3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

When a viewing was arranged for about 20 students we let them watch the product and then collected a constructive critic of the work.. The idea of this would be to gain further knowledge of how exactly my text positions and moves an audience and just how effective my text is at performing that task. Reasons for why I believe my text requires direct audience feedback is that it can in effect make the possibilities of a successful product definitely more achievable.

My product was shown once to an audience and then segments shot in significance to points made about the content. At the time of viewing my product was only to be classed as a first cut due to further audio and visual editing still needing to be completed in order to ascertain a fully effective product. Audience remarks were very positive about use of the depth of field and camera shot usage. On the other hand due to the nature of the text being a first cut some audience members found it difficult to identify due to no significant protagonist being portrayed apart from the assumption of a “final girl.” This was again due to the text being a first cut and audience/actor identification points not being completely clarified. However since then dialogue and transcripts have been added to give these connections between audience and character.

Positive feedback was mainly focused on how our text was iconic to the Horror/slasher genre. I achieved this by studying various films of that genre from both Hollywood and UK backgrounds to which I wanted to use almost intertextual points from both categories of horror. Texts I studied included: The Shining, Halloween, Wilderness, The hills have eyes, Friday the 13th and 28 days later. These films stood out to me due their style and chic in regards to the Horror genre. In many a case it appealed to me that the victims emotions were made all the more real through effective use of camera techniques. Thus I chose to reflect this within my own text using a lot of handheld footage amongst high and low angles, even climbing a tree in order to gain a better perspective view. When these points were raised in the viewing the audience commented on how the mixed positions of shooting points gave the impression of being watched and lost. Focus was another point of praise as people liked how I had altered the focus of the camera when shooting in order to use depth of field with obstructing objects (mostly trees, shrubs) this was to further the ideology of being watched. Many of the audience also voiced their appreciation for my use of codes of the slasher genre.

Places within the text that I could work on were quoted to be “Audience Identification” which I believe has now been achieved by use of both voiceovers and dialogue alike. Further points of inquest was the soundtrack I had created on Garage Band, In places the tempo of the track did not match that of the visual elements. Narrative structure of the teaser was also looked at, In places there is a direct jump to a different sequence which I believe in teaser trailers can be allowed due to the nature of the their release however I understand the point made as it disengaged the audience due to know audio or dialogue giving a hint of what is to happen. Overrall I believe my text could be improved by applying these points and the things an audience brought to my attention would definitely change how I went about editing this next time.

How my Text related to the Horror Genre, many of the audience pointed out and commented on codes I used within my work to actively represent the genre. Examples of this are eerie sounds such as crows in the background. It was important to be generically stereotypical in order to create the feel of a horror film straight from the start. Codes I used that were closely linked to the Horror Genre were: lighting, depth of field, extreme close up, canted angle shots, light and dark mise en scene and keeping the killer for the most part in the dark.