Question 3: What have you learned from your audience

feedback?

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Audience Feedback• Audience feedback for both ancillaries and

my short film was very useful. It enabled me to know what my target audience wanted, liked and didn’t quite so like in each piece that I had created.

• As I gained constructive criticism throughout it enabled me to change each texts accordingly in order for my target audience to enjoy and therefore want to watch my short film and read my ancillary texts.

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Facebook• Through Facebook I was able to post several different edits of my

video in order to get feedback from not only my target audience but also several different people in order to increase the opinions that I received.

• Not only this, I also posted different edits of both my ancillary's (poster and magazine review) to Facebook.

• By putting up all of my items onto Facebook, I gained a lot of useful feedback, be it both negative and positive. This enabled me to review my film again in order to re edit the scenes in which didn’t catch peoples attention, along with keeping the scenes which were seen to work very well. Along with this, through the feedback which I received from the ancillary's it also enabled me to re create or edit parts of the my poster for example which didn’t seem to work very well or didn’t conform to the usual codes and conventions of a film poster.

• Using Facebook was also an easy simple way to show my audience what I had created, and due to the fact that it is a social networking site, several different people were able to watch my film for example and also give me an opinion in order to get ideas from people who weren’t just my friends.

Short film feedback

As you can see, again I used Facebookin order to gain feedback about my short film. It helped me see what aspects people enjoyed the most aswell as what they think could havebeen better.

However, on this specific screen shot on Facebook, I didn’t particularly get any negative feedback, and so at the time there wasn’t a lot of aspects I knew, if I changed in my film they would be more effective.

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Through this specific feedback which I received from Facebook about my magazine review, it enabled me to realise that the ‘15’ certificate didn’t blend into the the page, and therefore stood out too much. Due to this feedback, I cut around the picture in order to delete the white background so the image blended in with the rest of the review. As you can see from the comments above, this was the main aspect which my audience suggested that I changed in order for my review to look more appealing.

Twitter • The main reason I used twitter was to market my video in

order to gain a lot of views this gaining feedback from a lot of different people.

• As twitter is a social networking site which unlike Facebook you don’t need to be ‘friends’ with people in order to access their profile, by my putting my film onto twitter it helped me get a lot more views from possibly people I didn’t know, and therefore different valid opinions.

• Again this feedback helped me see what my target audience did and didn’t enjoy about my film. It was useful as if they didn’t enjoy a certain scene then it needed to change it in order to conform to what they want in order for my target audience to actually watch my film. If I didn’t conform to the codes and conventions of horror and documentary style films then my audience wouldn’t want to watch my film.

Print screen showing my video in my tweets.

Peers (Class mates)In order to get as much feedback as I could I presented my short film to my media class, as you can see from the picture.I gained a lot of feedback from this, such as :- Insert a title under the protagonist whilst he is talking in order to conform to the codes and conventions of the documentary style films. - Film the house in the day time, in order for the audience to get a better insight into what the house looks like so they know the location the film is set. - Time laps throughout the night when he is sleeping.

Changed my film in orderto have a shot of the house in the day time

Conforming to the codes and conventions of Documentary genre through narrative.

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Peers • In class, we reviewed both of our ancillaries in order to get more feedback. • For my poster, the only negative feedback which I received from one

member in my class was that the writing seemed to merge together. However my other peers and teachers disagreed with this.

• On the other hand, it was suggested that the colours and fonts worked well together and connoted the genre horror.

• For my magazine review, it was suggested that I should have had three column inches rather than the two I did because it was thought that three column inches looked more professional. However, looking at other professional magazine reviews there were both two and three column inches, both looking professional, therefore I am happy with how mine looks.

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• These were just some examples of what feedback I received from my audience. Through this, I was able to change my film accordingly. Each piece of feedback I gained I made sure that I incorporated it into my film in order to attract my audience to my film a bit more.

• However, despite gaining very useful feedback from my class mates, I wanted feedback from my teachers as this would be a lot more realistic as they may give a more ‘real‘ opinion compared to my class mates. This is because usually friends don't want to tell the truth in order to hurt peoples feelings.

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Teachers • Throughout the whole making of both my film and ancillaries I have gained very

useful feedback. • First of all the main aspect in which I was advised to change about my film was the

start of it. Looking at ‘Uk’s Most Haunted’ they, at the beginning of the programme showed several different shots of the location in which they were filming in order to set the scene and so the audience/viewers were able to see where the paranormal activity was happening. This was advised to do in my film as originally it just went straight into the film with my protagonist talking rather than having original narrative. Not only did me doing this set the scene a lot more, it also conformed more to the codes and conventions of documentary style film as this involves narrative and text.

• Not only this I was advised at the start of my film to include text such as ‘This real life story’ in order again to engage my audience in order for them to know more about the location and background of the film .

Start of my film Start of Uk’s Most Haunted

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Teachers• For my poster, I didn’t gain a lot of constructive criticism on this due to the

fact I had spend a lot of time and research into it and therefore I had included all of the aspects which I needed to in a film poster.

• However, the feedback which I did receive was little spelling mistakes.• Despite this, I did gain good feedback which included:• - good use of image- enigma code for the audience• - good use of positioning of texts and images • - easy to tell the genre of film.

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Teachers• Finally the last bit of information in which I received from the teachers was

about my film review. At the time I wasn’t very happy with the way it looked because despite be conforming to most of the codes and conventions that are used within magazine reviews, it didn’t look aesthetically pleasing. This in turn could put my target audience off reading the article, and therefore put them off watching the short film.

Originally as you can see I didn’t have columns in my magazine article. Therefore it didn’tlook like a professional magazine review.

However, when my teacher suggestedI include different columns in my magazine review, Itried it and this is how it turned out. I also blended in the image of the poster in the top right hand corner which I think works really well.

Younger age groups• In order to get a varied opinion on my magazine poster I took a print out of it

to a group of year 9 boys. • They straight away, despite not telling them anything guessed that the film

was about paranormal activity happening in a house, and the protagonist on in the image was trying to explore the paranormal activity.

• They guessed this through the use of the title and the image which was given on the poster as it gives a lot away, however not enough in order for them to know what will happen in the whole film.

Audience Theory • Gaining audience feedback is very important as there is a lot of different

views and opinions which can be provided in order to create the best products possible that will appeal to the target audience. If the target audience aren’t’‘attracted’ to the film, poster or review and it doesn’t catch their eye, then they aren’t likely to watch the film or read the review.

• Throughout I learnt the text’s don’t have any meaning until they have been read or decoded by the target audience, therefore it was very important for me to continually get feedback from my audience.

• Not only this I also made sure that I put my different items on Facebook and other social networking sites as it is becoming more useful to access my target audience easily.

• I made sure that my items followed the hypodermic needle model, so the intended message is directly received. I believe that through getting positive feedback, especially from a group of people that had never seen my film poster before, and them straight away understanding it, enabled me to conform to this audience theory.

• Uses and gratifications is the most important for my film. This is because in 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts has four different functions, and as entertainment is one of them, the main reason why I am creating the film I am if for entertainment of my target audience.

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