Target Audience Feedback - Miss Georgiou

Audience feedback is important to a production as it enables the producers of the opening sequence to get an insight into what the audience thinks of it and are able to get both positive and negative feedback in order to improve it in a way that appeals to the audience.

Our group got this feedback by showing about 15 people, between the ages of 15 to 18 which is our target audience due to our age certification being a 15. We then asked them a short questionnaire, these consisted of questions such as:

• 'What was your first impression of our thriller sequence?'
• 'How did it make you feel?'
• 'Do you feel it was conventional to the thriller genre? If so how?'
• 'Is there anything you would change to make our thriller better?'

The feedback we got from the group would benefit our production of the thriller as we are now able to go back and improve certain elements to make it even better, potentially allowing us to get a better mark.

 

Some positive feedback my group received was:

1. We included a wide variety of cinematography which made the sequence interesting and effective. - I agree with this comment as this was something we tried to do. We wanted to show a range of shots but made sure they were consistently conventional. For example, we always used a high angled shot looking down at the little girl to portray her as the victim.

2. The idea and use of the underwater scene was unique and made it stand out compared to other thriller opening sequences. - This comment also sums up another one of our aims as we had this underwater scene idea right from the start. We wanted our thriller film to be different but by still being conventional. Also we noticed that there wasn't a lot of other thriller films who have an underwater scene and so thought if carried out correctly this would make our narrative really successful.

 

3. We were also told that our opening sequence was very conventional to the thriller genre, such as the use of low key lighting, the characters of the protagonist and unknown antagonist, as well as the choice of tension building music. - We wanted to try and make our opening sequence very conventional and so did this through the examples listed above as well as many more. We also made the music match the images and edits on the screen, so that it would build suspense and be even more effective.

 

Some negative feedback my group received was:

1. The narrative was very confusing and some of my audience didn't understand it. - I think that by planning, researching and re-editing the film so many times, we understood the narrative and so assumed that our audience would too.
2. They said that whilst our credits were good, they could be improved by making them look more conventional and more suited to the narrative of the little girl.
3. The idea of the flashbacks was good, but we needed to make this clearer and easier to understand.

To improve these points my group did the following:

• Whilst our narrative was confusing to viewers, my group and I were not too worried about this as this is what we were trying to do. By confusing your audience you make them vulnerable to feeling many different sorts of emotions, such as them feeling nervous or anxious to what is to happen next. This will allow the climax and ending of the opening sequence to have a bigger effect on the audience, and this is what we were trying to do. However, saying this, we did re-watch our thriller and got a second opinion and decided to take out a few of the shots in an attempt to make the narrative easier to understand.