2. The Importance Of Audience Feedback When
Producing an Ad Campaign
Advertising is really important when it comes to the success of a film. Without good
advertising, nobody will know that the film even exists and therefore wont go to
the cinema to watch it. Audience feedback is really key in this, so you know what
you are doing right or wrong. If you didn’t get audience feedback about a film, you
could continue unknowingly doing something that would put an audience off,
therefore limiting the profit you can make from the film.
I did a lot of research on the film, The Woman In Black. The Woman in Black was
crucial in the success of the recently back In business ‘Hammer Horror’ so it was key
that it was a success, as it could lead to the once rich and famous production
house, returning to its former glory. They put lots of money into advertising the
film, on the tv, radio, magazines, social media platforms and the web. Daniel
Radcliffe himself also put lots of time and effort into advertising by doing lots of
interviews. This is because The Woman In Black was his opportunity to get away
from Harry Potter, so he needed this film to be a success. They got lots of audience
feedback for this advertising, which was then put to use for the making and
advertising for the sequel to the Woman In Black: The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of
Death.
3. How I Gathered My Feedback?
(Embedded video below)
◦ I uploaded my draft trailer onto YouTube, and then had a viewing for my class and an
opportunity for them to give me their feedback, to allow me to improve my draft to make my
final product a better standard. We got 30 comments from people in the age range of my target
audience (17-21), some were positive and some were negative. Not only did I record the
comments from my class and put them on YouTube, I also had written feedback forms (see the
flipsnack below). Having these to reference to when continuing our editing of our final product
was really helpful as it allowed us to quickly and easily identify which specific elements of our
trailer needed fixing, and which ones to definitely keep.
◦ I gathered feedback for my other products, my poster and my magazine, by asking members of
my family (mum, dad and brother), and my neighbours. I used my ipad to show them my
products and they then filled in a feedback sheet which asked them their name, age and
occupation, what they liked about the products and also what they thought could improve
them.
4. Feedback Received from my Horror Film
Poster
The first comment that was made about my poster was not from someone In my
target audience. His age was 53, which is considerably older than who I want to
watch and enjoy my film. I am going to take his comments with a pinch of salt, as
he will obviously like and dislike different things to someone younger. He liked
the background on my poster, which was of some misty trees. The 49 year old
woman and the 17 year old male student also commented on how they liked this.
The dilated pupils of my model is another element that was commented on by
both the 19 year old female, and the 49 year old female. I am quite pleased with
this feedback from a range of ages as it widens my target audience. Other things
that my feedback showed people liked about my poser was the text for ‘Hollow
Graves’, the face standing out from the background, and the imaged I used.
Despite these positive comments, there were also some negative ones. The most
frequently occurring one was that the text at the bottom was too small. Although
I agree that the text was too small, if you look at other film posters, the ‘credits’
are very small, and are only meant to be read if you’re really looking. The 49 year
old woman commented that there was no age rating, which is correct. This is one
convention of a horror poster that I completely forgot to put on.
5. What would I change on my poster if I
could do it again?
If I could do my poster again, I think one of the first things I
would change would be the colours in the credits.
Although the white stands out really well from the
background, the red doesn’t as well. I would experiment
with colours including having all the words in white. Next I
would edit how I photoshopped my image. In my audience
feedback, one of my comments are that her knee’s look
abnormally large. Now that someone has commented on it,
I too see this and agree with it. I would probably use her
hair to cover her knees more to prevent this. I would
include an age rating as this is a convention that I
completely forgot to put onto this poster. I would also
consider using a model who has a different colour hair.
Although I think the black hair on a dark background looks
quite effective, I think that maybe ginger hair would look
really striking too, especially combined with the
background and large eyes.
6. Feedback Received from my Horror Magazine
Cover
There were several elements of my magazine cover that the people I asked thought
I had done well. One point that was made several times was the various elements of
the title. People ranging from the ages of 17-52 liked the font of the title, the way it
was in a film reel (which was suiting because the magazine is called ‘Reel’) and the
colour of it and how it stood out from the background. The older woman that
looked at my cover said that the puff advertising the free posters caught her eye.
The image was commented on to be appropriate and aesthetically pleasing by the
17 year old male, the 19 year old male, and the 49 year old female, showing that it
is appealing and appropriate for a wide range of ages. Some elements of my cover
that people didn’t like was the identity of my image. I had 2 comments saying they
weren’t sure who the model was. If my film was a proper one and had had a lot of
money spent on advertising, and hiring actors who were already famous, this would
not be an issue. But because of these financial issues I had, it was not clear as to
who the cover image was of. Another comment was the amount of cover lines I
had. I can see where this comment comes from, but I was attempting to follow the
conventions for a magazine cover, which is usually 4 or 5 cover lines, although I
could’ve perhaps broken this convention since the horror genre allows for this.
7. What would I change on my magazine
cover if I could do it again?
There are several elements of my magazine that I would change if I had
the chance to do it again. After studying the codes and conventions of
magazines in depth in AS media, there are several that I know I have
broken on this magazine cover. To start off with, I have only put 4 cover
lines, including my main one about the DPS. Although this does follow
conventions, my feedback told me that it looked too cramped, so I
would break conventions and have less writing on the cover. Next: the
image. I think I could’ve used a more appropriate image of my model,
as it is hard to tell that the film, Hollow Graves, is part of the horror
genre. This was commented on in my audience feedback, by a member
of my target audience. I don’t like the colours of the cover lines on the
left, so next time I would experiment with different colours to see what
stands out best from the background. I also have a few grammatical
issues on my cover, mainly the absence of apostrophes. There should be
ones in ‘Collector’s issue’ and ‘Cinema’s obsession’. This was easily
picked out during my feedback so is obviously an issue that caused my
cover to look rushed and unprofessional.
8. How I used feedback to produce my
final product?
See embedded Flipsnack Below
◦ When looking at the feedback I received for my final product, there were several obvious issues with
the trailer that needed fixing. The most obvious and highly commented on was the pacing of the
editing and music. It is conventional for horror films to start off slower and pick up pace throughout,
but ours stayed kind of slow. We fixed this issue by adding an extra layer of sound, like a heart beat to
help build suspense, and we also cut down some of our videos to make the cuts faster and it have a
general quicker pace. Another comment we received a lot was that people were confused by our
trailer, and couldn’t get a good enough grasp of what was going on to want to watch the film in full.
We targeted this by adding the ‘clinical’ shots of the nurse throughout the trailer, rather than just at
the end, and we also added some dialogue, which we were missing before hand. Our draft trailer also
featured a few ‘unnecessary shots’, which didn’t add to the plot or suspense of the trailer, but took up
valuable time that could've been used for better ones. We got rid of a lot of these and used the spare
time to add in the formerly mentioned shots of the nurse and the dialogue. The titles were another
issue we had in our trailer. They were too short so there wasn’t enough time to read them, and there
also wasn’t enough of them in the whole thing. This was an easy enough fix, we just made them
longer and added more of them in.
