Question 3 of my A2 Media evaluation.

1. WHAT HAVE
YOU LEARNED
FROM YOUR
AUDIENCE
FEEDBACK?EvaluationQuestion 3

2. Prior to
filming
Before we started to plan and film our trailer, we sent out a primary
research questionnaire.This questionnaire helped us to know what
and audience would like to see in a horror film and we used this
feedback to make decisions throughout the planning and filming
stages of the project.
One question that we asked helped us to know who we should cast
in our trailer. We asked the audience what age group of people
would they like to watch in a horror film.The most popular answers
from this were teenagers and adults. Being a student it was a lot
more convenient for us to use teenagers as our characters as this
meant that we could film in school during study periods and it was a
lot easier for us all to meet up than it would have been if we had
used adults as our characters as we would have to work around their
home and work schedule which would make it a lot more difficult to
film.
Had we had more time to film our trailer I probably would have used
adults rather than teenager to film as this is a more generic age
group used within the horror genre, therefore would have made the
film appear more realistic and fit with the generic conventions of
the genre better.

3. Prior to
filming
Another question that I asked in my primary research
questionnaire was which sub genre of horror was their
favourite. I asked this question because it would help me
to narrow down what the storyline of m film should be.
The most popular subgenres were supernatural and
comedy, however for the purpose of this project I decided
my film would be in the supernatural subgenre as comedy
would be a lot harder to create effectively whilst still
considering the horror elements of the genre.
Knowing what subgenre’s were most popular was useful
to me as it meant I could research existing horror films in
the supernatural genre and pay closer attention to the
generic conventions of these so that I could include them
in my own.

4. During the
production
of the
Trailer.
Whilst making the trailer we decided to show what we
had filmed so far to a focus group of students to get an
idea of how the audience would perceive the trailer and
take on board any improvements we could be making.
One of the main bits of feedback we got from this was
that the audience felt unsure of who to feel sympathetic
for. We hadn’t made the roles of the characters clear
enough to know who the antagonist was and who the
protagonist was. Luckily, as we asked this whilst we was
still filming for the trailer this meant that we could use
this feedback to make the roles clearer in future filming of
the trailer. We tried to incorporate more clips of Emily
being haunted and traumatised by the ghost of her
brother. For example filmed her being trapped and
distressed in order to make it clear to the audience that
she was being haunted and was the victim.

5. Following the audience feedback that the antagonist and
protagonist roles were unclear we decided to take this on
board when filming the bathroom scene for our trailer. In this
scene we tried to make it clear through Emily’s vulnerability
that she was the one being haunted and victimised
throughout the film. We also decided to use a voice over
towards the end of the trailer which was the ghost of her
brother saying “If you don’t confess, I’ll take you with me”.
This was our attempt of making it as clear as possible that
she was the victim and was being haunted.
We also changed the way that our villain looked. We tried to
use makeup to make him look more like a ghost, and more
intimidating. To do this we used a white face paint to make
him look paler and dark face paint around the eyes and face.
We thought by doing this it would help to create a clear
distinction between the antagonist and protagonist and
therefore hopefully eradicate the issue of the audience being
unsure of the roles.

6. What do
you think of
the Title of
the film?
Our film was originally called ‘the spectre’. We decided to ask our
focus group of students what they thought of this title and if it
suited the film and storyline. Some of the feedback we got was:
Dan - “I like the title, I think it’s easy to remember and fits with the
ghostly storyline”
Millie - “The title reminds me too much of the James Bond film”
Gabby - “I think there's a James Bond film recently out with the
same title”
The main feedback we got from this question was that our title was
far too similar to the James Bond film ‘Spectre’ which was only
recently released.Therefore in response to this feedback we
decided to change the name of our film to ‘Bittersweet Reprisal’.We
thought that this name suited our film plot well as it is focusing on
the haunting revenge, and when we asked our focus group for their
opinion on the new title, their responses were overall positive.