Question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Website
During the production, we asked a few members of our target audience to have a look at how the website looked while still in progress. We divided their feedback into positive, negative aspects as well as improvements:
Strengths
- Professionally looking
- Nice colour scheme
- Style connotes the romantic drama theme
Weaknesses
- The left hand side does not include good use of space
- Colours are nice, but rather too bright for the genre
- Font style should match the font style of the poster and trailer
Improvements
From what these members of the audience have said, we needed to make quite a few changes on the website. We first changed the colour scheme, so that the colours used were the same once as on the posters and trailer; this enables us to get a more consistent link between the three media products. We made better use of space on the website by including more pictures and information in order to satisfy the needs of the audience and the font style was changed to link the website to the poster and the main product (film trailer).
After we made those changes, we asked for the audience feedback once more:
Strengths
- Includes all features that a website of a romantic drama film usually includes (pictures from the film, poster, plot summary)
- It looks realistic and professional
- The house style matches trailer's and poster's house style
- Fits its purpose of informing and promoting
- It doesn't use good use of space, as if split by a diagonal line, then the bottom half is quite empty and therefore not very appealing
- The plot summary is not big enough in terms of text size
- The images from different scenes of the trailer look rather squashed.
Poster
When we finished the first draft of the poster, we asked a few people (part of our target audience) to give us some feedback. From their feedback, we identified the strengths and weaknesses and drew out the improvements we could make:
Strengths
- Professional editing skills
- Colour scheme suits the theme of the poster
- Poster fits its purpose of promoting the film
Weaknesses
- The font type doesn't match the font used on the website and in the trailer
- The character in the foreground isn't big enough which makes the poster look unprofessional
Improvements
From this feedback, we understood and learnt that although the poster consisted of positive aspects, it also had some weaknesses which made the product less laudable. We therefore decided to go back to the draft and make the required changes: the font was changed to the same type as the font used for the title cards of the trailer and the one used on the website; this helped us link the three products in a more consistent and professional way. Also, we made the character in the foreground bigger for a more professional and realistic look.
After we made these changes, we asked our target audience to give us some final feedback:
Strengths
- The images are professionally edited and well blended, using Photoshop
- It includes all features of a romantic drama poster e.g. the pictures, the title, "based on a novel by", tag line and credits
- It's consistent with the rest of the products, including the colour scheme as well as the font and its colour
- It portrays the conventions of romantic dramas
Weaknesses
- The costumes worn by the characters aren't suitable to the background/setting (wearing jumpers and boots on a beach)
- The title doesn't stand out sufficiently
- Some of the textual information, mostly credits at the bottom of the page, aren't visible enough
From receiving the audience's feedback, we have realised the positives and negatives of our poster. Even though the poster looks quite professional and the images are blended in well, the textual information doesn't stand out enough which has a negative effect on the poster overall. We have included all of the conventions of a romantic drama poster as well as the genre itself, clearly portraying what we wanted. As the images were taken in a school setting, we have decided to change the background to a beach, however, we didn't think about how the costumes will affect our poster. Overall, there was more positive than negative comments from the audience, proving that we have done well when creating the poster.
Trailer
While still working on the editing of the trailer, we showed what we had so far to our target audience - they have left some feedback which again we divided into both positive and negative aspects, as well as what there was to improve.
Strengths
- Good use of media language, good enough to satisfy the needs of viewers
- Fades help break up different shots so that everyone knows they reflect different days
- Both indoor and outdoor scenes are included
Weaknesses
- More title cards need to be included
- Music should start right after the green information screen
- Some shots are slightly shaky
Improvements
Considering the audience identified the above weaknesses, we then went back to the trailer footage and made the necessary changes. We added more title cards in to break up the scenes and to give the audience a better insight of the narrative, as well as to link the main product to the ancillary ones. Also, the non-diegetic sound included was changed so that it started right after the green screen and we also reshot some of the shaky shots. However, there were still a few that could not be reshot due to unpredictable and unfortunate circumstances.
After making the changes that were required, we asked our target audience to leave some feedback for the post production:
Strengths
- It reveals the genre of the film
- It has a typical format of a trailer
- It has all the conventions and features a romantic drama trailer does
- It fits its purpose of promoting the actual film
- The narrative is typical to some extent, but has an excellent message
- Some shots are quite shaky
- Some scenes have car noises that stop the characters from being heard properly
- The end of trailer was to confusing
- Orange credits at the end were not matching the other title cards which were black
Some people didn't like the peachy coloured title cards at the end, because they thought they didn't match the black ones. Also, some of the viewers claimed that the car noises heard in some shots were too disrupting and that the "shaky" shots made the trailer come across as unprofessional.
Having said this, we learnt that in the future, to satisfy our target audience's needs, we'd need to ensure that there would be no unprofessionally shot scenes and that we stick to one colour for the title cards.
Conclusion
Overall, we believe that our products were a success, even with the improvements suggested by the audience. The main trailer as well as the poster and the website were linked together by the same colour scheme and the same font, making it look professional. The project is a successful marketing campaign and would persuade our target audience to go and see the full movie in cinemas or on DVD.
If we were to go back and change anything, we'd do more research into website and poster conventions, making sure that the smallest details are perfected, such as making better use of space and making sure that the writing stands out enough. We would also make sure that we choose the costumes correctly so that they match the background and possibly take better quality pictures. We would also use a microphone when recording voice in the trailer, however, we found it difficult to figure out how it works, but it didn't ruin the end effects after all.