Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 

We gained feedback on the rough cuts of our trailer poster and magazine, and I will evaluate the aid this gave us on completing our overall task whilst also looking at the hindrances of the feedback we received. After each rough cut of the different products we gathered the feedback to take on board the views of the audience when creating the final product. When collecting our feedback we ensured that we had a wide range of age ranges and genders to create an unbiased and more collective response. However as our target market was the younger generation we have in our feedback responses a more youthful slant.

The first rough cut of which we gathered feedback was ‘Rough cut 1’ of our trailer. The feedback we gathered was from two adults in their 30/40s, who both commented upon the length of the trailer, stating that it could be ‘a bit snappier to hold the viewer’s attention’ Amanda 48 and one boy age 16; who was not bothered by the length but was confused by the subplot of the older characters at the beginning of the trailer; perhaps distracted as commented by other feedback gathered myself from peers by the aggressive nature at points of the background music; for example the electric guitar portion of music following the shot reverse shot between Rachel and both Caroline and Christine was too antagonistic for the nature of the product. This was reflected in our feedback and therefore it was changed. We pondered over changing the length of the trailer to adhere to the comments made by the comments; however on consideration we felt that as this comment was not made upon the trailer by those of the age it was targeted at it was not a crucial change to make.

After making these changes to the first rough cut of the trailer we then created ‘Rough cut 2’. We took on board advice specifically on the music of the trailer to create a calmer, but still creating up beat and tense tone which is more suitable for our audience and for the theme of the trailer. On this cut we only received feedback from the audience which we are targeting, aged between the ages 15-18. The feedback after the changes made from rough cut 1 was generally much more positive, which gave us a clear notion that we had made the correct alterations on the trailer, after the first set of feedback. The positive comments varied from compliments on the ‘various cuts and angles’ and the juxtaposing of the ‘average town setting with the peculiarity of the judging expressions’ which is commented to ‘hook viewers well’ Lewis 17. However other feedback also commenting upon the setting was critical of the emptiness of the scenery shown, and that perhaps more people should have been casted into the trailer. Consideration was therefore given as to whether the inclusion of more cast would aid the effectiveness of the trailer; looking into for example having additional background characters to create a more realistic average town setting. But after much contemplation of this feedback we concluded that the addition of more characters would hinder the eerie tension we wanted to portray throughout the town as Rachel Edwards walks towards her “target” Ben Mason. 

The final changes made through the aid of feedback on the trailer was the addition of a channel 4 overlay at the end of the trailer, this idea came from the comments on the feedback of rough cut 2  to make it appear more in tune to how Channel 4 advertises. Their suggestion of a voice over was considered however as we had intended the tension of the trailer to be aided by the absence of voices in replacement with high tempo music; we instead chose to create a similarity to channel 4’s advertising with the overlay and the addition of a hash tag also on this final overlay.

We also received feedback on our draft of the poster for the soap, which was crucial to the final product created. Positive feedback was given on the background of the poster which was well received as we had created this unique background crucially to stand out. Negative feedback was made however about the channel 4 logo covering one of the characters in the poster, this was easily altered on the final draft and the logo was lowered, to not obstruct any characters. Comments were also made about the contrast between the characters and the background which perhaps obscured attention from some of the detail on the characters. In consideration of this feedback we darkened the grass in the background so that it doesn’t contrast as much, whilst also lightening shadows of the some of the characters to aid the solving of this problem. Final adjustments also included the resizing of some of the characters to make them more prominent, and highlight them as crucial characters within the soap.

Finally feedback was also given on the magazine draft. The main feedback was positive of the layout of the magazine cover, but throughout all the feedback given comment was made that there was too much empty space and more imagery or text was needed to fill the empty space. This was rectified in the final magazine cover by adding an extra photo and text, rearranging the exiting photos and altering the text size to give prominence to the key stories. Feedback was also given about the plain style of the block blue background, and the suggestion of the use of gradient on this area was suggested. This was a crucial alteration made only as a result of the feedback gathered and created a much less flat looking style. Overall the feedback received on the magazine poster was vital to the final creation of the final magazine cover, and there was no hindering comments made for the completion of the final product.

Overall the feedback received on all the drafts before the final results of each product was significant in the creation of each to the standard by which they are. We learnt a lot about the differences between the responses to certain aspects of the soap opera trailer, poster and magazine depending on the age of the audience questioned; from this we then catered are questions to specifically the target audience we aimed to attract as it is how they view it which was crucial to the success of the creation of the products.