Production: Audience Feedback (Ms Begum)

Audience Feedback & Its Importance

Audience feedback is when people who have watched a film of some kind leave their comments behind which can be seen as constructive criticism. Audience feedback can be both positive or constructive depending on their view of the film.
Audience feedback is seen as very important as the feedback the production receives from the audience will then allow them to see what they have done well in the film for example, use of lighting. In addition, this also outlines the area's they think the film production could make some changes to for example, the characters representation. This then allows the film production to make the film better whilst satisfying their target audience.

Before the actual film production started me and my group all had to create our own individual questionnaire which would gather information for us on what our target audience want to see in our thriller film. The information gathered would then allow us to target our audiences specific request in order keep our audience happy while using their feedback to help make our film as conventional and enjoyable as can be. I found the questionnaire very useful as the results I received from my audiences feedback would be very beneficial towards my group as we will then get an idea of what our target audience want to see, how their request will contribute towards making our film a conventional thriller production and this will also allow us to start thinking about how we'll give them what they want.

A target audience is a group of people who a film specifically targets, this is due to either their age or gender. The target audience for my thriller production are young teenagers around age of 15 as they will be able to relate themselves to the film and also the content in which my film contains may be seen as harmful and disturbing to younger viewers. My decision on the thriller films age certificate was mostly due to the research I carried out around age certificate and film censorship. From my research I was able to have a better understanding of film censorship & age certificate as it allowed me to learn about all the different contents in a film which decides upon its age certificate and also what contents can also see a film get banned or removed from the cinema. This then allowed me and my group to make careful planning on the scenes were going to do as we want them to safe for people to watch.

In the examples below I will be providing 3 positive comments about my thriller production which I received from my target audience:

Roy Aged 17: Hey guys, nice thriller trailer, I loved the way you guys used the quick editing near the end of the trailer. It reminded me a lot of my thriller film and my film influence sinister. :)

• This comment showed me and my group that our decision to add fast pace editing near the end of our thriller film was a good idea as it was obviously effective and it was able to appeal to our target audience.

Lucy Aged 19: This has to be up there with one of the best thriller films I've seen. I'm Sure you got a very good mark for this! I particularly liked the way lighting was exploited in your film, I loved the way the lighting got darker and darker and the sound good faster and faster. Left me on my toes! Literally :p LOL xx

• This comment I received from Xavier made me see and feel better about of decision of using both effective lighting and sound at the same time to create tension and suspense amongst my audience. I also didn't think anyone will realise how dark my scenes will slowly get as the film goes on. This was done as it represented the mood of the scene.

Xavier Aged 21: Well firstly, your actors were of top class! and secondly, i thought the use of iconography and quick editing at the start of the film was very good as it made me forget to click to watch another video.

• I thought this was a very positive comment as it allowed myself and my production crew to see how the use of fast editing at the start of our film allowed our audience to start asking questions and entices them into wanting to watch more. The iconography bob was talking about was probably the bag which was used to cover one of our victims head.

Overall: I thought the positive comments were very beneficial to my group as it allowed us to see where we had done well and how effective was it. In addition, the comments also allowed us to see whether our intentions of using certain lighting, editing elements had an effect on the audience and was their response something of what he had hope to achieve.

In the examples below I will be providing 3 Negative comments about my thriller production which I received from my target audience:

Laura Aged 15: This was overall a good thriller production as i felt it contained all the conventional thriller elements in it. However, i thought that the soundtrack did not really match with the scenes and maybe needed a bit of adjustments.

• Whilst giving a few positive mentions I liked the fact that Laura pointed out of she felt our soundtrack didn't really go with our scenes as we can now look back at it and test a variety of different sounds to see how we could of changed it.

Rachel Aged 16: This thriller production was quite good, however, i feel let down as the start of the film looked very good and it grabbed me and my friends attention but as we kept watching it, the more and more the floor was suddenly become interesting. I thought you could of done with a extra scare scene in order to keep your viewers interested and scare them unexpectedly.

• Although this comment was very negative and positive at the same time and it benefited my group as we then went back and looked at the scenes we used and thought of different ways we could of made them better or even the different potential scenes we could of used.

Scott Aged 18: Is it me or was this just solely about the father and not the mother and kids? Don't me wrong this was a great film production but myself and I'm sure others would of liked to see more of an involvement of the other characters.

• I totally agreed with this comment as me and my group all thought the same. There wasn't enough involvement of the other characters as they both was almost equally as important as the father.

Overall: I thought the criticisms i received were also predictable as i myself was able to pick out those weak area's of my film. This benefited me as I now know what to do in order to grab and keep my audiences attention. This also allowed me to next time think outside the box and send a copy of my completed film to 5 or so people in my target audience age range and see what constructive criticism they could comment on.

My Comments about my thriller film:

I Believe i have created a very successful thriller film, This is because i believe i exploited the use of micro-elements very well and according to my positive comments my viewers all noticed it  as they all mentioned it in their comments and also they were able to appeal to it. 

I choice of characters was very good as they both acted at a professional standard which added that little bit of quality to my thriller film. In addition, even during a constructive comment one of my viewers noticed and complemented my actors.

Although, to improve as one of my viewers pointed out to me, the scene flow could of been improved and if i cold go back and improve this I believe this would get a very positive response from my target audience.

Conclusion:

From my audiences feedback I believe me and my group can give ourselves a pat on our back as the thriller film was a great success. I believe the fact that even when our viewers were commenting on the bad side of our film they still were all able to talk about atleast one big significant positive side. This showed us that our film was effective, it allowed us to see our audiences response and also it was able to appeal to them.