The Evaluation

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience consists of intelligent and professional females, who are aged between 18 and 35. They are creative, bright, and fun to be around, and enjoy being challenged when it comes to TV shows, books and films. In order to conduct post-production research, my group and I collectively decided that we would do this individually, in order to get a variety of responses from different people in different ways; we would be able to obtain the most feedback this way. Therefore, I decided that the two main ways of conducting post-production research would be to use the internet (particularly the social media website, FaceBook) and my peers the trailer, then film their responses. I targeted both the general public and the target audience when doing this, because I was not only curious as to whether the promotional package appealed to the target audience, but also whether it appealed to the public in general – I wanted to hear peoples thoughts and ideas on the promotional package’s effectiveness and weak points.

From conducting this research, I found that, overall, responses were positive. Members of the target audience on FaceBook stated that the trailer was able to entice them, and made them want to find out the narrative by going to watch the film themselves. As well as this, the target audience not only responded positively to the trailer, but also to the film magazine and the poster; they stated that they found the poster’s main image particularly scary, and wanted to know how the protagonist, who features on the poster, got so bloodied and bruised. With regard to my trailer, which I obtained the most feedback on, there were points of weakness which the majority of people I recieved feedback from pointed out. This was particularly the graveyeard scene - people thought it could be improved as it seemed quite unrealistic. I believe this area could hbave been improved if we had used different types of shots when it came to her reaction after meeting Dennis, as she appeared to walk off very hastily, rather than questioning/wondering what he meant by "YOU SHOULD KNOW WHO I AM".

Overall, the audience stated that they were able to have an idea of the film's narrative from watching the trailer; a woman is stalked, and eventually kidnapped and tortured. However,. some audience members stated that it was unclear who dies in the beginning, and why Mary-Anne is so distressed at the bad news. I believe more shots of Mary-Anne and her mother being close together and happy would have made this much more understandable, since Mary-Anne's mother only features in the opening scene where she is taking a picture - the bond between Mary Anne and her mother isn't shown to be as strong as it is meant to be.

When it cane to the ancillary tasks, I interviewed people of the target audience, and members of the general public again, in order to gain feedback on my ancillary tasks, Many people stated that they liked the colour scheme of the film magazine; they were able to tell from the main image and colour of the sell lines that the magazine was a horror special, specifically designed for halloween. However, others felt that the main image for the magazine wasn't as strong as the film poster - they did not understand the grey brick background and it's relevance, and felt that the facial expression of the protagonist, 'Mary-Anne didn't make her appear as scared as she is in the trailer. However, the brick background did have relevance, since it is a wall of the chamber that Mary-Anne is tortured in, although, in the trailer, the audience is unable to see this due to the dark lighting. Therefore if I were to retake images or recreate the magazine front cover, I would change it so that it matched that of the trailer.