AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

Our audience feedback helped us create an ideal film from their expectations of a horror. It also helped us to edit and define our finished trailer, suiting our target audience.

Many forms of audience feedback really helped to make our final trailer. Our first form of research was done through a questionnaire. These results helped us know what our target audience were interested in and what they would expect from a horror. We then took the results and put them into graphs and tables so that we could apply each aspect to our trailer. Below are the questions we handed out on our questionnaire. We made sure to hand them out to a range of ages to get a vast series of opinions to work with.
1) Are you Male or Female? 2) How old are you? 3) What typical element do you prefer when watching a Horror film? 4) Would you be more interested to watch a Horror if it included people of the same ago as you? 5) What would be a successful location? 6) Out of the Horror films listed, which is your favourite? 7) Which film out of the above list do you like the least? 8) Do you think music is important when creating a successful Horror film? 9) Do you prefer a trailer to include a lot of the story line?

After looking into the results we come to the following decisions: - The characters did not need to be changed as people like to see actors/actress's of a similar age which we had already incorporated. Seeing as our film is aimed toward the teenage viewers, our choice in characters was successful. - Our story line also didnt need to be altered as people enjoy chase and murder. Although murder may not be shown it is hinted toward in our trailer and is included within the film itself. - The location was also voted to be successful when the audience said it was more realistic to have a setting such as the woods.

- Looking at the results from peoples favourite horrors they all said that they like a sense of realism. Taking our story idea from a news extract should make our film more realistic and enjoyable to watch.
- Music was made an obvious importance when 100% of the results said that it wouldn't be as successful without it. Originally we weren't going to incorporate music but now we know that it is a necessity. - People do not a lot to be included in the trailer as it gives too much away and I think we show just the right amount to give them a hint toward what's going to happen, and not too much that they're put off.

Another questionnaire was handed out to see not what the audience would like to see but what they would expect to see. This research was helpful as we could chose conventions to go against so that it would be something new, making it scarier and less predictable. Some conventions horror we chose to follow as the audience expect to see certain elements and wouldnt want a horror without them. Below are some quotes from my chosen audience and what they would generally expect from a horror.
- Shirley Smith, 50 - ' To be scared and on the edge of my seat.' - Harry Demetriou, 17 - 'A predictable story line.' - Adam Ward, 15 - 'a big monster.' - Katie Jones, 17 - 'I expect the setting to be really dark and dismal.' - Rebecca Demetriou, 18 - 'To be scary and thrilling.'

After looking through all the results I decided that it isn't necessarily important for the audience expectations to be met. Harry stated he expects the film to be predictable so this is something I would like to go against, as horror it is better to go against this and to form a surprise. This helped engage the audience as its something they hadnt seen before. In all other areas it is more important to follow the audiences expectations. The Hero/Heroin is almost always good looking and intelligent. If we were to do this differently our characters may be perceived in the wrong light.

Asking taking in our results from these questionnaires we applied everything we felt necessary to create our final trailer. To make sure our outcome was what our audience wanted we gained further audience feedback. Our first form of feedback was received from two focus groups, involving different age groups to get different opinions. In total, there were 30 people in our 2 focus groups. These are the results out of 30. 1) did you like the film trailer? (Just a few examples) I liked it because it gave a thrill [and it made me] wonder what was going to happen next very scary yes because the music built suspense and the camera angles made it look like a real film created tension it made me jump! Only limited results said that the trailer was too scary and something they wouldnt want to watch. However, these results were received from the year 9 nine focus group. Their age is below our certificate rating so it was helpful to know that they didnt feel like the film was appropriate for them. This way we know we did our job at creating horror and tension suitable for our target audience.

We later on chose to carry out more feedback through social networking sites to see what people thought when watching our trailer, and whether or not it would be viewed as a success. Firstly, we uploaded our trailer to Facebook and below is the amount of likes we received. I have also listed the written feedback we received, which was all positive and given by people aged over 15.

Here is a recent print screen of the amounts of views we received on YouTube. No comments were left but 18 people like our trailer and so far none dislike. This form of feedback hasnt been as helpful as the questionnaires but at least we know that our trailer is getting good responses.

Here is a post I put onto twitter, including the YouTube link to our trailer. We only got back one response on this networking site. I feel that this may of been because you are unable to leave comments or show likes, making it harder to give their response.

Audience feedback really helped us know what our audience want to see. After receiving all our results through questionnaires we knew what our audience enjoyed in Horrors and also what they expect to see. We applied what we thought was appropriate from this feedback. Once our trailer was complete we gained more feedback through both focus groups and social networking sites. We Received a vast amount of comments on our trailer, both good and bad. These results helped us to tweak and define our final production to the best of our capabilities.