Question 3: What have you learned from your audience

feedback?

Introduction The most simple and easily analytical form that we could

provide information in was a series of graphs made up from a questionnaire, and so for the research and planning segment of the coursework, we designed a 14 question long response sheet with various questions asking for their opinion on aspects of our documentary.

Although all of the respondents were aged 17-18 years of age and so weren’t really within our target audience, we were sure that they would want to see a number of similar conventions in any documentary and mainly these questions were about those conventions, as well as finding out general opinions of the product.

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On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the documentary held your

attention?

Scores as high as 10 from 2 of the respondents and the majority voting 8 was a great indication that we had done something right with the features and conventions we had followed to try and grab the attention of the audience throughout the documentary.

With only one respondent voting 6, I believe that this candidate may have been expecting flashy special effects and other features of such nature, but most of the respondents understood the need for subtlety in the documentary as it was more of a serious matter.

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Did you find that the sound levels were balanced and even?

From finding that most bar 2 respondents said that the sound levels were ‘balanced and even’, we can conclude that there were perhaps some very minor issues with sound in certain places, but then again this is all down to opinion.

Other than the 2 that said ‘No’, the majority of the respondents said ‘Yes’ and so I am sure that any minor sound level issues were no so great as to an extent that they disturb the listening experience, and so perhaps just some tweaking would be a good solution but other than that, the sound was satisfactory for most.

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Did you find that you could relate to any of the documentary?

This was a surprising response for us considering the fact that the target audience was designed to be a much higher and mature age than 17/18 years old, but I think the lively feel that was created using funky background music perhaps appealed to this slightly younger audience.

We were also really surprised to find that all of the respondents could relate, so we can now be safe in the knowledge that the documentary covers enough angles with regards to aspects of health & fitness, to suit many ages and both genders.

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Were the colours managed effectively?

We made good use of the ‘colour correction’ window/palette in the tools of Final Cut Express, and were sure to make the documentary looks as visually vibrant as possible.

With our vast range of nature and food shots, we had an abundance of colour to work with, which I feel enhance the dynamics of the documentary.

Unfortunately we suffered from quite dull weather on the mornings when the final voxpops were shot, and so we were pleased to see that our colour correction had compensated greatly for this set-back.

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Do you think that the tone of the documentary is sophisticated?

As we were aiming for a more mature target audience, we were setting out to achieve a tone that would suit them; something of a serious yet light tone so as to show that not all hope is lost, and that we will be finding solutions to help.

The tone was designed to be informative mostly, as often it is difficult to use comical devices and laugh about issues such as rising food prices when families suffer everyday because of them, so I know I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the respondents found the tone of the documentary to be quite sophisticated even though I was not using received pronunciation in my voiceover.

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Do you think that the shots for the documentary were framed

appropriately?

Framing shots conventionally was a key issue in many of the student produced documentaries that we had studied as a group, and so our group set out motivated to make certain that our shots were framed as authentically as possible.

I was pleased to find that all of the respondents had said that our shots were framed appropriately, as this was a personal point of focus.

We studied many other documentaries and so instead of basing our framing of shots upon student produced documentaries, we were aspiring to produce industry quality framing.

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Do you think that the expert interview extracts were informative

and useful?

After trying to find a range of voxpops we managed to gather a select number that opposed one another, so it was convenient to be able to show two sides of the story and then appear to let the audience decide on what they think, when really the voxpop of the gentlemen who claimed he had no time and was too lazy portrays a negative view upon himself.

This meant that the audience was more likely to side with the opinion presented on the opposing voxpop, which was backed up further by our expert in the field, Jez Ingram.

Jez after years of experience in health & fitness, was able to provide some fantastic solutions for us to relay back to the viewers, hopefully providing some solutions to their problems.

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On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the double page spread article has been put together?

Most of the respondents answered with 8/10, 2 answered with 10/10 and the lowest was 1 respondent with 6/10.

The double page spread article was based heavily upon another industry standard double page spread article, and so I would have been rather surprised to see low scores on this particular question

We were pleased overall with this response, as it shows us that the conventions and layout that we followed worked for the target audience, however, again we have the issue of the fact that our target audience would be older and more mature, so perhaps those that scored lower were expecting a double page spread with more imagery and graphics perhaps.

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Do you think that we used and developed common conventions of

double page spreads?

Again we were pleased with this response and were lucky enough to have all of the respondents agree that we did use and develop common conventions of double page spread articles.

As a group we don’t believe that we challenged any of the common conventions of double page spreads apart from perhaps missing captions, and maybe we would change this if we had the opportunity to, but this wasn’t enough to sway the respondents, so we must have adopted a sufficient amount of conventions to satisfy the reader.

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Stylistically, do you find that the use of colour is appropriate?

The use of colour response was more split this time, as 10 said ‘Yes’ and 4 said ‘No’, but this isn’t our intended target audience and so perhaps we must take that into account when more traditional colours are used, as these are likely to bore a younger audience, making them lose interest in the article and likely to skip the page.

The colours in the double page spread aren’t as vibrant as they could be I don’t think, and that is definitely something I would change if I had chance to, as I feel it would reflect the vibrancy in the documentary much more accurately.

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On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the radio trail article has

been put together?

Compared to the other general opinions of the documentary and double page spread article, the general response for the opinion of the radio trail was much higher, which we were pleased with of course.

High scores of 7,8, and 9 out of 10 told us that our radio trail was generally of a high standard and so we were safe in the knowledge that our product had satisfied our audience by adopting industry standard conventions and style.

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Do you feel inclined or persuaded to watch the documentary after listening to the radio trailer?

This was a very important question for us, as the ancillary products would form the basis of advertising the documentary, and so as a group we were pleased to find that the respondents found that our ancillary product worked well alongside the documentary.

The fact that all of the respondents agreed that they would watch the documentary after hearing the radio trail was also very satisfying, as we know that this was the radio trailer did its job and met the target audience’s expectations of a conventional radio trailer.

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Do you think that there are enough extracts used in the trailer?

With the majority of the respondents saying ‘Yes’ there were enough extracts used in the trailer, and only 2 saying ‘No’ there weren’t, we know that there could have been maybe one or two more if we had sacrificed the slightly slower pace of the radio trailer for a faster pace to squeeze it in

The problem was trying to make the audience feel as though the radio trail was simple and concise but provided an adequate amount of information to persuade the listener to view the main product, and so overall we know that perhaps next time around we could try putting more in, but it may affect the pace of the trail.

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Do you believe that the radio trail uses common conventions?

With complete consensus from our respondents in that we had used common conventions in our radio trail, we were pleased to know that our target audience were more likely to enjoy listening to the radio trailer.

The conventions we used were decided from analysing a number of radio trails and comparing them to others with regards to their style and conventions, so this gave us a good grounding of knowledge to know what to include and what not to include in our radio trail.

Evidently this worked out for us as a group and we were generally happy with the response, as we had put a lot of time into analysing other radio trails.

ConclusionIn conclusion I find that we got a great deal of positive responses from our insightful questionnaires, and so I am pleased to find out that our ancillary products work well together to advertise the documentary in the first place, and that our documentary has had generally good feedback. The conventions and styles that we followed have been pulled off evidently from the results of this questionnaire, and so as a group we were very pleased with the way our products work together, however we are now also available of the holes in our products; we would most likely make improvements upon this feedback if we had to chance, in order to ensure greater appeal to our target audience.