I created two questionnaires on surveymonkey.com to find out the audience's opinion on my trailer, poster, and magazine cover. I distributed the questionnaire through social media; Twitter and Facebook. I also sent the link to the questionnaire to different people. I did this to see if my understanding of audience’s had been effective; especially in targeting the right demographic.
Questions for surveys:
What is your gender?
How old are you?
These standard questions give me an idea on what kind of person i am getting answers from. It gave me the opportunity to give more attention to the answers from people that are part of my target audience.
Film trailer Questionnaire
1. How much did you enjoy the film trailer?
This is a good first question as it gives you an idea on the overall opinion of the individual member of the audience, this gives you a better idea in how to judge their following answers. As well as this, enjoyment is one of the biggest factors of a trailer, if the audience don't enjoy the trailer they won't go and watch the film.
2. Did it hold your attention?
This question relates to the first question. Usually you should find that if the answer to this question is negative then the answer to the first question is negative too. Being an interesting and engaging trailer is one of the biggest factors in having a enjoyable trailer.
3. What do you think of the camera work and editing?
This is the first question to find out more insightful things, this is where the viewer is supposed to have noticed conventions of typical trailers in my trailer; e.g. Tony Thwaites theory which says that "each text is influenced by the generic rules in the way it is put together; the generic rules are reinforced by each text". Again the questionnaire follows a trend by which if you have been unsuccessful with your target audience from the last two questions it is unlikely that you will do well here, however if the audience is judging you purely on 'variety of shots' you could still do well, it all depends on how the audience interprets it.
4. Did you find any specific uses of mise-en-scene effective?
This question coincides with generic theory, particularly Gunther Kress theory; in terms of generic structure being reflected by structure or objects being repeated; the questions purpose is there to encourage the audience to identify the mise en scene, and question it's relevance.
5. How would you rate the trailer length?
This is a simple question to she how the audience felt about the length of my trailer.
6. Can you think of anything that could improve the trailer?
This question draws on audience theory; and as this is the first question where the audience are given a style of question where there asked to give an opinion.
7. Did you find any parts of the trailer offensive? E.g. representation of race, gender, age, culture.
This question taken at face value could be a basic response such as yes or no, however again depending on the audience demographic; you may get different members of your target audience identifying different things; for example lots of women take offence at explicit use of the male gaze in male-focused thrillers. So depending on your viewpoints, again you may get different response's depending on the genre.
8. Do you think the trailer does a good job at promoting the film?
This is a final chance for the audience to state any feelings on the quality of the trailer and it's use of promotional skills.
9. What would rate the film trailer out of 10? Why?
This again is much like the last question, but instead it focuses solely on quality whilst attaching a number rating.
From my questionnaire about my film trailer I found out that almost everyone enjoyed the trailer. The youngest person who answered the survey (aged 13) said he didn't really enjoy it as he thought "there should have bee more action and more action scenes". However this is to be expected as younger members of the audience (especially males), have very strong connections with the 'action' genre. It is often found that this age range have much love for the type of conventions found in the 'action' genre, and connect with that far more than the 'thriller' genre. Lots of the replies stated that there attention was held because of "all the questions that kept popping up" in their mind. This shows that my use of enigma codes in my trailer was effective in that it kept the audience focused on what was happening. The audience enjoyed most of the editing as they felt that it increased the amount of tension generated by the trailer. This is good since thriller trailers are supposed to keep you on your toes. Some of the replies gave responses saying that the trailer might be slightly too long. Some went in further detail saying things such as "about 20-30 seconds needs to be cut out, this will give it a more slick feel". Nobody took offence with my trailer, however there were a couple of replies which complained about the lack of racial diversity since every character was white. There were also instances were replies said that they would've liked at least one female character. One person said "this trailer is a sausage-fest! There isn't a dame in sight! There needs to be more female characters to make the trailer fairer, gender-wise". Almost everyone thought that the trailer did a good job at promoting the film. However one person said that they were confused about what the story was about. Again, almost everyone said that the trailer was of a good/great quality. But some people suggested that the trailer would've been greater if it had a better picture quality. However I couldn't change this factor as the camera used was the only one available to me. Overall the average rating for my trailer was 7.6.
Film Poster Questionnaire
What film genre do you believe my poster fits into?
This questions was posed to find out if the choices I took in making the poster connected with the conventions of the thriller genre.
Which specific elements of the poster work best?
This will give me an idea of what the best parts of my poster are. I will be given notice of what elements of the mise-en-scene is effective, and how the compare with the rest of the poster.
Are any parts of the poster ineffective or unnecessary?
This will tell me what specific bad parts there are on my poster. This question parallels with the previous one. I can compare the two answers seeing what I could have improved on the most.
What would you rate the poster out of 10? Why?
Just like the final question for the trailer questionnaire, answers to this let me know the overall quality and effectiveness of the poster.
May people recognised that my poster was for a "dark" film because of the use of dark colours. Some people went further stating that the poster represented a "thriller/suspense" genre. One person said that "because of the heavy use of the colour black I can tell that this poster is for a thriller film". The most praised about element of the poster was the unique focal image. Many answers praised the "two faces merged together", one (a 17 year old male) stating that they had "never seen a poster with something like this before". This tells me that I have challenged the conventions of thriller film posters. Quite a few people mentioned that the orange coloured font for the credits didn't really fit the overall tone of the poster. However, when I was creating the design I felt that the colour orange was the best choice to stand out in front of the background at a certain level that it didn't come across as the most important part of the poster. The average rating I received for the poster was 8.2.
Film Magazine Cover Questionnaire
What elements of the image make you realise that this is a magazine cover?
This will tell me what conventions of magazine covers the audience spotted when they looked at the image of my final magazine cover design.
What would you rate the cover out of 10? Why?
Once again this told me the audience's final opinion of the image, just like with the previous three questionnaires.
All of the responders pointed out the barcode and its surrounding elements (price, issue number etc.) when pointing out the conventions.
No comments:
Post a Comment