Evaluation Activity Three – What have you learned from

audience feedback?

I handed out a questionnaire regarding my film trailer to19 people

from my target audience (mainly females aged 17-19) and in the

following slides, I will analyse my answers.

1. Was it obvious to you that my work was a film

trailer?My questionnaire results display that the majority of people (18/19) found it obvious that my work was a trailer. This is reassuring and makes me feel as though I have successfully used typically conventions of a trailer in my work, thanks to the thorough research planning that I carried out in the pre-production stages. Nobody said “no” to the answer which is an encouraging statistic, implying that there can’t be too much to improve in regarding my use of typically film trailer conventions.

95%

5%

YesMaybe

2. If so, what conventions demonstrated this?

• “The narrative”• “Certificate at the beginning”• “The length of it” (3)• “Gives away a little bit of the story” (2)• “Use of a voiceover”• “Short scenes/quick cuts”• “The captions e.g. names of actors and best-selling book” (4)

The answers I received clearly demonstrated to me which conventions I used well in my trailer, all of which I used deliberately. My result for this questionnaire is therefore very pleasing.

3. Did my trailer conform to the drama genre?

My answers to this question are again very pleasing as 18 people out 19 said that my trailer conformed to the drama genre, whilst the 1 remaining person said “maybe”. This has made me feel as though my efforts at using certain conventions in order to conform to the drama genre have paid off. These conventions include: how I developed my characters, the narrative I created, the settings I used, along with the music, cinematography and editing.

95%

5%

YesMaybe

4. How much of the narrative did the trailer

give away?

I was pleased to find out that everyone who filled out my questionnaire said that they felt that my trailer gave away the perfect amount of my narrative. After my first draft, all the feedback I gathered said that I was giving away too much and so after a lot of cutting down, it would seem that I have edited it down to the perfect amount. 100%

Not EnoughThe Perfect Amount Too Much

5. Do you think that the music I chose was

appropriate and aided in creating tension?

I am delighted to have gained another reassuring result as it would seem that a high percentage of the people I asked said that the music was appropriate and aided in creating tension. I am pleased with this because I spent a long time going through different tracks and researching what to use.

95%

5%

YesMaybeNo

6. Were you able to empathise with the central

protagonist? From my results, it would seem that not everyone could relate to my central protagonist. Although a high proportion (84%) of people said they could, it has led me to wonder why the other’s couldn’t. One reason could be that the males in the people I asked may have not been able to empathise, purely because of their gender differentiation. It could of course been that I didn’t convey enough emotion with in the trailer which could be adjusted if I were to do it again, through editing of types of camera shots used.

84%

11%

5%

YesMaybeNo

7. Did you find the way that the trailer started off slow and built up it’s tempo was

effective? Interestingly, most of the people that I asked said that the way the trailer started off slow and built up its tempo was effective, however three people replied “maybe”. The people that stated maybe said their reason for it was that it was too slow at the beginning. I think this is all down to personal preference however if I were to do it again I would consider the tempo at the beginning and make sure it is not in anyway tedious.

84%

16%

YesMaybeNo

8. What was your favourite part of the

trailer?• “When you see the two sisters together after she dies” (2)• “The humor involved with Ben” (4)• “The childhood at the beginning”• “All of it”• “The scene where she is told she is going mad”• “Clever camera use to show sister’s hand appear” (2)

It would appear that the most effective parts of the trailer were the most significant parts such as Anna coming back as a ghost, and when she is told she is going mad. Many people said that their favourite part was Ben’s humor. I’m glad that they enjoyed this because I wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate or not due to the seriousness of everything else in the mise-en-scene. it seems that the light-hearted humor only aided the narrative and maintained the attention of the audience.

9. Do you think anything could be improved?

• No (15)• More explanation of the death with out giving too much away (2)• Beginning is too slow• It is a little bit too depressing

From the comments that I received, it would appear that there isn’t too much that I could improve upon which certainly is pleasing. Perhaps my answers would be more helpful if I had re-worded the question in a way which didn’t allow them to answer “no” which 15 people did. Other comments to note include my trailer needing more explanation of the death without giving too much away and that the beginning is too slow. If I were to do this again I would cut down the beginning allowing more time for the build up to her death and perhaps show a little bit more of how it happened. It is imperative however, not to give too much away as people wouldn’t need to go watch the film. Another person said that they found it to be too depressing. The mood that I tried to capture was coherent to the genre and I therefore think that that is purely down to personal preference especially since no-one else commented on that. It’s therefore not something I would consider changing.

10. After having watched the trailer, would you watch the whole film?

To my delight, 18 out of the 19 people I asked said that they would watch the whole film having viewed the trailer. Ultimately, this means that I have succeeded in making people want to watch the whole film through various techniques which was my main aim of the task. Only one person answered no however I am not worried about this because you can’t please everyone.

95%

5%

YesMaybeNo

In order to gain further feedback from my target audience, I used the web 2.0. This allowed me to show my work, as a producer, to a network of people who could give me feedback through features such as comments, ‘likes’, ‘tweets’ and more.

FacebookFacebook is a social networking which has allowed me the opportunity to share my work, however this is only visible to my friends due to privacy settings. Most of my friends are in my age range so this was a good opportunity to receive feedback.

Having been a week since I put it on Facebook, I decided to analyse my feedback. I received 37 likes, and I thought it would be interesting to break it down into demographics.

68% of the people who liked it were females which implies that I have successfully targeted the audience that I aimed to whilst also impressing others.

32%

68%

MaleFemale Receiving many

reassuring comments, mainly from my target audience: young females.

Complimentary of the humor I added

Promoting an online poll for further feedback

Twitter is an ever growing social networking site which can connect people all over the world in 140 characters. I believe this is a good way of getting my work out there and hopefully gaining feedback.

Twitter

Use of hashtags so that more people around the world can see it

Hopefully the majority of my 286 followers will be able to see this link and if they retweet it, all of their followers will be able to see it getting my work out to a wider audience

YouTube

YouTube is the website which I uploaded my film trailer onto and so I am going to analyse the statistics that it has been able to give me.

To the left is a list of the main demographics which are watching my film. From this it would seem that my main source of views is coming from females aged 13-24, which is my target audience. This is a very pleasing stat and reassures me that I have included all the appropriate codes and conventions to target who I aimed to. This is a table showing all of the

countries that my film trailer has been viewed in. In first place is the UK which was inevitable since is it an English film and I marketed it to my social networking friends who are primarily British. The rest of the countries haven’t constituted nearly as many views as the UK however it is still interesting to see how effective sharing work online can be and how fast it can be spread around the world.

These images demonstrate how sharing my film trailer on Facebook was effective as it gained many views. It also shows how popular watching media is on mobile phones these days what with smart phones and developing internet speed. If my film was targeted at an older audience then there probably wouldn’t be as many mobile views since the older generation don’t tend to have smart phones which are capable of watching media. In fact, there probably wouldn’t be as many views at all because many older people don’t even have computers.