A2 Media Studies – Unit G324: Documentary EvaluationQuestion 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

IntroductionWhen completing the research and planning process of our project, we created a questionnaire to develop an understanding of our target audience. Plus, we wanted to identify what features and information audiences would like to know about ‘Health & Fitness’ in a television documentary. In our initial questionnaire we asked males and females aged 20-50+ if they were knowledgeable about the topic to see if, and how we could help inform our audiences. This questionnaire lead us to define a level of information and guidance in our documentary, which worked very well. On the back of this success, we thought it would be appropriate to create an additional questionnaire for the purpose of gaining an understanding of audience feedback in relation to our documentary, radio trailer and magazine article. We questioned a large group of people in our target audience to feedback information about our products.

Television Documentary

We questioned our audience, ‘On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the documentary held your attention?’. The results from this were very pleasing. All of the audience feedback was rated 6-10, who said that the documentary held their attention. The majority of the audience suggested that the documentary was on a scale of 8 for holding their attention. This was very successful and we feel as if our documentary definitely holds significant content within the opening five minutes.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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

held your attention?

Television Documentary

We asked our target audience through the questionnaire, a simple yes or no question, ‘Did you find that the sound levels were balanced and even?’. The response from this was overwhelming for ‘yes’ 12 people said that they were balanced and a small minority of 2 people said no they were not. From this it is clear that our sound levels were well thought out and strong. The minority shows that they may need a little tweaking in places.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

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

Television Documentary

This basic question ‘Did you find that you could relate to any of the documentary?’ was asked to ensure we had targeted our audience precisely. The result was as expected and 100% of the audience response was ‘yes’. Therefore, our documentary fits its target audience perfectly and our research and planning tasks had all worked in our favor to create a strong and targeted documentary.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

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

Television Documentary

We used a lot of colour in our documentary so we want to gain audience feedback to see if this was effectively used and well composed so we asked ‘Were the colours managed effectively?‘. The response was clear, 100% of the audience said ‘yes’, which illustrates that our colours were appropriate and not too overpowering, which is the effect we wanted to achieve in our documentary.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Were the colours managed ef-fectively?

Television Documentary

Due to targeting an adult audience we wanted to develop a somewhat sophisticated tone to our documentary. We asked our audience ‘Do you think that the tone of the documentary is sophisticated?’ We had a positive response from this question, the majority (12 People), expressed that our documentary was sophisticated. However a minority (2 people), said that our documentary was not sophisticated. The response suggest that we had a strong sense of sophistication, however in parts this could have been improved. Overall, we set out to achieve a sophisticated tone and we feel this was achieved, predominantly through an authoritative voiceover. yes no

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

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

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Do you think that the shots for the documentary were

framed appropriately?

Television Documentary

In our documentary we took a lot of time and attention to detail to create well framed compositions abiding by the rule of thirds. Whether this was in the editing or filming process it was one of the main factors which we took in to account. So, when asking for audience feedback we felt it essential to ask ‘Do you think that the shots for the documentary were framed appropriately?’. The response was clear, 100% of the audience said the shots were framed appropriately, therefore showing that the effort and attention we underwent was successful.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Do you think that the expert inter-view extracts were informative and

useful?

Television Documentary

The final question we asked our audience, in relation to our television documentary was, ‘Do you think that the expert interview extracts were informative and useful?’. We asked this due to wanting a high level of information to be presented to an intelligent and understanding audience. The response was successful 100% of our audience said yes, therefore showing that we had planned our expert interview questions and documentary structure appropriately.

Double Page Spread Article

When showing our audience our television documentary opening, we wanted feed back on our double page spread article too. So, we asked questions related to our double page spread to gain some feedback. The first question we asked was ‘On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the double page spread article has been put together?’ The results for this were successful, the majority of the audience voted for 8, suggesting that the double page spread was composed well. Plus, all of the responses were 6 or above making our double page spread successful in the was it has been composed. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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

gether?

Double Page Spread Article

Then next question we asked our audience was ‘Do you think that we used and developed common conventions of double page spreads?’, we asked this due to wanting a high level of professionalism in our work and we thought it would be good to gain an understanding of how well we achieved this. Our audience response was brilliant, audiences voted 100% ‘yes’, suggesting that our double page spread developed common conventions very well.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Do you think that we used and developed common conventions

of double page spreads?

Double Page Spread Article

The final question we posed to our audience in relation to our double page spread was ‘Stylistically, do you find that the use of colour is appropriate?’, we asked this question due to our lack of colour in our design and the only colour was from stills. Considering this, the majority of our audience (10 people) said that the colour was appropriate and a minority said no (4 people). This shows that our use of colour seemed professional, but maybe due to the topic we could have introduced more colour in parts of our double page spread.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

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

Radio Trailer

As well as asking our audience for feed back on the television documentary and double page spread article, we wanted to gain an understanding of audience feedback in relation to our radio trailer. The first question we posed for our audience was, ‘On a scale of 1 - 10, how well would you say the radio trail article has been put together?’. The results from this were very successful, the majority of our audience voted for 8 and all of our audience questioned voted for 7 or above. This suggests that our radio trailers structure was successful in delivering information as an appealing factor to our audience.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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

has been put together?

Radio Trailer

We wanted to develop an understanding of how well our radio trailer attracts audiences to our television documentary, so we asked ‘Do you feel inclined or persuaded to watch the documentary after listening to the radio trailer?’. The response to this was extremely successful, 100% of our audience said yes. This illustrates that the connection between our radio trailer and television documentary is significant and appeals to our target audience.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Do you feel inclined or persuaded to watch the documentary after

listening to the radio trailer?

Radio Trailer

We wanted to be precise in the use of extracts from our television documentary, so we asked our audience, ‘Do you think that there are enough extracts used in the trailer?’. The response from this was strong; the high majority of the target audience responded yes and a small minority of 2 people said no. This illustrates that we used the appropriate amount of extracts but there may have been room for one or two more in places, but on a whole the radio trailer was composed with a significant amount of extracts.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Do you think that there are enough extracts used in the

trailer?

Radio Trailer

The final question we posed to our audience was, ‘Do you believe that the radio trail uses common conventions?’. We asked this question due to the amount of research we did in to the conventions of radio trailers and we wanted to ensure that we had applied these frameworks to our media product. The response from this was highly successful, 100% of the audience said yes. This shows that we had developed a strong advert, which abides by the common conventions of radio trailers.

yes no0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Do you believe that the radio trail uses common conventions?

ConclusionOverall, gaining audience feedback for our main product and two ancillary tasks has been insightful. We set out to gain an understanding of whether we targeted our audience appropriately with the right content, stylistics and imagery. We have been very successful with audience feedback and audience’s have said that our products all work well in provoking attention and leading them to view the other products. We have learnt that if we were to improve products, we could use more colour on the double page spread, more extracts in the radio trailer and maybe slightly tweak sound levels on the documentary. But, ultimately the audience feedback suggests that our products have been extremely successful with appropriate content for out targeted spectator.