What have you learned from audience feedback on your horror film project
1. What have you learned
from your audience
feedback?
Keyshawna Bailey
2. Attracting my Target audience
After months and months of hard work to produce my three final products (horror short film, trailer and
poster) I wanted to know whether all my hard work paid off and what the audience thought about all
three of my final products. I was interested in what they liked about the final products, what they weren't
so keen about and what they felt could be improved. I thought that it would enhance my work if the
audience could add their own personal opinions onto my work. After-all they are the ones I are aiming to
please, so what better way to know whether or not I accomplished what I hoped to?
In order to do this I had to first gather my target audience, I thought with my large following of teenagers
Facebook was the best choice for this, I did this my creating a public post encouraging people to open
up my Google Forms document to view all three of my products and then give their opinion on it
anonymously as I thought they would be more honest if this was the case.
3.
4. Initial Feedback
Before creating my short film, I had created a questionnaire asking my
respondents what they expected to see in a horror film. So that I could
incorporate these into my horror short film. My questionnaire provided me with
important information which I carefully took into consideration when creating my
short film. I was going to target my film at males, however there were only 14.2%
more females than males, thus when creating my film I
didn’t want to be too one sided towards males, therefore I
tried not to include jump-scares but play only underlying fears.
6. After completing my media film, I wanted to find out what people thought of my films. I wanted to get some
positive feedback as well as some constructive criticism. I felt that this was an important aspect in my
project. I had two stages of audience feedback. The first was taken place when I had just about finished
my film and the second took place after everything was completely finished. The first feedback I received
was from my media class mates. I wanted to find out what they thought I needed to add in terms of
improving even more before exporting. Some of the feedback I got for this were: “Good use of transitions
from one scene to another”, “need to adjust the audio volume at one point”, “Good length and keeps the
audience entertained” and “lighting needs to be a little higher in the interview scene”. This feedback I
received was very useful and allowed us to make sure my film could be as good as possible. I decided to
show it to my media classmates as not only did they know what they were talking about (as they are going
through the same process) but where also my target audience.
First draft feedback
7. My second feedback was taken after I had completely finished out film and had exported it. It was
interesting to see the comparison of feedback from the first time I did it. This feedback mostly focused on
the narrative and how different features such as the music, editing and mise-en-scene made the audience
feel after watching it for the first time. Some of the feedback I received included were: “Very good use of
music to visuals”, “Understood the narrative”, and “good range of camera shots and angles”. This
feedback taught me that I had successfully portrayed my narrative exactly how I wanted it as the audience
understood the narrative yet still felt the sense of mystery throughout. When evaluating how I carried out
of audience feedback, there are things I would change so that I were able to get better and possibly more
results regarding my finished product. I think I would have made used different media platforms such as
social networking sites so allow my target audience to let us know what they thought of my film. Because
my target audience was 15+ years old, using social networking would have been effective as many people
of that age use these sites. Doing this would also add another media technology to the ones that I have
already used.
8. I was also given positive criticism over the timing of the audio in the trailer. Some
people commented saying that music wasn't quiet enough when there was
dialogue from the actors. Also, the music may have faded out too early/late in
some scenes, consequently there was either parts with no sound at all or there
was dialogue cut off.
One person commented on how well the plot could be received by the audience.
They said that it was easy and clear to understand. But, the vast majority of
people stated that the plot wasn't clear enough. Some of them said that the trailer
was just a string of action scenes stuck together with nop plot. So if I were to
remake it, I would try and make the plot as clear as I can.
10. Once I completed the trailer I got a focus group together and had a screening in which everyone present
contained a questionnaire of 6 questions -created beforehand- that could help them in evaluating my work.
I tried giving them open questions, making it easier for them to reply with detailed answers. I gave them a
brief outline before starting of what I had done, without giving the film away, and explained I needed
honest opinions to see where I went wrong and how I could have improved.
The 6 questions which I asked were:
What aspects of the trailer would you say are typical of slasher trailers? (Similarities, differences)
From the trailer, what do you understand of the story?
What in the trailer do you find tense and/ scary? (be specific please)
What do you like or dislike about the trailer?
What could I improve? (please be specific)
11. The first question I wanted to find out whether conventions which are
found in gothic horror films that I used in my own were apparent. The
audience did in fact spot similarities, such as: 'Increasing pace in music
and movement to create tension' .One of the feedback actually summed
up and points out the narrative, genre, location and soundtrack of the film
as they acknowledge the effectiveness in which the non-diegetic music
has: 'Killing. Forest. Screaming. Music'.
The second questions results would enable us to understand whether
films narrative is effectively portrayed to the audience through my editing
skills, dialogue and the voiceover. However, diegetic sound and the
different camera shots along with the editing seemed to be effective too
as they were able to convey the narrative to the audience.
From the third question, were I hoping that the montage sequence along
with my use of non-diegetic music would have help in setting an
atmosphere for the trailer. Many of the responses agreed as they made
reference to both as well as suggesting with the answers that it increased
suspense within the trailer: 'Tempo good, voiceover excellent and very
'dark' and grey', another response was that they found 'The music leading
up to the killings' as quite tense and scary.
12. In improving the film (question 5) editing skills were picked up
on. 'The interchange between different scenes' could have been
smoother and this is obviously down to experience within editing
that I lacked. The captions of the logos was thought to be 'too
fast and not in sync' with the non-diegetic sound. This however,
and the comment previous to this one, are both improvements
that are possible and which I would look into. There were some
conflicting responses to this question however, as one response
was that the trailer 'showed a little too much of the film.' and
another was that it needed to: 'Reveal storyline a bit more.' This
suggests that opinions waver and depend on the individual's
interpretation of certain things and I cannot always please
everyone within my audience.
In the final question I decided to address the use of sound within
my trailer, trying to find out if it had my desired effect. The sound
is a major factor within the trailer and this was evident in my
audience's response to the question, in which the believed that
the sound made: 'it more interesting' as it: 'Builds suspense,
makes it like a typical 'horror' trailer' and 'makes it a lot scarier.'
