What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

Trailer feedback:
I had a lot of feedback about my trailer. There were several things I needed to change in order for my trailer to be at the best it could be

Firstly, the other students had thought my inter-titles looked like they were made on clip art. This is  negative due to realising that it is unprofessional and it does not suit the demographic of 18 plus. The inter-titles originally swiped across the screen. There is also the use of a red shadow behind the titles. These were viewed as 'clip art' which suggests it does not look professional.

However, as a group, we liked the font we used as well as the red shadow behind. We kept this the same because it is stereotypical for the colour red and white to be seen on fonts in the thriller genre. On the other hand, we decided to change the transition used on it. Instead of the text sliding, we put a zoom effect on which is a better way to draw the audience in.

·    Another thing we needed to improve on was the pace of the shot. It had been suggested to increase the pace after 47 seconds: This is because the end shots did not flow with the non-diegetic music. The cuts needed to be faster to be at the same pace as the music. This will make it more like a trailer and more interesting and 'thrilling'. We decided to increase the speed on the end shots such as the close up of the knife and the long-shot of Ryan pacing around his room. This is because this scene is dramatic and has the most action in. Therefore we sped this scene up due to it being stereotypical for a trailer.

·    It was also suggested to leave the close-up on Ryan's eyes for longer due to this shot being too fast for the audience to see. Leaving it on for a second or two longer will imply he is shocked and the audience will be able to see the shot clearly.
     
     This change was successful due to the audience having enough time to understand what is happening during the trailer. It also looks more professional as before hand, it looked more rushed when the extreme close up was on for a split second.

      Lowering the music volumes in the therapy room was another improvement. The non-diegetic music was too loud in the therapy room and the audience struggled to hear what was being said in the shot reverse shot. We decided to turn the non-diegetic music down so the audience could hear what is going n during the conversation and they will understand the narrative more.

·    We also needed to make the narrative clearer. By doing this, we needed to change the intertitle 'Three stages'. We deleted this and added a new intertitle which was 'A corrupt childhood'. This is seen as successful because this gives the audience background information and makes the narrative clearer.

·    We also changed the lighting in the therapy room. It was suggested that this scene was too light and we needed to make it low key to make the audience feel weary about the Dr. Going to therapy is not a happy thing.
     
     Overall, the changes made to the trailer have been successful due to the shots flowing better with the non-diegetic music, the narrative is more clear through the use of inter-titles and there are more stereotypical conventions used such as low key lighting and fast paced editing.

Poster feedback:
Due to my poster not being properly finished, I had little negative feedback given back. In a way, not having a large amount of feedback is difficult to work with due to not knowing how to improve and seeing my strengths and weaknesses. However, I had many problems with my poster. I had so many ideas and the ones I went ahead with did not turn out the way I had planned.

One piece of feedback I received was to add more information such as adding reviews. This is due to breaking up the dark background and also reviews being a stereotypical convention on a poster.

The second improvement was to add the other photo I was going to use. However, due to the images of Ryan and Glen, the facial proportions did not fit. Placing the two images next to each other like the way I planned did not look professional nor did it look right. Therefore I decided to change the layout a bit by moving the images to the sides of the page instead of the centre. After this, I then added in the reviews at the top of the poster as this is a stereotypical place to view them.

Magazine cover feedback:
There were several things I needed to improve on my magazine front cover. For example, the masthead I created was described as 'army style'. This is not appropriate for a magazine nor a thriller type magazine. Therefore, I changed the font into something similar due to the fact I wanted my masthead to be thick and bold. This also made it easier to fit the 'Films' part into the masthead. The font I changed it to was 'Rockwell Extra Bold' on Adobe Photoshop.

It was also suggested that I should remove the speech bubble. This is because it made my magazine counter typical due to this feature looking like it belonged on a cartoon magazine. It also helped balance the information on both sides of the magazine. It had also been noted that the yellow star I added on the competition logo looked 'odd'. The colour yellow does not associate with thrillers but also, it did not match my colour scheme of black, red and white. I have learnt that every detail counts when producing a magazine.

Another thing I made changes to was the main mid-shot. This was because the image was too high up on the page. By lowering the mid-shot, the audience will be able to see it more clearly, but also the magazine is more spread out instead of all the information being really close to each other. This makes the reader feel more at ease because they are able to see everything easier when its spaced out.

There were also a minority of comments on the black and white image used on the left side of the magazine. I thought this was effective due to a range of shots being used but also it was a shot-reverse-shot image from the trailer which I thought was appropriate when advertising the trailer. However, the image did not fit in this place therefore I deleted it. This then meant I could enlarge the text and move it around more. This makes it easier for the audience to read but also helps balance both sides of the magazine which is a stereotypical convention.