The film industry spends time and money on test screenings and market research to understand their target audience for a film. This helps them determine how to advertise and distribute the film to maximize ticket sales. The document discusses how the filmmakers obtained feedback on their romantic comedy film from their target 15-25 year old audience at different stages of editing. They screened rough cuts and a teaser trailer, collecting feedback through surveys and social media. This feedback revealed needed improvements like making the voiceover clearer and adding more establishing shots. The filmmakers found the feedback useful for strengthening weak elements and guided changes to better engage their audience.

1. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
Lillie Vickers

2. Why does the film industry spend so much time and money test
screening films to invited audiences or finding out what audiences
like through market research?
• They spend time and money on test screenings to invited audiences and
market research because they need to find out what the appropriate audience
is for their film. They need to know what audience will want to go see and
enjoy the film, the film industry need this information before the film comes
out because they need to know where to advertise their film. For example if
their target audience is 15-25 year olds they could use social media websites
to get them involved as that’s where they’ll most likely see it. The more their
target audience sees and hears about the film their more likely to go see it
which would boost tickets sales, therefore making more money for the
industry. Another reason for the film industry use market research is so they
know where to place their movie, they could release it in cinema, box office,
straight to DVD or online on sites such as Netflix and YouTube.

3. Who are your audience?
• Our target audience is 15-25 year olds and contains both male and female, with slightly
more female than male. This is due to the romance that is involved within the film.
• To find our target audience we used the website Pearl and Dean to look at films with a
similar storyline and looked at their audience. We looked at Love, Rosie due to the
friendship and romance storyline and Project X due to the party scenes.
• When we found out our target audience we wanted to know what they liked to see
within a romantic-comedy film and trailer, so we made a Voxpop of us asking them
questions such as; do you like a more romantic or comedic story line?

4. At what stages did you ask your audience
questions or get their feedback?
• We asked our audience questions and feedback after we had added all our clips
in order on final cut pro, the first screening we did we had not edited with realistic
sound it had only the song over the top. We also didn’t have an ident or any in-
depth titles.
• We then had a second screening in which we had added dialogue for the
characters, more sound effects for example the school bell, we edited the song to
fit were we wanted it to, our company ident, more party scene clips and titles.
• We asked for feedback again when we had finished the teaser, so if we were
going to make it again or a similar trailer it gave us a good idea of what we should
add and how this audience would respond.
• Below is a screen shot of the 3 teasers we uploaded to YouTube with the two
rough cuts being the far right and middle.

5. How did you get this feedback?
• We got this feedback by having our first screening of our rough cut to 4 groups of either
3-4 people, both male and female of the ages 17-18. We then gave them sheets asking
to rate our mise-en-scene, camerawork, editing and sound out of excellent, good, ok,
poor or very poor. We also asked them what they liked and what they would change.
• For our second rough cut screening we did the same as above but this time asked
them to rate our mise-en-scene, camerawork, editing, sound, conventions, brand
identity and titles which they rated out of excellent, good, ok, poor or very poor. We
again then asked them what they think we should do to make the teaser better and
what they liked about it.
• For our final cut of our teaser trailer we put it on the social media site Facebook asking
people to like or comment on whether they liked it or what they think we should’ve done
to make it better. This allowed us to see how other age groups outside and including
our target audience found the teaser trailer.

6. How did you use this feedback? Was it useful? Did
you make any changes to your work because of it?
• We looked at the feedback we got such as the comments and the areas we needed
work on as one group gave us okay for everything, we felt like we needed to strengthen
them by working on it a little more. The feedback for what they liked about the trailer
help as they said that it really flows well, the party scenes are enticing and the music
fits well with the teaser. This helped us because we knew that we didn’t have to change
these elements and that the audience liked them. When we asked what could be made
better we got answers such as; the voiceover is too loud, needs more dialogue and that
we need to set the scene a little more. This was huge help to us because they told us
what didn’t work well and what we could add to make the teaser even better.
• We did change our work because of the feedback because it opened our eyes. When
looking at the trailer constantly it helps if others look at it because they can pick out
things that need work more easily so we trusted their judgment due to this and also
because their apart of our target audience.
• The changes we made included making the voiceovers quieter and editing them so
they were clearer, adding more clips such as the outside of the college to set the scene
and adding a school bell over the top to make it more realistic, adding a company ident
and more party clips.