What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Trailer Feedback; 

In order to gain a variety of feedback on our trailer, we decided to publish it on Facebook. This is a huge social media platform, where friends and family can leave comments about our work which will allow us to make adjustments as necessary in order to increase professionalism. Once posted we received a lot of positive feedback, with people commenting on how much they enjoyed watching it. However, by doing this we also found that family and friends seemed to lack feedback, so in order to gain more constructive improvements we created questionnaires to hand out to people in our class and year.

Positive feedback;

• Good portrayal of characters 
• Thrilling plot 
• Love the ambiguous shot of the knife 
• Effective the plot twist 
• "Left me wanting to watch the whole film"
• Successfully builds in pace and tension during the second half of the trailer

Negative feedback;

• Change the colour of the word love to red - 'when love turns sour' to represent the danger and romance elements reflected in your trailer
• Maybe change the music at the start of the trailer - potentially too classical?
• Speed up the beginning of the trailer. Although I like the pace of editing of what it represents, it may be too misleading of the genre.
• Add in more sound effects to create effective layered sound which is seen in many trailers. 

Change 1
The first change that I made to my trailer was in reference to the first piece of feedback we received. By changing the colour of the word 'love' in 'when love turns sour', it allowed us to have deeper connotations to this inter title. Red is commonly used to connote love, danger and blood, which all can be applied to my trailer at once. The love connotation is in reference to the love that the two characters share throughout the first quarter of my trailer, the danger connotation suggests that love is what puts the female protagonist in danger and finally the blood connotation could link to the ambiguous image of the knife at the end, emphasising the enigma code. Although this was a small change we felt that it was effective at adding a deeper level of meaning to our text, whilst also remaining stereotypical of the thriller genre.



Change 2
The next change that we made to our trailer was making the letters in 'Fixation' more organised and adding an effect on this. We started by spacing out each letter perfectly then organising them in a zig-zag pattern. We felt that, after watching back over our trailer, this area look unorganised and unprofessional, therefore it became one of our improvements as this is a very significant part of trailers (the title). After completing this improvement, it made the title more legible and more similar to a real thriller trailer. The effect that we added on the text was a 'slash slide' effect, which made the text disappear in diagonal bars. Although not necessarily seen in many thriller trailers, we felt that it increased the impact of our title and left the audience wondering the connotations of this. The slashed effect suggests the way in which time is running out for the female protagonist and how little by little the male protagonist is gaining more and more control of her life.

Change 3
Music was a huge issue for us, as we struggled to find a piece that reflected the romantic tone at the start of the trailer but also didn't over-power the thriller genre throughout the rest. The first piece of music that we chose in our second draft was too classical and made the trailer seem slower in pace than it actually was. We changed the sound to 'pink horizon' from the YouTube playlist, although this ha similar connotations to the previous piece it is slightly fast in pace and less classical sounding, therefore more effective in our trailer.

Change 4
The last change that we made was shortening the clips down at the start of the trailer and separating these with inter titles. Our trailer is heavily inspired by the 'Red Eye' trailer and after re-watching this we noticed that 3-4 inter titles were included at the start (the more slow paced section) in order to briefly tell the story and create a direct link to the rest of the trailer. By following a similar idea, we were able to reduce the romantic tones in our trailer and make it more stereotypical of the thriller genre, therefore increasing its professionalism. In the inter titles we made sure to put some of the words in red in order to follow a similar pattern and connotations to the inter title 'when love turns sour'.

Poster Feedback;
In order to gain feedback on my first draft of my poster, I want around my class asking for positives and negatives on the overall effect.

Positive feedback;

• 'I love how you merged the three photos together. its really effective'
• effective tagline 
• main image is very effective, colour scheme is also simple but effective as it draws the audiences attention.
• good placement and overall effect
• simplistic but effective
• excellent use of colour

Negative feedback;

• Possibly change the font of 'fixation'
• separate release date from credit block
• October looks like its part of the billing block
• billing block is too redundant and also where is the rating and who said the quote?
• put the quote on line line and include source 
• make title a fraction smaller and move down slightly

Change 1 
After receiving feedback, I decided that I didn't like the way the top of my poster looked. I felt like it looked quite untidy with random gaps. In order to correct this I moved the rating above the acts names and also made it smaller in order to fit in this area. I also noticed that there was no source of the review so decided to include Empire Magazine as this is a well known film magazine, so by giving my film a 5 star rating would attract a large audience as their opinion is highly respected. Using the 'before I go to sleep' poster as my inspiration I decided to keep the placement of the actors names however, in order to tie in the colour scheme more, I changed their last name to the same red colour running throughout the rest of the poster.

Change 2 
My second change involved changing the font of the title to match the slogan and moving these down slightly. Multiple people felt that the previous font was not actually conventional of a thriller film as similar is not seen in other trailers or posters. After further research I decided this was the case and therefore changed my font to a more simplistic font, similar to the one seen on the 'before I go to sleep trailer'. I felt like this was a very important change as the title of the film is one of the main selling point to audiences, therefore if it is unclear or in an unappealing font it would be less effective. After changing the font I feel like my poster looks more professional and therefore effective, showing that audience feedback was essential in enabling me to create the best poster possible.

Change 3 
The final comments I received were to do with the billing block. Some said it looked too redundant whereas others didn't appreciate the placement of the release date. After receiving this feedback I decided to move the release date to the left hand side filling that gap and include the production company logo and social media pages on the right hand side to fill the other gap. I felt that although it wasn't necessarily stated, I should include social media as this would attract my target audience more as they are within the age bracket (15-18) who are stereotypically known for always being on it. I also decided to place the website under neither the billing block where the release date once was to result in a cleaner finish. Although it wasn't stated in my feedback again, I decided to change the font of the release date to a more simplistic one as I felt that it was too distracting before. However, in order to highlight its importance still, I put it in the same red font as other parts of my poster.

final poster

Magazine Feedback;

In order to gain feedback on this product, I once again asked my class for both positive features and things to improve on.

Positive feedback;

• Love the mast head, very clear link to the idea of film
• Good use of colour across the magazine 
• Good placement
• Good composition 
• Background is effective

Negative feedback;

• Move the title to the centre with the tagline, possibly add more cover lines to fill up empty space at the sides and bottom and possibly add a skyline
• Add more cover lines 
• Reduce the size of the cover lines on the right
• Move skyline down and add a block of white above the title with films titles there, lighten background too
• Enlarge main image

Change 1

The first change that I made to my magazine front cover was moving the tagline further down the page to make room for a skyline at the top of my magazine. I added a strip of white in order to lighten the overall poster and included film titles of new films coming in 2018. This is a common feature seen on many film magazines, so by including this allowed me to increase the professionalism of my magazine cover. By providing the audience with three short film titles that are new to 2018 allows them to catch their attention and draw them into reading the magazine in order to find out more. 

Change 2

The second change I made was adding in more cover lines as this was a common improvement to my first draft. I already felt as though my magazine was too plain, however I was looking for feedback as to where to place more things. After receiving the feedback above, it allowed me to understand other people's views on the layout and enabled me to make more room for cover lines etc. The first step in doing so was to reduce the size of my existing cover lines, this allowed me to include more of these above and also looked more proportionate to the whole magazine. I also decided to enlarge the main image as there was a lot of unnecessary image on display, enlarging this enables the audience to clearly see the vulnerable and domineering facial expressions of the characters as well as making the protagonists direct mode of address more effective. By enlarging the image I also found that a space had been freed on the right hand side of the page. Here, I placed the 'WIN! Premier tickets inside!', which gave a more balanced look the the magazine cover. 

Change 3

My third change was to 'clean up' the look of the bottom of the cover and also reduce the amount of empty space. Although, I wanted to keep my cover quite simplistic and not clutter it too much by making it seem to busy, I felt that it was important to fill up some of the space like my feedback suggested. In order to do this I made one of the featuring film pictures more square as there was a lot of unnecessary space on it. I then moved this opposite the other featuring picture which once again balanced the overall look of my cover. I then made the 'Behind the scenes..' section smaller and spread it out across the whole of the bottom of the page. By doing this it added a level of symmetry with the skyline at the top of the cover. Finally, I added '2017 film awards', due to the fact this cover is released early 2018, audiences would be interested to find out an overview of what films won which awards in 2017. By putting the 2017 in the same shade of red as the rest of the page in draws the audiences attention to this section and makes them what to read the magazine to find out more on this.

Change 4 

The last change I made to the magazine front cover was brightening up the background image as my feedback suggested. This enabled the coloured font to pop more, attracting the audiences attention further. I also felt like this made the main image clearer, allowing the audiences to recognise these actors/characters easier from my other products and therefore appeal to my target audience more. 

final magazine cover