Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback questionnaire gave us an insight into how successful our media products were and what we could improve on. They also gave us a good idea on what gender and age our target audience should be.


We found there there was a big difference to how different genders viewed our products. Females were more interested in the romance genre as the generally gave better feedback than the men questioned. However, due to our small sample number, this result cannot be truly generalisable, but it is known that on average women enjoy media products with a romance genre more than men.

From the feedback we learnt that Romance films are enjoyed across a large age range, especially with females. Our target group is therefore females around the age of 15+, however our main target age range is ideally professional women 25+, as these are the people who are likely to have a surplus within their income to spend on leisure activities such as going to the cinema and reading film magazines, so by making out products appeal to them, we are more likely to gain a bigger profit from out products.




The questions asked in regards to the film trailer were:

• With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how well do you think our trailer fitted the romance genre?
• How would you rate the camera work?
• How would you rate the film overall?
• How would you rate the choice of setting?

When analysing questions about our romance trailer, we received a majority of positive feedback, with the questions getting marked around 4s and 5s. However, when answering how well did the respondents think our trailer fitted the romance genre, we had a feedback of 2 people rating only a 3, which is generally rated as 'satisfactory'. This shows that some respondents thought there was much more room for improvement. After completing the questionnaire we asked the audience the reasoning for answers that gave a low mark. When asking the two people the reasons for their 'satisfactory' grade, the reasons were:

• 'It wasn't romantic enough. There was just not enough 'love' involved, The film seemed to be based too much around Alice's life without George rather than there relationship together.'
• 'It seemed to fit more in the genre of drama. Although there was love involved in the storyline, the main theme was George's death.'

From this feedback we learnt that some participants thought that the genre of romance was too broad for the trailer. However, we did earlier decide that the genre would be a sub-genre of  'romance tragedy'. From this, we learnt that we should have been more specific when writing the questions. When we asked the two respondents the same question but replacing 'romance' with 'romance tragedy' they both gave a rating of 4.

Our camera work was rated all 4's and 5's, with the majority giving a rating of 5, showing that our camera work was of an 'excellent' standard. Although 4 is still a rating we are pleased with, as it was the lowest rating on that question we asked one of the participants why they rated it a 4 and not a 5.

• 'I didn't like the hand held camera work. Although I can understand why it was used, personally i just don't think it fits in well with the romance genre, it's too scary and reminds me of horror films that have used that technique. However,  all the other camera work was great, and i would have given it a 5 if the hand held was not in it.'

This response is based more around personal experience rather than the actual camera work. The participant thought the camera work was worth a 5, but as they have seem other films that have frightened them using this filming technique they now make a link between the two, and still find hand-held camera work uncomfortable to watch.

When deciding to use this technique we didn't take into account this aspect. Although we realised that it was used in horror films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity', we thought by using it in such a different genre like romance it could be a refreshing use of the technique. 

Below is a comparison of screenshots of the horror genre and our romance trailer when using the hand-held technique.

Paranormal Activity 3

The Blair Witch Project

Our trailer 'Until The End'

Within the questionnaire we only asked one question about the magazine. We felt teamed with asking the participants the reasons for their answers this would give us enough feedback. 

We asked;

How well do you think our magazine cover fitted the romance genre?

A  majority of people rated either a 3 or 4 for this question. Although we would have ideally liked to have got higher marks, due to the fact that we had little romance magazine covers to deconstruct as there is a lack of them within the real media, we had to guess what the conventions of a romance magazine cover would be. 

When asking the participants who gave us ratings of 2s and 3s the reasons why, we found that the reasons were generally the same problem that we had; knowing what the conventions of a romance magazine cover actually were. Many respondents said they thought the magazine cover looked professional and followed the conventions of a normal magazine cover, but were unsure on how it could follow the conventions of  a romance magazine cover. They gave us constructive criticism by saying maybe we should have made the romance more obvious, we could have put both and Alice and George in a loving position on the front cover (however we thought this would be too similar to the poster) or we could have used colours that represent love like red. 


From this audience feedback we learnt that we did a good job on the magazine cover, but due to the fact that conventions of a romance magazine are not well known, we could have made the 'romance' of the cover more obvious, however we didn't want to go over the top with romance conventions as we thought by having both Alice and George on it and having other conventions such as 'red for love' and roses it would give the magazine a tacky look.




Like when asking questions about the magazine cover, again we only asked the one question for the poster;

How well do you think our poster fitted the romance genre?

                                                                                                        

From the participants responses, we learnt that overall we did a good job on the poster, with us getting a majority of 4s, which is normally a 'very good' rating. When speaking to the participants who rated us a 4 about the reasoning for that grade, many said that you could clearly see it was a romance film. Alice and George are in an embracing, loving position and there is a quote from the film below the title. The reason they did not give it a 5 was that many of them thought it could have been more simplistic, as there is no need for all of that writing on the poster.

Our audience feedback was an important part of our project as it gave us insight into what we did well and what had room for improvement. Overall our feedback tells us that we did a good job, especially on the film trailer and the poster. In regards to the magazine cover there is room for improvement, but due to the fact if it was released into the real media it would be the first romance magazine out there, we did a good job without making it look overall romantic and tacky.