Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience thought that the music we chose fit in well with our film trailer. The focus group felt that it complimented the battle scenes within our film trailer and really added to the whole epic superhero theme of our film trailer. Two of the teenagers we used in our first focus group believed that we implemented into our trailer what they had said earlier. They both said that we took on board the advice that they had given us when we asked them what we could do to make our trailer a superhero action comedy similar to the film Kick-Ass and how we could make it attract and excite our audiences. We took on board the group telling us that the protagonist in our film should be witty, funny, we added humour and action and most of all we made it clear what the film is about. The focus group could see the protagonists desire to tackle injustice in the world but that he doesn’t have the physic or what a superhero needs so in the end he does try really hard but he still fails. This is exactly what the focus group we used earlier said we should do in our film trailer. In general, the focus group gave us positive feedback; one of the teenagers in our focus group liked the scene with the man on the toilet. He said that it was a nice juxtaposition, the calm serenity shown when the man is just relaxing on the toilet and then the action from the battle scenes. Everyone in our focus group said that they want to watch our film. Some of the people in our focus group said that they think it would become a viral success and some said that they think it would be a cinema success. One of the teenagers in our focus group said that he thinks that an opinion leader is most likely to see it and spread it to his friends through websites such as facebook and twitter or by word of mouth therefore many people will know about it and it will possibly become a cinema success as well. Despite this, there were slight criticisms. The focus group said we could improve, for example, the length of the trailer, it could have been shorter and the trailer could have been snappier, as well as left some questions unanswered and created more of an enigma into the character.

All in all, our audience recognized that we subverted the stereotype of a superhero in our film. Often superheroes are strong, tactful and charming whereas the superhero in our film was meek, not very skillful or charming. They could tell that our film was a superhero, action comedy film as it incorporated conventions of the superhero genre, for example, we had a superhero and villain in our film trailer. We also followed conventions of the action genre- we added in battle scenes and we also followed convention of the comedy genre- we added in scenes where our superhero fails miserably. The focus group could relate our film to films such as Kick-Ass, which happened to be the inspiration of our film.

On the whole, we feel that we could have made a more effective film trailer by taking into account our audience feedback, making it shorter, snappier, and mainly just leave some questions unanswered, not give too much of the plot away and create an enigma into the character, making the film trailer a little bit mysterious in order for our audiences to be curious and therefore want to see our film more.

 

We showed our film magazine front cover to the same focus group as well as other teenagers to fill out a questionnaire. From our results, the majority of our audience liked the image of 'The Talon' and the layout of our magazine front cover. They thought that the image was eye catching and from the image they could recognize that our film is a superhero film and they could also tell that it would follow the comedy genre as the costume that ‘The Talon’ is wearing, is made poorly, it looks pretty lame and so does his weapon as it is made out of forks. However, our audience felt that the main character of our film wasn’t positioned in the middle but slightly more to the right and felt that he should have been placed properly in the middle of the magazine cover. Our audience also thought that the layout of our magazine cover is professional; it has the masthead, the cover lines, a main image, information and a barcode. Some of our audience members liked the film title, but a couple thought that it was boring and some of our audience members liked the position of the film title, but a few didn't. They felt it should have been towards the end of the poster, in the middle of the main image. Only a few of our audience members noticed that we used different font styles and thought that it really stood out from the background as it is bold and has a black stroke. The variety of fonts conveyed to them that there will be a lot of action within the film, so they also recognized that our film follows the action genre. Our audience also felt that the background was boring and that we should’ve used a more attractive colour or added an effect to the background in order to grab our audience’s attention, as well as add an effect to the masthead to grab our audience’s attention.

We feel that we could have made a more effective film magazine front cover by placing the image of the protagonist of our film in a different position. According to our audience it looks like it is slightly more to the right. Another way we could have improved our magazine front cover is by adding a shadow to the title to make it stand out from the background, almost make it look like it is coming of the page in order to attract more audiences. Furthermore, we could have improved our magazine cover by changing the colour of the background from grey to a more exciting, bright, eye catching colour or add an effect to the grey background, such as a gradient- making the left side of the magazine cover dark grey and then fading the colour to light grey as it goes towards the right side of the magazine cover or perhaps choose a different colour for the left side of the magazine cover and different colour for the right side of the magazine cover, contrasting colours, for example, white on one side and black on the other side to represent good and evil as our film involves a superhero and villain fighting against each other.

 

We also showed our film poster to our audience and asked them to fill out a questionnaire. The results showed that the majority of our audience liked the colour scheme of our film poster and the fact that we added the release date onto our film poster. Many of our audience members thought that putting the image of the main character in our film inside the letter 'T' from the Talon's cape was great and very creative idea. The image of him inside the letter has an artistic effect, it is almost as if he has been painted into the letter or as if he is fading, and he is dressed in his school uniform which conveyed to our audiences that he is young, insecure and doubtful. They had a completely different view of him than the view they had of him when they saw him as the Talon on our magazine cover. These audience members could definitely see there was a difference between the two sides of our main character but by placing the image of our main character as a normal boy in the letter still give them the idea that the boy and the Talon are one. However, some of our audience members didn't realise the image of our main character in the letter T. It was too light for them to see. Our audience liked the letter T looking as if it is falling of the poster. It symbolised the letter T falling of The Talon's red cape. This showed our audience that he isn’t an amazing superhero; he makes mistakes and still has a lot of improving to do, but they liked the scratch marks on the cape because this showed that he can be brave and when he has to he’ll fight for what is right. Our audience also liked how we used the letter T from his cape, in our film logo. They thought that this was clever and that it made our logo eye catching, which is why they liked the our film logo. Many of our audience members liked that we put a website onto our poster, but a few felt that we could have added more websites onto the poster, for example, a twitter website, or a myspace website as not everyone has facebook. Many youths are on twitter and myspace nowadays. They felt that the more websites, the more audiences will hear about the film and many of them could get more information about the film. Not many of our audience members noticed that we used different font styles on our film poster and felt that we could have used more or used ones that stood out more. Most importantly, our audience could tell from our poster that our film is a superhero film because we used the Talon’s cape as the base for our film poster. Our audience could recognize was an action film because of the scratch marks which made them think that there would be a battle scene in the film and they could also recognize that it is a comedy film because part of the Talon’s logo was falling of the cape.

Overall, our audience didn’t think that there was much we needed to add in or change concerning our film poster apart from adding on a couple more websites and using more font styles. We disagree with this, we feel that if we added more text or font styles onto the poster it would have looked too messy and not very professional. We feel that the text we  put on our poster was enough and that the text we put on our poster was essential for our audience to know. However, we do agree that we could have made the image of our main character stand out more in order for people to see it more clearly. Apart from this, we don’t feel that making any other changes would make our film poster more effective than it already is.