What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout my research and planning I conducted various focus groups among my fellow students, teachers and family to help me with things like design and titles in order to find out what people would deem as authentic and eye catching.

All of the time I made my decisions based on these focus groups as I felt it was important to take audience opinion into account and respond to their ideas. After I had completed my marketing campaign I conducted further audience research to see if I had successfully achieved my aims in conveying genre and authenticity.

The questions I asked regarding my poster were:

1. Is the poster eye catching?
2. Can you tell which genre the film is from by looking at the poster?
3. Does the poster look authentic?
4. Does the poster contain all the conventions you would expect to find in a typical poster?

The main thing my audience picked up on was the font - they felt that it was in keeping with the genre (the genre-orientated reviews helped add to this idea) and purely from the font they would be able to tell straight away that it was a horror film. They also felt the bleak colour scheme, although would not be eye catching, would attract the attention of horror fans as that is what they are used to in posters of that genre. They suggested, however, that the slight accents of red text would help attract attention. The comments on the layout were positive with audience members saying it looked authentic.

The questions regarding my magazine front cover were:

1. Does it feel like a mainstream magazine?
2. Would it catch your eye on the shelf?
3. Does the magazine help promote the film?
4. Can you tell the magazine is a horror special?

Because I used a well known director for my film, and older actors, it was difficult to put any stars on the cover. My audience feedback was that it was a good idea to make the magazine a horror special and they felt the colour scheme I used was eye catching, but also in keeping with the horror special idea. They questioned my decision not to use an actor on the cover but in the end they agreed that it was a better idea not to as they were older and wouldn't appeal to my target audience, or be considered eye candy. They also thought it was the right idea to use my teacher as a substitute for Wes Craven as he is a well known director (and I couldn't use a found image).

The questions I asked regarding my teaser trailer were:

1. Does the teaser trailer use typical conventions?
2. Can you see the genre from the teaser trailer?
3. Is the narrative established?



The feedback I got from this was that the trailer gave a bit of the narrative away but withheld a lot of information as teaser trailers do. The opinion on the music was that it effectively displayed the genre and the spotlight effect on the title was effective.

Finally with all elements of my marketing campaign I asked my audience if they all worked well together. They said that it was easy to see that all pieces were promoting the same film. The small consistencies like the font helped to tie them all together.