The document discusses lessons learned from receiving audience feedback on marketing materials created for a film. Key lessons included: 1) Audience perspectives can differ significantly from creators' perspectives, providing unexpected insights. 2) It's important to think like the audience to ensure materials are clear and meet audience needs rather than just the creators' intentions. 3) While audience feedback provides value, creators must make final judgments calls, as feedback will not always align with genre conventions or provide consensus views.

1. Evaluation Question 3:
What have you learned from audience feedback?
In general, when giving out questionnaires and getting
results, the main thing I noticed was that the audience had
views that, as the producers, we never would have
thought of. It was good to know what they thought, seeing
how our products came across in their eyes, so that we
could develop our texts to meet our target audience as
much as possible.
As the makers of the trailer, poster and magazine cover,
we were interested to find out what they thought, plus
some of their opinions, we never would have thought of
ourselves because we would be seeing them from a
different angle. For example, when we were making drafts
of the poster, the key image of the clown was very obvious
to us (as we were the ones who created the character),
however when receiving feedback, we realised that of
course, the audience had no idea what the image was, or
how it linked to anything else on the poster. The knife the
clown was holding was also clear to us, but the audience
weren’t so sure, this is why I moved onto the key image of
clown’s wig, knife and confetti, to try and give some hint
as to what the plot of the film is.
Due to this type of feedback, I learnt that you have to think
about being in the viewer’s shoes a lot more that in your
own shoes, as they are going to be the ones seeing it
more, and for the first time. It doesn’t matter if the product
makes sense to you; it has to meet the target audience
and make things clear enough. Although, you could say
we did leave a bit of mystery when not revealing much of
the face of the clown, to link it to the horror genre, but I
think the three props of wig, clown and knife give enough
information away without revealing too much.

2. The audience you survey may have completely different
opinions to you. You may think that something works well,
but they may hate it and disagree totally.
I learnt that you don’t totally have to do what they say, but
sometimes they do give good ideas that maybe we hadn’t
thought of before, such as in a magazine draft, they said
that the main image of Amy was too big and
overcrowding, but we, as the makers, didn’t really notice
this.
There were times when we didn’t agree with the
audience’s viewpoint, but there were also many occasions
where we agreed totally. For example, the red and blue
colour scheme on an earlier magazine draft didn’t work. It
looked too child-like and more masculine than feminine.
We were happy to get rid of this idea.
However, with the other magazine drafts, the audience
didn’t like the flash of the star, when we initially thought it
was a good idea. We chose to have a flash of a still shot
from the film as many magazine covers have this. We also
chose the star, as Amy is the ‘star’ of the film. However,
our feedback told us that the star looked out of place and
didn’t make any sense at all, even though we had given it
a caption. But nevertheless, we got rid of the star as we
did feel that it was overcrowding the page, making the
overall cover concentrate too much on our own film. In the
end, my final magazine cover did have the clown as the
key image, to make the magazine more masculine
orientated and more film-magazine-like. Feedback from
the audience revealed that they preferred this idea to the
one of Amy which was more feminine.
Another issue that we came across was the masthead of
the magazine, when it was named ‘Clapperboard’. We had
tried hard and put it a lot of effort to get it looking how it

3. already was, so we were reluctant to change it, however
we decided in the end that what the audience thought was
the better option in our opinions too, so we deleted it and
changed it- it was too small and unreadable for them as a
masthead. This again is an example of how we didn’t put
ourselves in their shoes, which we would try to do a lot
more if we repeated this task again. As for the second
time around, doing the magazine, the audience mentioned
that the masthead didn’t look very ‘horror-like’, which is
why I added the dripping blood effect, which they seemed
to like.
However, with the poster drafts, we were pleased that the
audience thought exactly the same as us- when deciding
which poster was more professional-looking. We were
glad that they preferred the poster that we preferred, with
the clown’s silhouette, as this meant that we had been
working on the right track, and that we had thought about
our audience more, and meeting their needs, more than
we did with previous drafts etc. However, in the end, we
noticed that due to the lighter colours; our poster was
hardly horror at all, which is why I went on to create more
drafts with darker backgrounds.
As for the trailer, when we received audience feedback,
one of our main concerns was wondering whether we
should include the ‘ringmaster’ voiceover or not. The
results we received were confusing to us, as half of the
audience said they preferred the voiceover, as it
introduced the clown and made more sense, although the
other half claimed that the voiceover made no sense at all
and was overpowering everything else! As the results
were 50% to 50% on that question, it was our final
decision as a team to come up with the answer on
whether we should add it in or not. From doing this, I
learned that the audience cannot always give you the
correct, or a straight forward answer, so you as the

4. producer must take responsibility in making final
decisions.
It was a relief however when we got our trailer feedback,
to know that we were successful in making the genre of
the film obvious, as well as the fact that our target
audience would actually want to go and see the rest of the
film. From doing audience research and feedback, I learnt
that this is probably the most important thing when making
a film trailer, and that doing a questionnaire as you
develop it lets you know whether you are heading in the
right direction or not. We did this questionnaire just after
the half way stage, so, knowing that our trailer came
across as a horror, and knowing that people would watch
it was pleasing for us, as it had meant that we had been
successful in this part of the project.
Furthermore, I was taught that the audience may disagree
with normal conventions of the film you are trying to make.
For example, when surveying them about our trailer and
poster, some of them thought that the words on screen
and on the print work needed to be less dull and have
more interesting fonts. We understood where they were
coming from, but we noticed that what they were
suggesting did not meet the conventions of horror film
trailers or posters at all. Horror trailers have plain black
background with a simple bold font on screen, rather than
anything fancy with more interesting fonts, and posters
once again follow the same pattern where the fonts have
to be bold and stand out so this is why we could not meet
these particular comments as they were heading away
from making the genre clearer.
A similar example of the 50/50 vote regarding the
‘ringmaster’ voiceover was when I was creating my own
drafts of the poster. My audience feedback was helpful,
but it also created problems at the same time. For

5. example, I had designed 4 different drafts and for each
person asked, I made them choose a favourite design.
The result of this was that each draft had an equal number
of votes as a favourite, so in a way, I was back where I
started; not knowing which draft was most suitable as
each one had both negatives and positives. However, this
could have been avoided, if I had more time to ask a
larger number of people, then I would have received a
wider range of opinions, and then more of a majority
decision. But, I have learnt that as the creator, it is down
to you to make the final call.
The other main occasion where we did not put ourselves
in the audience’s shoes was when considering the actual
title of the film. We used the name ‘Confetti’ for the clown,
as clowns are mostly associated with being happy at
celebrations, where confetti is thrown. We kept it as it is a
misleading title for a horror film, to make it mysterious, and
give viewers a surprise when watching it. We wanted to
challenge the conventions in some way, so this is how we
did it. The audience said the title was confusing, so we
added in the voiceover to introduce it as the name of the
clown.