Evaluation Question Three (Ella)

What have you learned from you audience feedback?

Throughout the entire process of our research and planning, production and post production we regularly attained audience feedback. Our target audience was males and females aged between 15 and 25. We felt this was appropriate as our actors, are within that age group which would according to uses and gratifications theory attract people who could relate to what they were watching. As both our main characters are male this would also attract both male and female audiences, male actors typically attract women due to their looks and men are appealed to by someone they can relate to/ aspire to. Also as our story’s theme is based on the Syrian refugee crisis it would attract audiences following current news etc. Again appealing to our demographic of 15 to 25.

Last year we neglected our audience feedback and although we did get some, we felt we could have gotten a lot more in order to create the best possible product. Therefore this year we really pushed to include audience feedback at every single stage of creating our final products.

We used a variety of different forms in order to gain audience feedback:

Facebook - 

Facebook was an excellent way of receiving audience feedback. Its convenient, instant and frequently used by our target audience as commonly people aged 15-25 check their Facebook multiple times a day. This meant we were not only able to share our short film, poster and review publicly with posts but also ask audience members directly via messenger what their opinion was.

We then took this feedback on board when creating our final products in order to comply with what our target audience wanted. 

Interviews -

At different stages of creating our final products we were have potential spectators within our target audience come in and we would film their reaction when showing them something in relation to one of our products. We would then ask them questions and for their feedback. For example, when choosing the name for our short film. We did a blogpost on this which you can view by clicking on this photo -

This was an excellent way to receive feedback and we could ask relevant questions and get genuine answers on camera, that we could refer back to. In these interviews, all the potential spectators said that they liked the title 'Alien' therefore we took this feedback on board and chose to name our short film 'ALIEN'.

We also for our short film, asked potential spectators suiting our key demographic to watch a few slightly different versions of a scene and tell us which they believe is best for our film. 

Survey Monkey -

Survey Monkey was another extremely useful way to receive audience feedback. It was useful for as unlike the other forms of giving feedback, the answers are anonymous. This allows the audiences to give completely honest feedback without worry. This allowed to use this genuine feedback to our advantage. We looked the results and went on the use this information in our short film. 

We did a survey asking about protest signs and if the audience would understand what they were relevant to, in order to ensure our protest scene was clear and evidently about anti-immigrant protestors. The feedback we received from this survey showed us that our target audience, were shocked by the statement "Today refugees, tomorrow terrorists!"  and that they all did understand the relevance. This allowed us to go ahead with our protest scene using the audience feedback to know the prop signs were relevant, communicated what we wanted them to and would intentionally shock our audience. 

Blogger -

Blogger allowed us to get audience feedback regularly. As our blog was the most frequently updated with every step of the way it was a useful platform to gauge how our target audiences were feeling about everything we were doing. Potential spectators could leave comments on any of our blog posts at any time and give us feedback which we could then take forward. 

Has our audience feedback on the film been effective/helpful?

Yes, the audience feedback we received was extremely helpful to us in creating our final portfolio. Receiving honest audience feedback frequently is crucial to any feature or short film, its important you know what your target audience want and conform / appeal to their wants. Otherwise, you could be completely misguided and your film could be unsuccessful. The audience feedback we received allowed us to adapt our short film, poster and review in order to conform to what our target audience were telling us. This meant we could create the most appealing product possible for our key demographic. However, I feel that we could have gotten more audience feedback, specifically on our poster and review. Despite having many discussions we received very few comments on our posts, which was disappointing for our. Nonetheless we used the feedback we did receive to our full advantage, making the poster of the single main character as opposed to having an extra in the back. A comment we received from a 17 year old male suggesting this caused us to have a look at our poster drafts and see that this would be the most beneficial thing to do to appeal to our target audience and make the poster as aesthetically pleasing as possible.