Question.3 What have you learned from your audience feedback? Ryan Jones

Methods of gathering feedback There are many different ways in which a film company can get feedback from there intended target audience, as well as the general audience. Companies will use strategies such as pre-release screenings. This is when they will invite a certain audience (film critics, journalists) and respond to their feedback accordingly. An example of this is the pre-release screening of Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ which tested the audiences acceptance of a very violent scene and to see which parts could be in the film and which were just to much for the public. I have also found another way in which films use to get feedback and this is by looking at reviews and ratings on websites such as Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, etc. This feedback will be from the general public, once the film has been released. The box office figures, readership figures and awards will also give information on the audiences overall response to the film. By doing this you can work out how to quickly do the last promotion before your film stops playing in the cinema. Lastly a quick way of promoting and at the same time getting feedback on your film is by doing a conference meeting with the main stars of the film. Another way to get good feedback is to create a questionnaire for an audience to fill in, as the answers provided will give an insight as to how successfully you fulfilled your film specifications in terms of genre, target audience, etc.

How we will gather feedback We have produced a questionnaire for other classmates to fill out once they have watched the trailer. And this will give us feedback directly from people that have been doing the same work as us so that will really help us. I will upload the trailer video to Facebook and ask friends and family to have a look and write a comment of what they think which gives me a wider range of audience feedback. I will gather the feedback from the comments on the YouTube upload.

Target audience for trailer, poster and magazine cover It is very important for the producers to know who there target audience is for there film, with out knowing that how else will they know how to market it. Getting your target audience is crucial and essential when it comes to making a film a success. Once they know the target audience they can then aim most the marketing at them and this will allow for the maximum selling of there film. Basically right target audience = Money, which is what they are aiming for. Our target audience of gender: male, age: will be focused on for pre-screenings, and general feedback tactics because, as our target audience they are most important audience to the success of the film. Our questionnaires will also be filled out by a wider audience rather than just our target audience as we plan on appealing to off-shoot audiences as well, to increase our overall revenue. Having opinions from a variety of people will inform us on whether our film will be an overall success. If feedback is all good then this would tell us we are doing the right thing and that we can go ahead and put more money into the marketing to make even more profit. The focus group for our audience feedback will come from our target audience. It is important for us to know the gender/age of those feeding back so we can identify whether we have achieved a media product to suit them. This will then help producers to modify, accentuate and sometimes remove certain conventions/scenes/aspects of the film.

Our questionnaire on our trailer

Class feed back on our trailer Once everyone in class had finished their trainers we all sat down in the classroom and watched everyone's trailer. As we watched everyone's trailer we all had a questionnaire from each group to fill out to give them feedback. This is what feed back we got when we showed ours to the class: Positive Camera work was really good and the editing seemed very clever the way it had been done. Acting was good for college students and the adding of humour was a good and funny touch. The freeze frames and mise-en-scene were exciting. The music went well with the action and was very sustainable for the genre and narrative. Using a poker scene and bank robbery was a really good idea as it really suited our genre and this came across from the feedback as lots of people said they liked these bits. We also received some constructive criticism which will help us see which parts didn't go so well and how we could go about changing these parts to make them better so that we don't miss out on a bigger audience. Negative The music didn't go down when there was dialogue and the dialogue wasn't loud enough so you can't hear it that clear. There was a bit to much action happening and this kind off gives away to much we should have shown less off this and then it would of been a bigger surprise when people go to the cinema and watch our film.

Our questionnaire on the film poster and film magazine

Our three posters We did three different posters for each character in our trailer and this just gives us a better chance that people will see at least one of our posters. We got this idea from a film called Jackie brown as this is what they did when making there posters.

Class feed back on our posters Positive The tag line in our posters is big and bold and very easy to read and understand. This is effective because it allows the audience to see the important bits that we want them to see. The images used go along with the narrative of our trailer which works well and also hits at the genre. The images are also well shot, being clear and focused. The main title (Dead Mans Hand) is nice, big, and bold which is nice and easy for the audience to read and it's the first hint they will look at when looking at our posters. Negative In Ryan and Liam's posters both there faces are blurred which doesn't really help introduce the characters. Would have been better if there faces were clear like Beth's poster. The images don't jump out at you as soon as your see them. They don't drag your eyes in and make you want to look at every single piece of detail on the poster. When getting this negative feed back we did agree with some and we didn't with some but when you get negative feed back that shouldn't just stop you that should make you want to work harder to improve your work to make it the best and I think that's exactly what we did.