EVALUATION QUESTION 3- WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Finding our audience

Our first step when creating the trailer was finding who our target audience was. We decided that an audience similar to ourselves would be easiest to cater for and so we decided on a young male audience aged from 15 – 21 years and we have chosen our genre and built our story around this audience.Our genre of a neo noir film is often most popular with a male teenage and young adult audience. We have been sure to include plenty of action within the plot to draw in this group of people. Our cast, including the protagonist is primarily of young males, which reflects the characteristics of the audience and gives them a greater sense of attachment to our characters.Although our primary target audience is 15 – 21 year old males, due to the setting being in the 1950s and the noir style of the film it may also be of interest to older males who watched noir films which were popular in the 1950s.

Audience questionnaireBefore we began filming we gave out questionnaires to people within our target audience to fill in, that being males 15 – 21. This provided a very helpful piece of initial audience feedback as it gave us information about what our audience wanted and expected before we began filming. This allowed us to target the story and other elements of the trailer to the interests of our target audience.

Effects of the questionnaire on our trailerAfter this initial audience research we had to think about how we wanted to ensure that out audience would appreciate our product. In our questionnaire almost all of the people who responded expected or hoped for some form of mystery within the film.We decided to keep much of the story open and unanswered in the trailer, creating some mystery and intrigue for our audience. This would show one of the conventions of the genre to our audience, letting them know more about what type of film it is as well as leaving them wanting to know what will happen.Other things that people expected to be in the trailer were guns, action and darkness. All of these are things that we built our story around and have included in our trailer.

First trailer feedback

After filming, we edited our first version of the trailer. We knew that there were still improvements yet to be made at that point yet felt it would be helpful to see what members of our target audience felt about our trailer so far. We got individual members of our target audience to watch our trailer and asked them some questions. This was more informal but the questions were the same each time and we videoed these interviews. We asked about the pacing and the music, and whether they liked the first scene as we felt it could possibly be improved upon. The majority of people said that the pacing and music for the most part was good yet they felt that the beginning of the trailer was quite confusing. There were also comments about the lack of dialogue and the story being somewhat hard to follow.This audience feedback proved to be very helpful and we changed the opening scene by adding slightly more dialogue and making it much clearer as to what was going on. We also added some writing throughout the trailer, which helped the audience to follow the story more easily. There were also some other small changes made to help with the pacing of the film

Second trailer feedback

After we were finished editing the trailer and were happy with it we wanted to get further audience feedback to see if our target audience agreed. We filled the room with members of our target audience and showed them the trailer. We filmed their response as well as getting them to fill in an anonymous questionnaire afterwards. The response was very positive. There were a few points made abut the lack of dialogue in places and about some of the music and pacing of the trailer. It was too late for any reshoots at this point but we did edit the music for it to flow slighter better.Overall the feedback was very positive and so we knew that there was not much more needed to amend the trailer other than a few tweaks

Our poster

When creating our poster we had to think about how we wanted our target audience to view it. We knew that the poster had to represent the film and so making it full of mystery and action was our first priority. We looked at older noir posters for inspiration as well as more modern neo noirs. I liked the way that the traditional noir posters had a large group of characters yet it was not always clear which character is which, and this creates a feeling of mystery just from the poster, making it quite intriguing. More modern neo noir posters are often darker and more gritty than the much brighter traditional ones. For our poster we decided to incorporate elements of both. We have both the dark and gritty tones along with the cast of people with a painted effect on top as a homage to the traditional noir posters.

Poster feedback

We stuck a few copies of our poster around our college, each with some questions next to them asking people what they liked and what they thought could be improved. The feedback was very positive with just a few suggestions for improvement. These included adding some credits at the bottom of the poster as well as a BBFC rating. We took this feedback into account and added these features to the poster.

Our magazine cover

We wanted our magazine cover to be very mysterious and full of suspense, just like our poster and we faded the characters into the dark black background. We made sure that the writing was not too full and bright, being mainly white for the most part so as not to take too much attention away from the characters in the middle of the page.

Magazine cover feedback

We decided to conduct an interview with a sample of five people from our target audience. We showed them the magazine cover and asked them what they thought of it, and what improvements could be made. There was little negativity towards the cover and most people said that they found it mysterious and intriguing and that it would make them want to watch the film. The only thing that people mentioned that could be improved was some of the writing which could be more easily understood. We took this on board and made a few changes to improve this.

How to reach our target audience?We have quite a young target audience aged from 15 – 21. This means that social media is one of the best ways to connect with them as this is very popular among young people. Other ways include the TV, cinemas and posters on public transport, all of which are popular among young age groups.We will have a social networking account on Twitter and Facebook where we will post trailers, posters, interviews and behind the scenes information. All of these methods will reach our target audience and create anticipation for our film. Social media is such as good place to advertise as people can easily share it among friends building up more interest. We will create a YouTube channel as well where we can post videos such as interviews and trailers.We will share our trailer through social media but also using TV channels such as the Notts TV channel and independent cinemas such as Broadway and Savoy, in our local area both of which are used regularly by students, to try and get it seen by as many people as possible, particularly those within our target audience.

Where could our audience watch our film?Aside from local independent cinemas we considered how else we could show our film. We would sell physical DVD copies of our film yet we are aware that this is not necessarily the best way to get it to our young audience. Young people would be more likely to download the content so we would allow them to do so through our official website. We would also try to get our film to a company such as Netflix or Amazon Prime as these are very popular among young people.

Summary

Overall the feedback for our trailer, poster and magazine cover has been invaluable. It has definitely improved our work and helped us to ensure that our work is well suited to our specific target audience.