A2 Media Evaluation- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Through audience feedback I have learned many people’s opinions and most of the time, I have edited my work on their comments/advice to improve my main product and ancillary texts. When I was first working on my poster I changed the film logo by adding extra black and red bits around the logo by colouring on Windows Paint (trying out both) as can be seen in these work in progress screenshots below (and on my final poster). I started off by using audiences to find out which they thought looked better, the red or the black version (at this time I had not yet completed a consistent background version), of which more people said the black version was better, although there was not a lot more support given to the black as opinions given to me were very mixed and still are. However 1 person commented against having the part around the logo at all, making the background completely consistent which I thought was worth trying out, so I tried doing the poster with the whole background featuring the style of the extra part of the logo and I think it’s looks good but not as effective or eye grabbing, so I ended up going with the black extra version. So from audience feedback I didn’t learn much due to many conflicting opinions, but I learnt that the least popular (and my least favourite of the 3 also) version of my poster was the red background version which was useful, so I did not do that version and although I think that the completed consistent black background version looks good, I am submitting the black/white logo extra version. Apart from this I also got useful feedback from people on the picture and the ‘coming soon’ being too small, so I made them bigger to make them stand out more, however making sure the ‘coming soon’ was not too big to draw all attention away from the title.
Audience feedback relating to my magazine: When my first draft of my magazine was finished (using Diamond as the picture but thinking all the text/conventions were complete) I showed it to people and I got audience feedback saying there was too much text on it (an example of a magazine with short text features is @ http://lilithlotr.ejwsites.net/articles/TotalFilm-Feb03/cover.jpg) , for example I changed my original feature “Reality: An exclusive interview with Halle Berry” to “Reality: Halle Berry Exclusive”. As the task was to make a realistic and good looking magazine, I shortened the text down as in the Halle Berry example I did. I also got feedback about the white background on my ‘Film Now’ logo and while most people didn’t comment on it, a few people said that it would look better if it was black like the background, so I did this using Microsoft Paint and changing the colour around the text so that it fitted in with the black background of the magazine (screenshots below of before & after) and I think that it is an improvement. I also made the “Film Now” logo bigger to stand out more, as it is important to highlight the title of the magazine, although this wasn’t suggested through audience feedback.
Audience feedback relating to the trailer: When I showed people the trailer, a few people said that the logo looked plain, so things were added such as blood dripping to make it more interesting and make it seem more belonging to the trailer and genre of horror. People also commented (at an incomplete stage) that the trailer needed music and this was added in the form of a rock song that Conor sent me, which I timed exactly so it got heavy as soon as the attacks started in the trailer. Before the song gets heavy there is a whispering vocal which I originally repeated until it started but people responded negatively to this saying it was too repetitive, which I completely agreed with and this and thought myself, with feedback confirming the need to change. So instead because the sound from the actual filming did not work (eg: Conor saying “go”) as the sound was always planned to have rock music over it, I created silence by bringing in one of my CD’s, importing the song by Windows Media Player, inserting it into Windows Movie Maker and copying the approx 1 second silence and placing it multiple times until where the rock music comes in. So to summarise, I learnt that the logo needed to look more horror and interesting and the confirmation that my original plan of repeating the whispering vocal was too repetitive.