What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to make our trailer appealing to the right group of people, we received some audience feedback. This allowed us to see what our target audience would expect to see in a trailer and how we could improve it before our final product was produced. We did this by making different surveys and analysing the responses we received. The first survey of 10 questions was based on trailers in general. This helped us to decide the overall structure of our text and the best ways to target the audience. From our analysis we found that the majority of people would expect a trailer to be more than two minutes long. This allowed us to estimate the total footage needed when filming. We also found that our audience are most likely to watch trailers online or on social media. This allowed us to make the decision to create social media accounts, as this is a major target technique, especially for a young adult audience. From several of the questions, the storyline of the trailer seems to be the most significant element. Therefore we had to use editing to make this clear and effective. The majority of trailers have incomplete stories as it is a highly persuasive technique for the institution to use on the audience, especially as our trailer is post-modern therefore is commonly fragmented.
One of the main ways that we received audience feedback was through a rough cut survey. We showed a range of our audience a rough version of our trailer, before it was complete- without the music or titles. From the responses we received we were able to add appropriate elements to make our trailer effective. From our rough cut to our final trailer, you can see how we improved the product by adding voiceovers and additional clips. These helped to make the narrative clearer, which meant that the trailer was more appealing to the audience. As this was feedback that we received from our audience, we knew that this would be effective. We also discovered the style of music that our audience thought would best suit our trailer. This meant that we could narrow down the style before creating it, making the production easier and simpler. From this survey we also learnt that our props could have been signified more successfully. Therefore we added some slow motion effects on the most important props, necklaces, in order to present them effectively.
By creating social media accounts, we were able to interact with our audience even before the trailer was released. This allowed us to receive feedback from social comments and see people's opinions. We were able to use the media to influence a large group of people by 'injecting' them with a particular message. This is known as the hypodermic theory. In our trailer, we wanted to inject the idea that mermaids existed and in order for our audience to 'believe' this we had to use a lot of editing.
