What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 3 -Devon Dalton

A lot of the improvements made to our final products were influenced by our audience feedback. Although we have collected feedback for our trailer, magazine cover and poster as a group, I had also collected my own individual feedback for this evaluation.

Bob Thurgood Philips (17 year old media student) You should fill in the silent bit at the beginning of your trailer with a car sound or some music. Youve used a good selection of camera angles and the characters feelings are clear. And the story line is easy to understand. Jess Wilding (18 year old media student) I like how the lighting changes as your trailer continues. It looks more realistic and shows the different parts of the day. I dont really like the music that much; its annoying after a while. Maybe you could create a little build up to it before it starts to play? You also need to include a titles page with a voiceover to make it more like a real trailer. Catherine OBrian (18 year old media student) I really like watching your trailer, its very realistic and its easy to understand whats happening. You should include an establishing shot just to make it more obvious that youre using conventions. Mrs Endicott (English teacher) Your trailer shows a brilliant range of character interactions, which would lead on to creating some interesting story lines. However, I think the beginning scene lacks creativity and doesnt quite match the quality of the rest of the trailer. Mr Thornton (Maths teacher) I dont really get why there isnt any sound at the beginning of the video, but I like the concept of a new character causing trouble in the soap. Im not keen on the music either. Melody Platford (18 year old close friend) I really like how you have old people and young people getting along with each other, it makes a change from other soap operas. I think you should show that by playing some nice, calm music at the beginning, and then change it when the new girl enters the scene. Lucy Farrar (17 year old close friend) The main story is really interesting and the music is a good reflection on the city girl. You should probably do something about the quiet bit at the beginning, it seems a bit awkward.

Soap Opera Trailer

My feedback sources for our soap opera trailer second rough cut include: 2 family members 2 year 12 students 2 year 13 students 2 teachers of different subjects 2 close friends

Jason Hines (19 year old step-brother) Im guessing that the ginger woman means trouble, which makes a really good introductory story line. You can tell you guys put a lot of thought into choosing the right location and characters. The music gets kind of annoying after a while though; maybe you could mix it up or make it less repetitive? Carol Porter (34 year old aunty) I really like how all your characters are linked together and have different reactions to each other. Maybe you could add something at the beginning during that silent gap. If you hadnt explained what was happening, I wouldnt have understood that the main girl is from the city and is moving out to the country. Lee Dyer (16 year old student) Its really good, but you should show the location of where the characters live.

The feedback collected by our group is almost identical to my own results. Because the same negative points were brought up by different people, we concluded that our trailer was not reaching out to our audience effectively.

Because we acquired feedback from such a broad range of people, we considered them to be part of our target audience. Instead of interpreting our feedback as insulting, we used our feedback to improve our product according to our audience's needs. We made 4 major improvements to our final soap opera trailer, including:

After making our improvements, I then asked Jess, Catherine and Melody what they thought of our new and improved trailer. I chose to ask these 3 people again as they suggested the improvements after watching our second rough cut. Jess Wilding (18 year old media student) The music sounds so much better now that you've added something more dull before it. And the radio static sounds really good too. Catherine OBrian (18 year old media student) It looks a lot better with the establishing shot. Now your viewers can tell where your soap is set. Melody Platford (18 year old close friend) It looks and sounds so much better now, and the music ties together with the video.

Soap Opera Poster

Adding an establishing shot of the fields in Mill Lane to show the rural setting of the soap. By including this shot, our trailer relates more closely to existing soap opera trailers through the use of conventions. Adding a titles page that provides information about the episode at the end of the trailer. This also makes our trailer a better reflection on existing products, and distinguishes our medium as a trailer.

After receiving such constructive feedback from the group of people I asked to analyse our soap opera trailer, I asked if the same group of people would provide feedback for the second rough draft of our soap opera poster. Instead of collecting detailed responses, I formed a table divided into negative and positive feedback.

Adding a more laidback, rural style of music to the beginning of the trailer to fill in the silent gap. This also reflects the countryside environment, and contrasts with the more upbeat, modern music.

Added a record scratching noise to transition the slower music into the upbeat music. The noise resembles the car radio losing signal, and could be interpreted as white noise.

(Soap Opera Poster - Rough Draft 2)

We changed our colourful and child-like logo to one that looked more professional and sharp. We used black and white to make our logo more simplistic, and used a more detailed font to make up for the lack of colour.

Like our trailer, the same negative points were being brought up by different people. To target our audience more effectively, we utilised our feedback in order to improve our poster in accordance to our audience's needs. Here are the major improvements that we made to our poster:
We changed the word 'Essex' to a sparkling, diamante image of the word 'Essex' to create an association between the place and the antagonist by changing the word to something more flashy and modern.

We placed the antagonist in the centre of the image instead of having her mixed in with the other characters. Her place in the middle signifies the separation she has created between the characters of the soap, and makes her the focal point of the poster. This then establishes a connection between our poster and our trailer. Instead of using a choosing to show a selection of characters for our poster, we chose to include all of the characters from our trailer to fill the space around them. We also knew that by including more characters, associating our trailer with our poster would be more likely for our target audience. We used professional editing software to cut out our characters from their individual image backgrounds more accurately. This creates a better quality of image, and makes it less obvious that the characters were cut out to begin with. We also edited the colouring of the characters, and placed a sepia filter over all of the characters apart from the antagonist. By keeping the antagonist in her original colours, her modern indifference to the old-fashioned characters of Mill Lane is highlighted.

When we asked the same people to comment on our improved poster, we received feedback such as "the characters match the old-fashioned picture frame now, which makes a lot more sense" and "the new character looks more intimidating and evil, and shows what kind of role she will play in the soap".

Soap Opera Magazine Cover

I then asked if everyone who gave feedback for our soap opera trailer and poster, would take the time to comment on the second draft of our magazine poster. This time, I recorded the most important comments and directly linked them into the images of our second rough draft, and did the same for our final magazine cover.

Mr Thornton - "I think you should use brighter colours like the yellow, as the darker colours, like the green and black, make your magazine look less interesting."

Bob - "That is such an improvement from the last one. It actually looks real!"

Melody - "That's such a good name for a soap magazine! Although it's the same size and colour as the 'Mill Lane' title"

Bob - "There's too much space - it doesn't look real because it doesn't look busy enough." Jason - "There's a lot of colour, but it's not very bright and it doesn't stand out a lot. You could use more yellow in the picture." Jess - "Your characters have been cut out so well! They look professional!" Mr Thornton "Excellent, well done! That's quite a big improvement." Catherine - "Your colours make you cover lines pop! I would buy this magazine!" Carol - "I like your choice of backgrounds, and how the vicar is standing in front of a church. It looks very professional."

Catherine - "Your cover lines are a kind of boring. You should use more shocking words, and the sentences should stand out more." Carol - "I like how you've used so much colour, but I think that the chunks of colour make it look a bit plain. It would look better if you had more backgrounds behind the characters."

Jess - "The pictures of the characters are bigger, which looks a lot better and makes your magazine cover more personal."

So what have I learned from my audience feedback?

I learned that if you don't receive audience feedback, you won't understand what others think of your product. My opinion on our group work is very subjective and biased because I contributed towards making it, so I would think that we've produced a very good standard of work. But 2 brains are better than one, so if I don't collect other people's opinions as well, I may find out that our work isn't actually to a very good standard at all, and it would be my own fault for not improving my work based on other people's thoughts and ideas.

I've also learned that if I'm going to collect feedback in the future, it should be from people that I would target my products at. This way, I can find out how my product needs to be improved in order to cater to my target audience's needs. It also means that if my product is suited to a group of people that would be included in my target audience, my product is capable of reaching a larger audience too.

And finally, I learned that if I want my product to be successful, gaining feedback is essential. Every successful product collects feedback as a form of research so that the producer can understand the consumer, and create a relationship with their audience. In a way, collecting feedback relates to John Hartley's theory that "institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience, but - crucially, for them - to talk to one as well; they need not only to represent audiences but to enter into relation with them."