Raye Douglas - Q3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Initial Audience Feedback     Production Feedback       Evaluation Feedback

Trailer

We first interviewed a few people when showing them two trailers: 'Trainspotting' and 'This is England'. We wanted their feedback on the genre and asked them questions about things they liked and things they didn't. After this we came to a decision that we would choose the genre British Realist Drama and with locations though it could be about a teacher. After deciding this we interviewed a focus group of student teachers. We showed them the trailer for 'Happy Go Lucky'. We found out that they didn't like how the plot was unrealistic to a teachers lifestyle when showing her at school. As we wanted to make the story 'realistic' and truthful to a the representation of teachers we made the story-line more simple and focused on the real struggles of teachers. I feel we successfully showed realistic struggles of teachers for example showing her marking work, struggling with students and asking for help.

When choosing shots to add to the trailer we have two ones we liked from a scene of Flora and Conor laughing on a bench however when we asked a focus group in our media class which one they thought
we should add they suggested we cut them both. I felt this was a good decision as the shots were too messy in the background or the laughter looked forced. 

 We then re-filmed the shots after setting up the camera and choosing a 4 second clip from a 4 minute shot. This gave us the shot we wanted as it was realistic fitting our research from the focus group. This also hinted at a possible romantic relationship between the two to fit a larger target audience as most said they liked a sub genre of romance. It made our original genre change slightly but i thought it worked well as it gave the audience a bit more interest to watch the film.
I feel like our audience feedback had a huge influence on our final product. The most effective research was the focus group of teachers asking what they liked in a Drama about teachers- feedback straight from our target market as we then knew what ideas to have for shots to convey a particular kind of lifestyle.


Film Poster
( ENTER PHOTO OF POSTER)
Our group showed a film poster of 'Happy Go Lucky' to several people who the majority said they liked the cartoon like title as it reminded them of a school like theme. After this feedback we made our title on our film poster a cartoon like font. This made the title look like a logo so therefore was easily recognizable and when we wrote the title on our magazine we could use the 'logo' for our film.

During audience feedback they also said they would have liked the cover star in the 'Happy Go Lucky' poster to be a cartoon. We tried to make this effect on our poster however decided it didn't fit our genre as well and could look too cartoon comic like.

We got our class to analyse our poster when we were half way through the process of it. They didn't like the photo and thought the background was too messy for a film poster. On Photoshop we then blurred the background and kept floras face in focus bringing the attention on her and altogether easier to write headlines on a clearer background. This reminded me of the 'Happy Go Lucky' poster and i liked the outcome of our poster after we blurred the background. 
I think the feedback we recieved from the magazine was mixed. Some thought the film genre was clear but others thought it was slightly american and was a Romantic Comedy. This could have been from the bright colours used in the photo and the fact our central character was very attractive hinting that she could be attracting someone in the film. To imporve i think we could have had a photo of her with not such a yellow background and less make up on making the audience have sympathy for her.


Film Magazine
(ENTER PHOTO OF FILM MAGAZINE)
Our audience preferred independent magazines 'Little White Lies' and 'Sight and Sound'. They liked the simple look of the covers and the simple portraits of the cover stars on magazine 'Sight & Sound'. They also said they liked the way the masthead was not straight across the center. We applied this to our magazine cover and it gave it a more sleek sophisticated look that would appeal to an older audience. This worked well as our target audience is 16-50 years old.

We asked AS media students their opinions on our magazines. We didn't tell them the genre of our magazine cover as we wanted a truthful uninfluenced answer. They said our original masthead made it look very posh and simple which we liked however looked like the style for a make up magazine. We then changed it to look more like an art magazine rather than a mainstream lifestyle magazine. I preferred the masthead for our final idea as it looked like it suited our genre more and could be easily recognized as a logo. The brush stroke of the font makes it look more artistic. The red font gave it a more classic look and all together made it less mainstream and more independent.
I really like our final product. I think our headlines reach ou taget market of young women and men perfectly and the feedback from our masthead made us change it for the better to look more artistic.
Over all i am very pleased with the feeback we have got from our poster. The biggest comments were on the photo of our cover star as it was done with an SLR camera and lighting and a background that looked very professional. It was clear and direct.
(ENTER PHOTO OF FLORA - THE CLEAN ONE FOR THE MAGAZINE)