Evaluation 3 - What have you learnt from audience feedback?

In order for my trailer and ancillary tasks to be as realistic, persuasive and effective as possible, I constantly referred to the traget audience of Psychological Horror films. Due to the fact that my target audiences age was 18-28, a similar age to my own, I was able to constantly reference and question my peers in class. Being able to easily contact members of my target audience was extremely helpful, I was able to establish a clear idea of what they expected from the media products and what would gratify them most.

Before beginning my main or ancillary tasks, I decided to compose a focus group/ questionaire aimed at a handful of members of my target audience. I asked basic questions such as; "in general, what do you find frightening?", I also asked more in depth ones such as "what type of characters do you expect to see in a psychological horror?". After analysing the results I was able to construct an idea of what was necessary for a successful psychological horror. Speaking to my tarket audience within the early stages, enabled me to learn what I needed to create in order to forfill the audiences expectations. It gave me prior knowledge on what was needed to amplify feelings of fear and tension in my trailer.

When creating my ancillary tasks, my target audience gave me constructive critisism on my work. Things said such as "the mast head looks to plain, you should change it" enabled me to access a new perspective and realise the features that were letting my work down. The target audience gave me feedback on the 3 versions I had created of my poster and magazine cover, seeing how the they have enabled my work to improve and progress has reinforced to me how important it is to refer to your audience. If I hadnt I would have just created one version and not have made the improvements at all. In addition, after further analysis of my target audience, ideas such as the 'ABC scale' enabled me to edit features of my work so that they were aimed at my audience specifically. For example, as my audience are classed as D/E on the scale I used a bright and bold colour scheme on the magazine so that connotations of youth and thrill were shown.

Throughout the creation of my trailer, I made sure that I referenced my target audience so that I could learn about what I needed to improve/ include. This meant that I was able to change even the finest details so that it improved the experience for the viewer. Contacting my target audience on a regular basis also gave me a 'fresh outlook' on my work, as I found that it was hard to judge what was good/bad after staring at it for so long!

I feel that if I did not recieve any audience feedback on my work, then it would be completely off the mark. I would risk an inaccurate interpretation of audience preference being shown in my work. Thus meaning that my products would have not been accurate, realistic or appealing. Speaking to my target audience has enabled me to learn the importance of 'the finer details', often when refering to my audience they would notice things that I had not picked up on. Using focus groups, face to face feed back, social networks and questionaires allowed me to construct products that were persuasive and gratifying for viewers.