1. WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK AND
HOW DID WE USE IT
EVALUATION QUESTION 3
FREYA DOWNS
2. HOW WE USED FEEDBACK IN OUR DOCUMENTARY
Audience feedback played an essential role in both the creation of our documentary,
and also reviewing and improving it afterwards. Before we created our documentary
we did a pilot study into our topic, target audience, and genre. This was very helpful
and we experimented with two methods in doing this- an online survey, and, a paper
survey that we handed out to people in our target audience. We used the tool
“Survey Monkey” to create our online survey on Meninism and spread it around
using social media sites such as Facebook. Using Facebook was good for spreading
awareness and inviting people to take our questionnaire as our friends and peers fit
into the target audience of our documentary and allowed us to gain answers from
near 50 people. Using Survey Monkey was an excellent tool as we could have an
instant compilation of both open and closed questions, as well as the instant
gratification of charts and graphs made of our statistics, saving us time to use the
information. The mix of closed and open questions it allowed us to have gave us
clear percentile statistics, as well as general opinions to work from. We decided to
make the second questionnaire only on paper so that we could make sure it was just
our target audience who were completing them. Using Survey Monkey was good
and reached a huge amount of people, but as it is anonymous, we have no idea of
the age/gender/social class of those who participated. By choosing who we give the
questionnaire to on paper, we could then focus it completely on what our target
audience want. We could also use the results our topic questionnaire in our
documentary, as using statistics was one of the codes and conventions of
documentary making, it was excellent to have some primary research to use easily.
3. There is a full analysis of our
initial topic research on our
project blog that we did early
on to have a clear idea of
what we needed to cover.
https://prezi.com/lg3f1uey-
yjg/topic-questionnaire-results/
4. POST-PRODUCTION FEEDBACK
The most important feedback we had though was our
feedback on the actual documentary. We held two
screenings for this, one with our media class who are a
general mix of age, gender, class, and interest, and a
second with a group of people specific to our niche
audience. Our feedback for our documentary was
generally good and what we expected would happen,
those who were outside of our target audience gave a
generally negotiated reading of our documentary,
acknowledging that it was a good documentary, but not
really being interested in the topic. People in our target
audience however gave a preferred reading and found
that the documentary was enjoyable and gave an
insightful and mixed view of Meninism. One main
criticism that we found was that in some areas our audio
was off, the speaking was quiet and the music bed was
louder than it. Thankfully we were able to use this
feedback to correct our audio issues and make our
documentary as professional as it needed to be.
6. This is an example of some of the
verbal feedback we were given,
we pinpointed specific groups of
people from our target audience
(here a 16 year old middle class
male) and asked them to discuss
the documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=EHBQOuLtaI4
7. MAGAZINE AND RADIO FEEDBACK
We created a questionnaire to get some feedback
on the two other pieces we created for this
documentary; the magazine double page spread
and the radio trailer. We were very happy with the
feedback for these two pieces as it was entirely
positive which we think is due to the how amount
of research we put into how these products should
be made and our professional results are the
product of the effort we put into the whole
project. For the magazine, the respondents
answered yes for questions such as “does it fulfil
it’s purpose to advertise the documentary?”, “were
the colours appropriate?”, and “did it look
professional?”. This was also the case for the radio
trailer with questions such as “did you enjoy
listening to the advert?”, “do you think the music
was appropriate?”, and “was the audio level
consistent?”. We think the success of our radio
trailer was also because of the feedback we
received from the documentary and it helped us
keep an eye on the audio levels.
8. CONCLUSION
• Audience feedback has played a very strong role in both the creation, preparation, and final product
when creating a documentary.
• The type of feedback will change depending on who we ask, different answers will be given from in and
out of our target audience.
• The feedback we got after finishing our documentary helped up fix any issues.
• By reviewing feedback before creating our secondary pieces, it gave us better results in the feedback of
these pieces.
• Online feedback is the easiest way to get feedback quickly, in large quantities, and review the results.
• Physical feedback is the best way to control and keep an eye on who gives us feedback and review what
groups they represent.
