What HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
I conducted multiple surveys and open discussions during my stages in research and particularly development stages, to understand conventions so to meet the necessary requirements of things or to even go to challenge such conventions depending the variable. Feedback was given for trailer, magazine front cover, poster and film website. Here is how I interpreted this feedback and used it to develop my products:
Music Survey
From my music survey, I have learnt the expected generic conventions of music soundtracks for trailers by people through this digital online audience feedback. Typically most of the time I found it was often confirming what I had discovered in the research for the music. I wanted to hone my survey on the main aspects of questions on genre of music, type of instruments and at which points would people expect to see the fluctuation of change in tempo and speed for the music in a superhero psychological thriller trailer.
Initially, prior to this in ‘Trailer research analysis 1-15’ there was a range of when music soundtracks started and I questioned this in this survey along with when the soundtrack should end. In this collation of information in Question 1 50% of respondents identified that they expected our soundtrack to commence when company logos appeared and (Question 2) 60% majority chose the release date (final slide) to be the conventional pivot point for an ending. We applied this information exactly we needed this to follow the conventions exactly so to create a close representation of the realistic trailer.
In regards to genre of music, our trailer posed a problem being that we had the unconventional hybrid genres of superhero and psychological thriller, this meant we had a more difficult task of collaborating the soundtrack to match our genre and action for the trailer. Although, beforehand of this survey and research I had the assumption of rock potentially being a strong candidate for the main theme of our trailer – to see if this was valid I asked what people would anticipate or the genre of music and I received a diverse range of response over the matter, however majority confirmed rock as the best suit with minors being pop, metal, alternative and DubStep. Yet, I learnt that from what knowledge I gained in ‘Music Research Prezi’ was that it evidenced rock as a compelling utilisation of tool by composers and producers in such films. Particularly, in ‘Thor Ragnorak’ with ‘Immigrant’ song, ‘Iron Man’ with AC DC ‘Back in Black’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ with ‘Hooked on a Feeling.’ Each of these blockbuster superhero movies used rock music as a vehicle for commentary or reflecting aspects of violence, cultural references and emotions or feelings. This emphasised that it would have been ignorant for us not to actively use rock genre music for our own advantage too. I have talked further about this within my ‘Use’ sub-page of question 1. Though, the other options people was contradictory of my expectations from what I had discovered in music as it was somewhat contradictory of the main overarching motif of music for superhero films as mentioned; this is why I deliberated to neglect these other options people chose for they did not collaborate or seem valid. Overall, this choice was strategical advantageous in us easily reflecting the state of mind that the protagonist Clary was in as we were able to induce loops in Garage Band that perhaps were discordant or some being powerful to show the conflict in this mental patients mind which is in constant battle of attempting to define or make out what is reality or dream to her.
A soundtrack for a trailer also concerns with ambient sounds, and dependent on the trailer can be chosen to reject ambient sounds altogether and have artificial sounds altogether. It was stated that 100% of respondents strongly argued the pressing role this type of sound played in a trailer. Ambient sounds are to establish location and setting typically, however we chose together that we would reject this by incorporating only ‘artificial’ sounds because we needed the audience to be able to relate to our protagonist which would have been difficult to do so as we needed to forcefully disorientate the consumers of our trailer – disrupting verisimilitude we discovered would be the foundation of disorientating and therefore such confusion would be similar to that of Clary’s so they could understand the protagonist. Quietness of locations and unnatural situations unsettles audiences. Consequently, from this inferred information from this feedback we could point out the issues of violent groups and there oppression against minorities effectively harming these people.
Postmodern trailers somewhat differ in regards to narrative due to they do not necessarily have a strict form to follow as they are not bound – this being the whole point of postmodernism. We had to ask in this case, ‘When do you expect the music to climax?’ I received a wide range of views in the allowance to give people opportunity to select more than one different occasion, many agreed that action and cliff hangers were such occasions but this did not include for many an emotional scene. Only one person selected an emotional scene which strongly represented that during our what ‘portrait scene’ of Clary screaming, laughing and smiling we should not of had any music at all. From this we actively went along with this convention and so used non-diegetic whispers instead because it is to show the mental health of Clary with loads of voices in her head.
Poster Audience Feedback
During production of my poster on Photoshop CS6 I wanted to learn how people felt about four options of poster main image editing filter colour, brightness and glow to do with the energy ball that I formed. The purpose of this poster was to be enigmatic, utilising the enigma codes in regards to offer a commentary on what Clary the protagonist’s powers would convey. I wanted to learn therefore what peoples preference was from these four different options which can be seen to the right and on ‘Poster Development’ PowerPoint of what they thought was best to achieve this enigmatic look matching my overarching theme of our film / trailer. Response was… 70% chose the second option as they stated that “there was an equal balance of white-blue colour to red.” This mass collective response to option 2 made me realise how it opened up the poster to have an ambiguous semantic (Barthes) code theory of connotative meanings of the offering of red being of blood, violence, power, and death to that of the blue which can deem to connote water – rejuvenation, rebirth and vitality. This can mean that the poster can be interpreted by people in two ways, that it offers Censors point of view that the powers present Clary negatively suggesting she will destruct everything around her. Whereas, on the other hand some can presume that the ball of energy fact against a dark coloured background is illuminating and therefore guiding the way is conveying a symbol of hope in which the blue, white emits particularly with the strong white projecting innocence of this power contrasting the red. The audience feedback here was in essence a ground breaking in me also attaining to maintain this constant offer of two perspectives that can be seen in all my productions of ancillaries to collaborate my trailer.
Website Feedback
Our final feedback we received from audience was the on the joint website we created for our film ‘The Suppressed.’ In terms of how went about conducting this audience feedback was more open for a verbal discussion that allowed a wider scope of criticism as we queried whether if the ‘Buy Now’ strip actually worked along with the Homepage or if it was too big and bold, yet we had around 80% who said they preferred it to be bigger than smaller for being “more eye catching” in its clear visibility and harshness against the background helps to separate and fill up what they believed would have been a jarring space otherwise. For one of our pages general response was that some writing legibility was not being maximised to what it could have been and we took this into account from then on learning to always make sure we use vibrant colours like yellow when against a background like ours.
Magazine Front Cover Feedback
Lastly, this final ancillary task I investigated into using audience feedback as a step-by-step development almost during the editing of my base image while using the software Photoshop CS6 to the magazine front cover. I used this audience feedback as a means to learn not just the conventions of the Empire magazine but also how to make it best to interconnect with my whole production for A2. For the magazine I was applying a glitch effect which in survey’s people illustrated that in regards to adding fragmentation of the picture it should not be included upon the face of the protagonist but on the background alone. This was compelling as it could have been inferred that by having the glitch on Clary’s face if looked with a connotative semantic theory would of perhaps conveyed that her powers would be the glitch: this was not something that I intended to portray as the whole point is to leave the questions debating and curious with these essential half clues to the content of the films ending. So forth I adopted glitches on the rim / outline of the subjects body to portray that the background so location is more of the glitch which we strongly did however present in our trailer to force people to think. Also, I gathered collation of feedback from the entire percentage of respondents that the protagonist needed to be a sharp clear image to meet Empire’s conventional stereotypical formats for their base images. I hence went to add an additional layer by which I could layer up so that the protagonist could be in a sharp high resolution shot.
Rough Cut Feedback
From rough cut feedback of our trailer we were able to ask more direct questions, this meant we learnt whether if specific editing or titles was thought suited as we wanted to achieve full authenticity. Within our survey we first asked whether if they believed our black and white filter for hospital scenes worked to create an isolating and ominous atmosphere: 100% agreed it did demonstrating that the aim of this editing that we had planned for was successful and laid out a clear narrative. Another main question was considerable did see a massive progression from our rough cut to our eventual final cut because we asked whether ‘what things should be used to create a better understanding of the narrative?’ We were given a mixed response with similar equal percentages picking ‘Voiceover’ and ‘Dialogue,’ with ‘more credits’ being the minority percentage of 11.1%. We could infer from this response that perhaps our plot line was not as clear as we had thought, hence we then went onto incorporate our voiceover “what would you do if you couldn’t remember… a time before the Doctors… a time before the medication” and “what if you remembered.” This gave the clear outline now that whilst watching the trailer that the protagonist was unable to recollect memories as a direct result of medication given by the Doctors. To further confirm this we asked the same people to watch the trailer once again with the developments from their advice and they assured us that the narrative now had clarity. We incorporated more credits also using it to separate scenes and settings so that the audience could easily distinguish between passing of time or location as this is what we could establish the 11.1% meant by their choice of this option.
