimed. Some feedback that was useful was that whilst some people did like the music, others thought it was a too simple and needed changing. I agree with this as I think that if we were to do it again we could have spent more time on the music.
     In terms of the poster, lots of people commented on how much they liked the fact that the chess blended into Megan's face, though someone said that it made her eye look funny. In some ways I understand how it looks weird, but other people commented that they liked the fact that her eye was odd because it added to the plot of our film. I am glad that this is the general opinion of our poster because it means that we have successfully made our film appeal to our target audience.
     A lot of the feedback for the magazine was possitive although there were comments that it didn't have much writing on it. As a group we did discuss this a lot, but as the background is busy, a lot of writing would have made it look overfull. We aren't too conserned with the comments about not having a lot of writing, because we did have other comments that the magazine worked well with our chosen image.