What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is essential. It allows your target audience to judge which parts of your products are successful and which parts may need to be developed further in order for your entire promotional package to be more official.  It allows a product to evolve into a more professional and engaging form as opposed to simple and menial. Throughout the process of producing our three products, feedback was significant, Fern and I had gained feedback through different sources, and each source had made us alert of what elements in our products had negatively impacted our promotional package.

Last year, we had gathered feedback through directly asking our target audience of their opinions, and carrying out questionnaires. However, this year we felt it would be more useful if we had additional feedback through different technologies instead of just using these basic methods. This had resulted Fern and I into using Facebook to upload our finished products. From doing this our target audience were able to review what we had uploaded, and then comment on the decisions that we had made. Overall, I feel using Facebook as a way of collecting criticism and positive feedback, was an astute decision, it had allowed us to gather different interpretations to then make further adaptations to our products.

We had uploaded our finished trailer to Facebook, and directly asked our target audience to comment on what they visually and verbally can see/hear.  As well as our target audience, we had gathered feedback from different individuals simply because we felt it was necessary to see how a mass audience perceived our finished product.

Our audience had articulated their admiration for the fast cuts that we had included near the closing of our trailer. They had felt that this was extremely effective for the genre that we were working with, and felt that because of how dramatic and enticing it was that it had made the narrative and genre more evident as well as luring them to want to watch the actual film. This positive feedback that we had gained was beneficial, it was also an agreement to what Fern and I had felt ourselves, as together we were both very fond of this part of the trailer. This had evidently showed that the parts which we felt were successful- were actually successful.  Another advantage that we had gained from our audience feedback was that the narrative was clear and easy to understand. This was a major concern for Fern and I, simply because we were worried that due to our trailer being non-linear then it would be difficult for our target audience to establish the real narrative of what is occurring. Yet from gaining this positive feedback, it had optimistically impacted on Ferns and I judgement, reassuring us that in fact our narrative was easily understood.

Disadvantages that were bought up had consisted of; the billing block not being clear. This had become a major issue for our product simply because it would give an audience the impression that we have not created our own billing block but had used one off of the internet- which obviously isn’t what we had done. Due to this valid point that we had gained, instantly- we returned to Imovie to try and overcome this problem. Eventually we had found a way to resolve this problem by adjusting the framing and composition of the billing block- and eventually we had a clearer and detailed billing block. This issue that we immediately came across was extremely time-consuming to get to the bottom of, moreover once we had completed this adjustment, it was worthwhile to complete. Another concern that was suggested from our audience feedback was that Fern and I could possibly consider using a voiceover. Once we were informed with this point, we had discussed the possible changes that we could make- nevertheless we decided to keep the trailer as it was. We had done as we felt that if we incorporated a voice over we would be revelling too much of the narrative that what we wanted to. Although this feedback was significant and useful, we felt it would raise the standard of our trailer if we had included a voice over or not. We wanted to give the impression that Jason the most intriguing character was ‘distorted’ ‘disrupted’ and not including speech from his construct makes this more realistic simply because it shows that his character is isolated.

Overall, using Facebook to receive feedback was beneficial; it had allowed us to act on what needed to be done to give our film trailer a more professional outcome. The only disadvantages of using his method to gain feedback was that it was difficult to get our target audience to be willing to comment on our product- due to them also creating a product it had taken time to stop what they were doing to then assess our finalized piece. Another disadvantage of using this website is the lack of anonymity- because of this Fern and I had customised who could see our product so that we wouldn’t gather any inappropriate feedback off of someone who we may not know.

The feedback that we had gained for our film poster and magazine cover simply was from the voices of others opinions. Firstly, we had decided that uploading these two products to Facebook would be useful but then we had changed our mind- we had felt uploading these two products to Facebook would  be bribing individuals to an extent just for them to comment. Additionally, those that would comment on these two products may not be aware of the exact conventions of a film poster and a magazine cover, because of this we had opted for just gaining opinion through directly asking different individuals. Their opinions that we had gained were just as significant as the comments that we had collected from Facebook for our film trailer.  It was essential that the feedback that we got was mostly from our target audience as that is what we set out to do. When asking our target audience about their opinions of these two products the feedback that we had gained was; Originally the text underneath the part of the magazine cover which says ‘TOP 100’ was positioned as ‘Align text right’ Fern and I had done this simply because we wanted to challenge the typical conventions slightly, without dramatising them to a large extent. Nevertheless, there was a frequent comment from our target audience that this part of the magazine cover had looked odd and out of place, instantly Fern and I had acted upon this issue and had transformed the text to the positioning of ‘Align text left’ automatically we felt more pleased with this transformation- reinforcing the idea that the feedback was extremely useful. Another negative comment that was bought up was that on the film poster where it says ‘JUNE 15: CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET” was that there wasn’t a question mark. This was a silly mistake that I had made during the process of creating the film poster yet I hadn’t realised this mistake until our target audience had pointed it out- automatically I had returned to Photoshop and had inserted a question mark after this sentence. This had successfully impacted on this product as it had made it look more official and professional as opposed to looking ‘slap dash/bad English’

Generally, the voiced feedback that Fern and I had gained allowed us to make improvements to our film poster and magazine cover. Our target audience had pointed out valid issues that these products contained, and straight away Fern and I had made sure that we adjusted these faults. Gathering this feedback directly was a huge advantage to us as the individuals could specify in detail the reasons for why they were addressed with these concerns. Using this method to gather responses was less time consuming compared to using Facebook, as we didn’t have to convince those to put forward their opinions, as straight away our target audience were willing.  A huge disadvantage of using this method was that Fern and I didn’t have proof that we had gained this feedback- we weren’t’ able to back up these decisions. Unfortunately, at the time Fern and I hadn’t thought to record these opinions of others, yet we believe that would have been an extremely successful method if we had done that. The feedback that we had gained was successful, although it did contain negative pointers, it was successful simply because it allowed Fern and I to better our products without having to work out the mistakes ourselves. We had gained feedback throughout the process of gathering our research, yet the feedback that we had gained from our confirmed products seemed a lot more in depth and sufficient. Fern and I have learnt a lot from this feedback- not only have we made changes to what individuals have commented on but we have realised that throughout the making we should be more exact with the development that we make, perhaps we should of carried out more research in order to make sure that an audience wouldn’t be able to comment with any negative. Nevertheless, this is a learnt lesson that we can now apply to the next work that we may produce.