A2 Media Evaluation Question 3

1. Q3. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED
FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
By Natalie Rockall

2. Within the film industry, it is vital to have film
screenings, in which director and producers
preview a screening before its general release
in order to gauge audience reaction. The
feedback given from a test screening may
then be used to alter the movie before
release.
Despite these screenings being both a costly
and time consuming process, they are vital –
to see if anything needs to be re-edited,
reshot or rewritten. Additionally, through they
can establish the general target audience
which can then aid the distribution
companies extensively in terms of advertising
which could then help with the success of a
film.
TEST SCREENING FILMS?
WHY?
Above – a simple feedback form

3. OUR TARGET AUDIENCE
When creating any product, it is imperative that
you know who you target audience are. A target
audience is the demographic of people most
likely to be interested in your product/service.
To find out ours, we carried out both primary
and secondary research.
During planning, we decided to go with a
thriller genre with a supernatural element, after
doing research into the horror industry we
decided to go with this subgenre as we felt it
was quite a current interest of our target
population.
Through our research, we conducted that a
typical viewers age for watching a film similar to
ours would be aged between 15-24, additionally
from looking at table 1, those aged 24-35 also
amounted to a large percentage., and due to
their being a male protagonist in our film, it is
more likely to attract a male audience. Looking
at Table 2, it is evident that the most popular
socio-economic class for this genre is C1 (lower
middle class).
Table 2 - looking at socio-econom
Table 1 - looking at gender and age
Pearl and Dean logo

4. CONDUCTING OUR TARGET AUDIENCE
- PRIMARY
Our primary research was done by creating questionnaire with both quantitative and
qualitative information, so that our data collected was both reliable and valid to what
we were trying to find out. This survey was created on Survey monkey and distributed
to our target audience through Snapchat which has a swipe up feature which took
you directly to the questionnaire, making it easier to complete, encouraging more
people to answer it.

5. CONDUCTING OUR TARGET AUDIENCE
- SECONDARY
Our secondary research was collected through a site called Pearl & Dean, who are
known as the UK’s best known cinema advertising contractor. The benefits of using
this is because it had statics which you could directly compare, and the results
would be viewed as the same by everyone because there’s no value judgment
against numbers.
Comparable profile for ’Insidious: The Last Key’

6. PITCH PRESENTATION
A pitch presentation is a concise, visual
presentation for an idea of a film which is
generally made by the screenwriter or film
producer in the hope of attracting
development.
As a group we conduced a mini
presentation incorporating all of our ideas
and then presented this to the rest of our
class
Pitch Presentation – cover slide

7. Slides from our pitch
presentation:
HOW WAS IT COLLECTED AND USED?
To create our pitch presentation, I created a PowerPoint on the Google drive, and shared this with the rest of the
members of my group, so that it could be accessed by everyone. We discussed our film idea, and then delegated
slides.
We presented our pitch presentation to the rest of our class, after we had finished our presentation we gained
some verbal feedback and were asked questions about our idea.

9. WHAT INSIGHT DID IT GIVE YOU?
DID IT LEAD YOU TO MAKE ANY CHANGES?
Our feedback for our pitch presentation was fairly
brief, and the questions asked were based more on
the plot and narrative for our film idea.
However, we took what we were given and made
some changes in terms of planning our film, and we
planned out some ideas and events in which could
go into our teaser trailer – this was helpful, as it then
meant we had more shot ideas when it came to
conducting our shot list.
FEEDBACK
-research more into target audience
-look into magazines, will we need to
create our own due to gap in the
market?
-plan more events for the teaser trailer
Post-it note with our verbal feedback

10. ROUGH CUT SCREENING
Blog post on our Rough Cut Screening
Two different poster designs

11. HOW WAS IT COLLECTED AND USED?
We previewed a ‘work-in-progress’ screening to the rest
of the class, the purpose of this was to get a response
containing feedback with both strengths and weaknesses
on areas to improve on. As this was a rough cut we were
aware in advance that it wasn’t up to a standard we were
happy with.
Whilst our trailer was being screened, there were some
A4 handouts
Looking back at our piece and everyone else's it gave me
an insight as I was looking at our products from an
outsiders perspective and noted down things I had
noticed which can be seen in the picture to the right.
Self evaluation in regards to each of the pieces

12. Scanned copies of some of feedback
sheets from our rough cut screening:

13. WHAT INSIGHT DID IT GIVE YOU?
DID IT LEAD YOU TO MAKE ANY CHANGES?
The feedback from the rough cut was extremely helpful. We took
everything given and took into consideration and then implemented it into
our media products. One of the biggest changes that was made was to
the sound in the teaser trailer. We needed to add so many more layers,
including a backing track, and we also needed to ensure that there was a
build up in sound towards the end of the trailer so that it fit in with the
conventions of a teaser trailer. Another change which was made was the
colour grading of the shots, we gave them a low-key tone to convey a
certain mood. A lot of shots were either taken out completely, or shorted
to increase the dramatic impact and to set up an enigma.
Following on from the rough cut screening it triggered further research
into the conventions of teaser trailer, we noticed that there was usually two
company idents, so we ensured we did this. We also added in titles
towards the end to break up the sound track, which created tension and an
unsettling feeling.

14. We also noticed what was wrong with others, and made sure that we
hadn’t made the same mistake – such as the correct sizing for the
magazine cover, not only did this just include the physical length and
width of the magazine, but also the diameter of the masthead and how far
down it was from the top. (this research can be found in a separate blog
post).
Final magazine cover

15. FINAL SCREENING
After our main product and two ancillary
texts(poster and magazine cover) were
completed we did a final screening. As a
class we set up three macs, one with each
of the media pieces on them, and left a A4
handout in front of one of the monitors,
for the other groups to complete. We
went round the class and did this for each
of the groups.
Blog post on our Final Teaser Trailer

16. Scanned copies of some of feedback
sheets from our final/ promotional
package screening:

18. WHAT HAVE I TAKEN FROM MY
FINAL FEEDBACK?
As what we were presenting
were out final ancillary texts and
no changes were allowed to be made
before the final deadline, we had to
take any criticism and use this if we
were to do a similar project in the
future.
In terms of the success of our marketing campaign,
there was a question asked on the feedback sheet
which questioned if the promotional package for a
film was met and if the USP came across clearly.
However it wasn’t answered – this may have been
down due to the layout of the handout, and people
were confused with where the questions actually
started. However, someone did mention that they
felt that the magazine didn’t fully link with the other
products and seemed quite empty. However, Little
White Lies conventionally don’t have very much text
going on in their covers, and are very illustration
based, additionally, magazine covers are separate to
the trailer and poster anyway, as it is up to the
publisher’s and editors to decide on the layout.