Evaluation Question 3

To gain feedback to analyse how succesful my short film and ancillary texts were with my target audience, I asked 6 questions to some people in my media group as they are able to understand media terminology and have a good grasp of the process of production and post-production as well as being in my target audience. This questionnaire was based on the final version of my short film but was before it'd had been published and ancillary texts, shown below (in their final versions).

Question 1:

What is you age and demographic group?

Question 2:

How effective are my three products are working together?

Question 3:

How suspensful and dramatic did you find my short film?

Question 4:

What could I do to improve my short film?

Question 5:

Would you watch it again?

Question 6:

How effective do you think the sound, editing, mise-en-scene and cinematography is?

Here are the responses:

I was able to ask these detailed questions because people in my media group would understand terms such as 'mise-en-scene' more than outside responders who would probably not understand the question causing the results of my survey to be inaccurate. From the results of this survey, I am happy that they work together and the choices I made in directing the short film add to the drama I tried to convey, although I did make some minor changes to my ancillary texts after their feedback which has helped my create a better final product to gain wider audience feedback on. 

The next step of gaining feedback on my product was to gain feedback from a wider variety of people including those at college who don't study media as well as the wider public via social media. The easiest and most effective way to do this is via Surveymonkey as it would be hard to create a paper questionnaire like I had done in media for the wider public as it was a much more open questionnaire. Surveymonkey is a website that allows you to create surveys which you can embedd on social media and blogs to widen your audience response net.

How I produced my survey:

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Here are the responses:

 

 These responses are mostly positive reviews, showing the effectiveness of my products in combination. People especially praised the correlation between the my short film and poster, one reviewer saying that they are effective at leaving the audience wanting more which shows that they are effective at working together to draw an audience for this product. They also said they liked the images from the film being used on the magazine article which shows positive opinion about mu ancillary text, in addition one person also said the review was respected showing the professionalism I tried to create across my products.

The majority of responses I recieved were from people 16-18, over 83% of respondents. The rest of the respondents were 19-24 which is in my target audience age range and demographic group 'E' meaning the answers in this survey are from people who I want to target my product at so I should listen to their feedback. 

This question is a trademark of Surveymonkey and allows you to find out the likelihood of people promoting your film to their friends and family. I scored 17/100 which isn't too bad as the starting point was -100 not 0. However, despite the score 83% of my audience still have the film a recommendation rating of 7 or above showing it's popularity. Perhaps if more people would have answered I would have had a fairer result as 1 person voting between 0-6 accounted for 17% of the vote. However, I am still pleased with this score as a large majority of respondents voted positively, however I may need to look over element of my video and ancillary again to see

if  there is anything I could improve to bolster this score.



A vast majority of respondents said they would watch the short film again, with no responders saying they wouldn't which shows people have enjoyed the piece I created. This is extremely positive, showing that the target audience have enjoyed this film meaning it should be succesful which will draw greater amounts of revenue ect, I am also happy with my final product after this feedback and have resisted the urge to tweak elements of my short film as people think it is good. 

This feedback is mixed but tells me that there is an oppurtunity for cross-media-convergence with companies to produce merchandise for my product, but only on a relativley small scale for example a DVD, mug or t-shirt. Some one also said if the film was longer they would be more interested in merchandise however I cannot change this as my brief was to produce a short film no longer than 5 mins, however if this was a real media text to be released I would have probably made it longer. 

The comments were mainly positive, showing that people enjoyed the story as well as commenting on the effectiveness of the cinematography, sound and script however people found issue with the ending however I researched that a convention of crime-thriller short films is a twist at the end and this could be explained through a sequel if this was a real media text so removing this section would be unconventional however the majority enjoyed the rest of the narrative which is pleasing to see. One respondent also commented on hiring more professional actors, whilst still praising the actors involved. As this was an amateur production with almost no budget it would be hard to hire professional actors, even though it may improve the film. Despite that, the actors still recieved some form of praise which is extremely pleasing considering they've had no acting experience. One person also said the shots could have been better but as this was a survey on my final product it was too late to change this which was unfortunate, regardless of this the rest of the repsondents enjoyed the film and praised its professionality. If I had more time, I would have re-filmed sections but the majority works well, in my opinion.  





I also did a further survey to find out the  age, demographics and interests ect of my respondents so I could target my short film appropriately, this can be found at the bottom of the page underneath the responses I received



Question 1- As explained above, my age group and social demographic were the same- all of my respondents landed in my target audience of demographic group E, which shows that this product has been marketed accurately and is succesful at appealing to an audience that is notoriously hard to capture in the digital age.

Question 2- This was an 60/40 split between male and female genders, with more of my respondents classifying their gender as male which relates to the stereotypical view, as explained by Tessa Perkins, that men are more interested in crime and thriller films than women however these results could be ambigious as only 6 people answered, if I had more time I would have made sure this survey would have reached more people to ensure even more accurate results which would only help shape more accurate and worthwhile feedback to my three media texts.

Question 3- I asked this question to try and determine whether or not my audience had a specific interest in my product- this would help me to see if it was a good genre to produce the film of as well as validtating their feedback from my previous questionnaire: if they liked this genre, they would understand the conventions behind it. 5 of my 6 respondents said they liked this genre which is extremely positive, and one said that they 'Maybe' like the genre showing no negative responses across my panel. This could show that this is a popular genre amongst the target audience I have curated and therefore shows that this product is expected to be relatively succesful, backed up with the positive comments from the previous survey.

Question 4- The majority of people I asked said that they found the ancillary texts informative, complete and 'good at fitting in with the theme'- 5/6 said that the texts appealed to them directly. This, backed up with answers from my previous survey, shows me that the ancillary texts are extremely effective. Despite this, they did pick up on some minor issues such as placement of elements on my DPS and image quality of the picture of Carl on my poster, this was hard to fix as it would possibly be pointless as I would still add the 'noise' effect to the image and B, I did not have the time to retake photos of the cast and I wanted to show cross-media-convergence by using images direct from the film.

Question 5- There was some ambiguity regarding the responses of this question, which I asked to find out whether people thought that I had created accurate and realistic representations of certain age groups ect. Some people felt the characters were exaggerated but still realistic to portrayal of the age groups, relating to Tessa Perkins stereotype theory which suggests that stereotypes are sometimes true but can be challenged- not many people would expect a 15 year old to be involved with a drug lord which is either ridiculous or adds to the supsense of tension of the piece- it depends on personal opinion.

Question 6- I asked this question to find out whether or not people enjoyed short films, and to see what other forms of media they enjoy consuming. As Marshall McLuhan says, 'the medium is the message' and this means that I would be able to tell whether or not they felt my medium was effective. All of the respondents cited film or TV which is promising, as short film could be considered a hybrid of the two. (Taking the shorter length and budget of a TV show whilst also following many of the conventions prevelent in feature film) This could show that many people may be introduced to short film through liking film and TV showing that my audience feedback might be more reliable

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In conclusion, the feedback I have recieved from both my peers and the wider target audience through the Surveymonkey survey has allowed me to evaluate, tweak and improve my final work to match my original brief as well as provide an entertaining and conventional short film which my target audience of 16-24, mostly male, would enjoy and want to watch again. I am confident that I have planned and produced an effective piece of work that I could sell to the public effectively.