Here is my evaluation answer for question four

1. Question 3
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

2.  Audience feedback played a critical role in my production and
post-production processes. Without the audience feedback that I
obtained, I would not have been able to identify my target
audience or know what their expectations were from my products.

3.  Knowing how valuable audience feedback was, I ensured that I
regularly communicated with my target audience to discover their
opinions on my initial ideas and drafts of my products. Their constructive
criticism was extremely valuable to me as it allowed me to take certain
things into consideration and give me ideas that I hadn't thought of
beforehand. As my film trailer realistically had an audience of 15-25
onwards, I was able to get opinions from a wide variety of people from
my classmates, work colleagues and family members. This gave my
feedback good validity and representativeness as I got feedback from
a wide range of ages that were still part of my target group. Despite the
age difference between some of my target audience members,
because they were all interested in drama films and trailers, they often
gave similar answers and tended to share the same views on what they
did and did not expect to see.

4.  Whilst planning and designing my website homepage, I constantly kept asking my
classmates in the process what they thought of it so far. I would then go home and
ask older family members to keep checking that my audience feedback was reliable
and valid as I was asking various members of my target audience, rather just the ones
that were the same age.
 My original idea for my website homepage, was to have the name of the film, 'The
Expedition', stand out and therefore I spent hours drawing up different plans of how I
could do this. When it came to finally starting my website design, I chose a black
background so that I could have the rest of the text on the page a white colour whilst
occasionally using red. I decided to make the red and white text the house style
colours on my site because they worked well together. My reason for choosing red
was because it matched the red dress the missing girl is wearing on her poster. This
helped add continuity to the site and helped link my products together. As I used
these two colours on my website and had it related to the trailer, I knew I needed to
add it to my film poster which is why I chose to add the red text element onto that
product as well. Once I had done this, I gathered my target audience to come and
view the first drafts of my products.

5. The Reception Theory
 The reception theory, derived from Stuart Hall, considered how producers encoded their texts
and then the audience decoded them. This applies to my work in particular as with my trailer, I
have included all the codes and conventions that I feel is necessary for people to get the right
interpretation of my trailer i.e. knowing that it is of a drama genre. In some instances, the
audience will correctly read the message that the producer is trying to get across, otherwise they
will fail to correctly understand. Hall identified 3 types of audience readings;
 1. Dominant/Preferred
 2. Negotiated
 3. Oppositional
 In terms of my work, I believe that my audience gave a preferred and in some cases negotiated
reading of my products. They have a preferred reading because most of my audiences, when
watching the final screening of my trailer and viewing my website and poster, understood that it
was a drama genre.
 A small proportion of my target audience seemed to give a negotiated. Although I have
acknowledged that my trailer can fall into 2 genre categories, a drama and a thriller, some
audiences felt it was more of a thriller. This shows that it is mainly down to personal interpretation.

6.  The most common feedback that I got was about the my film trailers name on my
website. When discussing this criticism further, my audience agreed that I needed to
make the title on the website the same as that on the trailer and the poster. I made
the decision to get rid of my 'eroded' themed font and replace it with a pure white,
simplistic font. Not only did this boost the continuity of my website further, it now
conformed more strongly to my genre conventions. Without this particular one piece
of audience feedback, my grade was in danger of being lowered for not having
good continuity throughout my advertisements, however I was organised and
therefore received the correct feedback and demolished this dilemma efficiently.
 Overall I learned a lot from my audience feedback in terms of my website
homepage, and the same goes for my film poster and trailer. I went through the
same process, sending out surveys via survey monkey, sending out paper
questionnaires and conducting interview sessions regularly to ensure that I constantly
had up-to-date feedback on how well I was conforming to the conventions of my
brief and the expectations of my audience. I believe that without the target
audience feedback that I got, I would have been unsuccessful with making my
products the way that they are.

7.  With my film poster, I had taken a more unconventional route with
me not featuring my main actor on it. Instead I chose to have my
medium of shot of the woodland location where I had filmed all my
trailer. My reasoning for doing this is explained in my answer to the
evaluation question number one. I was intrigued, and knew that this
unconventional element was vital to get feedback on as I assumed
it would receive mixed reviews. However, when I asked a group to
view the poster, the majority of them liked it and said although it
was a different take on the creative and design side, it still looked
like a poster of a drama genre. They also recognised the link
between the woodland location featured throughout my trailer and
that of the main image on the poster.

8. Who was my target audience?
 My target audience has been males and females from the age 15
and upwards. From the survey that I conducted and sent out, I
discovered that drama was a very popular genre with the ages 15-
40 onward. My target audience research made me realise that film
trailers don't have an age, for example, the primary audience for
finding nemo is children, however, the secondary audience is adults
of all ages. Without my research I wouldn't have been able to
identify my audience and been successful overall with my products.