The document discusses using audience feedback to improve film productions. It explains that filmmakers conduct test screenings and market research to get feedback from audiences on how to strengthen their films and target their marketing. The feedback helps filmmakers identify their target audience, determine if a film will succeed, and learn what audiences like. The document also provides examples of how a film production team gathered feedback during their project pitch, rough cut screening, and final screening. They used the feedback to improve areas like their script, sound design, trailer structure, and marketing materials. The final feedback suggested they successfully achieved their goals for a teen drama marketing campaign.

1. What have we learned from
our audience feedback?
By Ashleigh Precious

2. Why do films spend so much time and resources
on test screenings and market research?
• To get feedback from the audience, finding out way to improve and how to work on the strengths in order to
make it the most successful film possible.
• To work out who they should direct their marketing campaign at as it can give a clear indication to who the target
audience is. They can also use this information to use the from people outside the target market in order to get an
idea of what they can to expand their target audience to suit a wider range of people. This would bring in
more people using the right advertising campaign and therefore bringing in more money for the film.
• It also gives them an idea of whether the film will be successful or not, particularly with the target audience that
they had already directed it to.
• Market research helps to find out what the target audience likes, how to appeal to them and how they can apply
this to their on productions in order to get it to appeal to the same audience. They can do this by using primary
research with questionnaires and surveys, or secondary research online to look into previous campaigns for films
and seeing how they were successful.
Therefore expensive research such as test screenings and getting feedback from them is
worth all the money as without it, the film would not have the information required to
make the film as successful as possible.

3. Who are my target audience?
• The target audience for our production is predominantly teenage girls between 14 and 18, who go to
school and live ordinary teenage lives.
How did we research:
• We used Pearl and Dean as methods of secondary online research, it helped gain insight into exactly
who is interested in similar films to our own.
• We also studied other campaigns seeing which were most successful with their target audiences.
Such as the teen drama 'Mean Girls' which we found to be so successful because they covered every
stereotype of school kids, such as the 'outcasts', 'jocks', 'bullies' and 'the outsider'. We looked into this
theory and found that it was very typical of the genre which could be why it was so successful.
• We also went around and asked people as a form of primary research to answer our questions
about their interaction with films. This helped us to gain more insight into exactly the kind of people
we wanted our film to appeal to.
• Another thing that helped us greatly was the fact that each member of our group fit the target
audience: typical teenage girls, still in education, facing teenage dramas and have friendships
similar to the one in our trailer. This helped us to tailor our film to what we personally would look for
in a film and this helped us greatly.

4. How did you get this feedback?
• Pitch Presentation:
For this, we presented in front of a group of approximately 20 teenage males and females a pitch explaining the narrative of
our film and we received feedback and questions at the end. This helped us to work out how to improve on our pre-production
plan so that our final pieces were as good as possible.
• Rough Cut:
We also screened our rough cut and received feedback and questions at the end about the sound and editing, this helped us to
work out what to prioritise in the editing process.
• Final Screening:
We screened our trailer, as well as leaving our magazine cover and poster on display with a series of questionnaires to fill out by
the rest of the group. This helped us to understand what we could improve on next time, and where we had improved from the
previous set of feedback.
The group we used for our feedback was half teenage girls and half teenage boys, therefore we got 50% insight from our target
audience and 50% feedback from a secondary audience which was important in seeing how we could best appeal to both to
widen the target audience.

5. How did you use this feedback?
• Pitch Presentation: We used this information by applying all the questions
and feedback from the group to our pre-productions in order to answer all
the questions and fill any narrative gaps that we left out.
We edited the script more than anything because after receiving the feedback
we noticed holes in the story which we needed to fix to make our film narrative
make sense and work. Therefore the feedback from this early stage was crucial.

6. How did you use this feedback?
• Rough cut: We used feedback from the rough cut because it helped to show
us exactly what we needed to sort out and prioritise first in the editing of our
teaser trailer
The main thing that people noticed was that we hadn’t yet added a soundtrack
and after watching it back with everyone, we realized how crucial music is to set
the tone and help people understand what’s going on. This includes the fact
that there were no sound effects which were also important, therefore straight
after getting the feedback we worked on adding sound.

7. How did you use this feedback?
• Final Screening: We needed this feedback to find out what may have gone
well and how well we improved from previous feedback, as well as what we
could have also done to improve it still.
It also helped us to see how successful we were overall in appealing to our
target audience and whether we achieved what we wanted to as far as making a
successful teen drama goes.

8. Was this useful?

9. Why?
1. This was useful because it gave us fresh perspectives and allowed us to see
our ideas through other peoples minds.
2. It helped us to spot problem or mistakes in our productions in time for us
to rectify them
3. Another thing which was useful is that we learned critical thinking skills and
how to apply them to our own work

10. What changes were made to our work after
receiving feedback?
1. Adding sound to our final cut trailer
2. Adding a better background to our film poster
3. Used a wider range of transitions to our trailer between shots
4. Edited the narrative in order to fill in any holes or mistakes in the plot
5. Adjusted the order of scenes so that it made the best sense
6. Decided between a voice-over and inserted titles throughout to make the narrative
clearer
7. Added to prop list: Images for the stalker board

11. What does the final audience feedback suggest
about the success of your marketing campaign?
After receiving the final audience feedback I would suggest that we were a…

12. Why?
• Because overall the feedback said that we achieved good camera-work and
mise-en-scene throughout, which we felt was really important to a successful
media product.
• We also noticed that there was no confusion about the plot or narrative
which there was when we had originally received feedback
• All the previous feedback we had received on how to improve was different
from before, which showed us that we had built on previous feedback and
improved.

13. Proof:
First attempt at film
poster Final film poster First magazine cover draft
Final film magazine cover