What have you learned through audience feedback?

Audience feedback is crucial in establishing overall opinions of the teaser trailer and how it is seen through the viewers perspective. We used a variety of methods to accumulate feedback to achieve a firm understanding on how well the teaser trailer is received.

The Media Screening

We held a media screening that allowed a variety of different people to view our teaser trailer and fill out an evaluation sheet about our trailer. The results were helpful in generating an understanding of how our trailer is viewed by others, and gave us the ability to see which elements of our teaser trailer were most successful. 

When asked the question 'What genre of film do you think the teaser is?' we received a large mixture of results, with a significant number unsure of the genre. We fully expected this as we were essentially creating our own genre and the ambiguity of the film storyline and genre was intentional to put emphasis of the 'tease' of the trailer. Despite this, the majority of the results generated were centred mainly around 'Psychological', 'Cult' and 'Thriller', meaning that the majority understand the general basis of the genre.

We asked our audience 'How well do you think the trailer fits the intended genre?' and we found the large majority felt it fitted 'very well'. Most people that felt it fitted very well answered the former question with answers such as 'Psychological Thriller' and 'psychological cult' meaning that our teaser fitted well with the idea of 'Psychological', a significant part of  our intended genre 'Technological Psychological Thriller'.

When asked the question 'What do you think the most effective element of the teaser is?' the majority answered 'camerawork/editing', we spent a large amount of time editing the teaser to achieve a fast-paced, brainwashing effect and this therefore proves that it was effective in reaching the audience in a significant way. The second most popular result was our use of 'sound' within our teaser trailer, an element we spent a large amount of time perfecting and researching, especially in achieving the most successful music to accompany our 'brainwashing' segment of our trailer. 

We asked the question 'Who do you think the target audience is for this teaser trailer?' and the most popular results that we generated were:

• Age: Teenagers
• Sex: Both genders but predominately male
• Interests: social networking, religion, culture, politics and cults

The feedback to this question supports what we wished to achieve in the creation of our teaser trailer. We wanted to make it applicable to all ages but predominately teenagers so therefore it is fully understandable why the majority felt it was aimed at teenagers due to the use of youthful techno music and modern technology The implicature that it is aimed at predominately male is understandable as there is a distinct masculine feel to the teaser that was intentional to put emphasis on the power of the cult. Through creating the teaser trailer, we wished to put emphasis on religious, cultural and political issues and the  feedback to this question proves that we were successful in doing so. 

The final question that we asked was 'What was the most memorable moment in the teaser trailer for you?' and our overall feedback was:

• combination of images in brainwashing segment
• Close up of the lips 
• Flashing Symbols and repetition of the phrase 'we are the answer'
• promotional speech

We spent a large amount of time collating the material for the brainwashing section of the teaser trailer and through doing this evaluation we have learned that we were successful in reaching the viewer in a memorable way. 

Overall through doing this media screening we were able to view the trailer from an outsiders perspective and learn how the trailer appears to others. We learned that through  leaving the exact definition of our genre open we were taking a risk, but we feel that the overall consensus of the genre was along the right lines and the inability to exactly define the genre was expected and understandable. Furthermore, the intended 'tease' of the trailer would not have been as effective had we incorporated more of a storyline to create a firm genre and therefore we were happy with our overall decision to keep it ambiguous. 

YouTube Feedback

We posted our teaser trailer on Youtube, which allowed us to get feedback from anybody who wished to view the trailer. Youtube capabilities allow people give feedback through 'likes' and comments and gives us a general overview of the typical age and gender of the average viewer. 

The feedback shows that the average viewers are females between the age of 13-17 and both genders between the age of 18-24. This was to be expected as it was our general target audience and proves that we were successful in reaching our intended audience.

Comments such as 'I want to join the resolution' and 'I just joined the resolution' are proof that we were successful in creating a promotional cult tool as well as a teaser trailer. This feedback is fully appreciated as it means that we have succeeded in our goal of creating something that blurs the line between a realistic promotional cult advertisement and a film trailer. 

Facebook Feedback

Facebook worked as a successful tool in receiving feedback from our target audience of teenagers and allowed us to circulate the trailer online. 

It was another outlet for us to access our client and allowed us to get some interesting feedback from people online. One of the main pieces of feedback that arose from our Facebook Feedback was the originality of what we have created and how we have challenged ourselves by not choosing the more popular genres such as horror.