Q3. What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

Q3. What have you learnt from the audience feedback?
Throughout the making process of my film and ancillary products I place importance on what
my audience expected from my movie and what they wanted it look and feel like. So I
provided my target audience with updates on the making stages of my products and gave
them the chance to offer me some feedback and advice regarding what I had done so far
and what I could do to improve and appeal more to their taste. I did this by posting the
different versions of my trailer onto Facebook each time there was a new modification. When
the first version of my trailer was posted a person expressed their excitement to watching the
entire film asking when the full movie would be finished so that they could see if it was as
scary as it sounded. This allowed me to see that I was in the right path to create a radio
trailer that reflected the film genre and provoked some kind of emotion from the listener, but I
still needed advice regarding what else I could add to the trailer, especially since it wasn’t
the final product. So I was very happy to hear an advice from another member of my target
audience group who told me that I should add more sound effects and since the trailer would
sound interesting with at least two background music since it was the same music
throughout the whole trailer, maybe something slower to build up tension at the end before
the scream. At this stage I had already thought about adding more sound effects to my
trailer, however I still needed to find other websites where I could download more royalty free
music, since I couldn’t find any sound effects that complimented my film on the Soundbible
website. Despite this her advice was still useful to me because she suggested something I
had previously not thought about which was to add different background music. I took her
advice and put it into action once I had found more music. The end result was much better
than it was originally because the background music complimented the seriousness of the
voiceover creating tension, like she said had said it would, and making my trailer sound
more eerie.
I also kept my audience updated by arranging times during lunch and after school when they
could come in and watch what I had edited so far. The first time I showed my film to a
member of my target audience was during the stage when me and my partner had not put
our scenes together http://a2mediaerica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/feedback-from-
classmate.html .Luckily she was still able to grasp the main concept of the film and didn’t feel
confused with the fact that our scenes were separated. This allowed her to provide me with
some useful feedback regarding the scenes we both had edited. One of the things she
thought we could improve was the dialogue between the three friends at the start of the DVD
footage. She felt that the dialogue didn’t flow well because it looked as if the actors “were
waiting for someone to say something” [1:05-2:16]. This was something both me and Anika

took notice of as well but we decided not to redo the scenes since it would be hard to gather
all of the actors together again, especially since one of them was an external student. I also
found that it would be hard for them to re-enact the same scenes again using the same
dialogue since it was originally improvised. Some of the emotions might be lost since they
said things on impulse as a reaction to what the other person had said instead of waiting for
the right time to say a prepared line and thinking about how they should say it. Another
problem she identified was during the scenes were Rebecca finds her friend’s torch in the
bushes [2:55-3:00]. She couldn’t see them clearly which caused her to wonder why the
protagonist was screaming. I tried to fix this problem using the spotlight effect on FinalCut,
however it didn’t look natural since it wasn’t consistent with the rest of the footage recorded
by Rebecca, and this made the overall concept of found footage lose impact. In addition
other members of my target audience said that this scene was fine and that they could see
the torch so I decided leave the shot as it was originally.
However despite these suggestions her overall reaction to the film was very positive since
she thought it was “quite scary”. She identified certain aspects of my film which she thought
worked well such as The Blair Witch Project feel given off by the hand-held camera
technique and camcorder effect applied to the DVD footage. This allows me to see that I was
able to successfully incorporate intertextuality into my film in order to make it more appealing
to our target audience and TBWP fans since she was able to see the references we made to
the film. She also enjoyed the fact that the killer’s identity remains hidden and felt that it was
an intriguing aspect of my film. It is important to see that my film was able to provoke this
kind of reaction from a member of my target audience because it shows that so far my film
has been able to engage my audience despite it not being finished yet.
After receiving the feedback from the previous audience member, I continued to edit my film
after joining them together. After I had finished putting them together and adding some
sounds onto my film, I decided to gain some more feedback from my audience in order to
see whether I had chosen the right sound effects to work with so far
http://a2mediaerica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/feedback-audience.html . This audience member
told me that she really enjoy the sound effect applied to the scene where the antagonist
turns away from the camera, since it worked really well [3:41-3:45]. This allowed me to see
that I chose the right sound to use in order to reflect the role of the character and create
tension as it neared the end of the film. Furthermore she also identified the scene where
Rebecca is being watched a successful since it showed "stalker-ish signs [3:31-3:40]. This
shows that I was able to successfully include the voyeurism theory into my film by using the
POV shot, since stalker-ish behaviour also falls under the same category. However despite
her positive feedback I found that her constructive criticism was much more useful to me
especially during this stage of adding sounds to my film. She advised me make the last
killing scene more dramatic because it wasn’t dramatic enough [6:31-6:32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdrrI2Hwix4 ]. After watching both killing scenes again I
found that the dragging scenes had a greater impact on the audience because of the
powerful scream at the end. So I began to look for additional sound effects that I can add to
this scene in order to make it more impactful.
Another useful advice I received was in relation to the audio during the second killing scene.
I was given the suggestion to rerecord the audio for my last killing scene since it was a very
significant shot in my film, especially because it is where the identity of the villain is finally
revealed to the audience, who have become curious since the first appearance of the villain

in the film. This way the dialogue in the scene would be much clearer for the audience and it
would be able to convey its meaning successfully. However after showing the scene with the
new audio to another member of my target audience they expressed their preferences over
the previous audio which I enhanced using the voice enhance option in FinalCut because
they felt that the new audio was “too much” [6:10-6:26]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJWz_QK8mak . So I decided to use the original sound
instead.
In addition to the feedback I received from my target audience, I also had the chance to gain
some useful advice and suggestions from a film practitioner
http://a2mediaerica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/feedback-film-practitioner.html . One of the
suggestions he made was for us to use less zooms and more sudden cuts in order to make
the shot seem more awkward and create more impact, an example of where we could use
this is during the scene where the camera zooms onto the opened DVD case in Rebecca’s
hand [0:49-0:53] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-4glTjDEE However after having to
change the method used to watch the DVD since the playstation which was originally being
used broke, we no longer needed to add this awkward cut since we used a combination of a
mid-shot and close up shot for the new scenes instead [1:06-1:1:26]. An additional
suggestion he gave was to remove the 50s TV and static effect from the scene taking place
outside the DVD and only using them in the footage of the DVD. After thinking about his
suggestion I realised it only made sense to use it in the DVD scenes since it enhanced the
aspect of faulty and damaged found footage in my film. This change also allowed my scenes
to flow better especially in the scenes where Rebecca is walking in the house [0:40 -0:58]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Kwz9ZpsYU .
After finally completing my film, me and my partner Anika began to distribute it to our target
audience in order to receive feedback and gain more YouTube views.

After reading the different responses given on facebook I was able to see how involved my
audience members felt with the film to the point where it even made them “Jump” and
“scared”. Some people were even reminded of other films that also incorporate the handheld
camera technique and recommended them to each other such as The Chronicle and
Jeopardy, which shows that I was able to successfully appeal to those who enjoy the hand-
held camera technique, which is a trend amongst horror films and has now began to be used
by other genres as well. However the most useful and interesting feedback I received was
from the person on the right. This is probably because she possessed some knowledge of
media and the horror film genre, which allowed her to spot certain convections that were
included in my film and suggest some improvements in relation to them. For example she
suggested that we could have added more close ups, which is something we initially had
planned to do but decided not to in order to challenge conventions. Furthermore she had a
lot to say about my film and noticed details that others didn’t pay much attention to, which
shows how engaged she was with the movie and how much she enjoyed it. I was glad to see
that she spotted the irony at the start of the film when the main character is reading the
Death note comic, since it was
something I suggested. However this
line is probably my favourite comment
my audience has made “it’s a plot I
haven’t really scene before, props to
you”, since it is really hard to be original
and try not to be influenced too much by
existing products, so I was glad that my
film offered her something new and
fresh.
In addition to Facebook, my film link
was also shared on instagram were we
received a total of 42 likes and counting.
The overall response was very positive;
they really enjoyed the film and the “creepy location”.
Compared to my film and trailer, my poster only received feedback after it was done. But this
time I used Gmail. This audience member was nice enough to share her thought on the final
trailer as well as the poster, which were both very positive.

Poster: Trailer:
-Poster screams “horror” through -Clear, concise and pleasing to the ear.
the use of colours. -Very well done.
-Includes the key elements of the film. -Sound effects create a spooky
-Colour of tag-line allows it to stand out. atmosphere.
-Tag-line at the end, makes it more
memorable.
-Very professional voiceover.
She also offered some improvements that I could have made in my movie poster such as
making the tagline bigger and using more interesting fonts. After looking back at my poster I
found that I could indeed increase the size of the tag-line without it getting in the way of the
images beneath it. It would also make more sense especially since the directors names are
made larger than the actual tagline which in this case is more important since we are not
very well known, so the tag-line would be more effective when attracting the public’s
attention. However in reference to font used I believe that the choice of font is fine, since the
most important word in the poster is the movie title, if the other words also had effects and
fancy fonts the focus would be taken away from the film’s title.

Q3. What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

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Q3. What have you learnt from the audience feedback?