Since for our coursework we have to make a trailer, poster and magazine cover for an original Noir film we decided to execute some audience research. As a group we wanted to find out how audiences hear about new films, how they view the importance of trailers and what they think make an effective trailer. We used Padlets, Survey monkeys and filmed focus groups to get our results and we then used our results to make effective changes to our trailer, poster and magazine cover to ensure that they were all professional.
Quantitative Research
To begin with, I decided it would be best to execute some quantitative research to better understand how our target audience hear about new films, how they view the importance of trailers, what they think make an effective trailer and what types of genre are popular. To do this I made a Survey Monkey and collected the results and made a presentation on Adobe Spark where I analysed these results. I found this process to be very useful as not only did it lay the foundations of our trailer, it also gave me a better understanding of what our target audience wanted and helped me realise that audiences are active and that Stuart Hall’s Encoding and Decoding model is accurate. The link to the Adobe Spark that features my analyses of the results can be found below.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/ov69MDX3t0k0B/
The main points we took away from my quantitative research was that our trailer had to have: . A Clear Narrative . Creative and effective cinematography . High levels of mystery, and ambiguity so that our trailer showed the complexity of the plot and posed questions to the audience that they could answer through watching the film
Below are two filmed qualitative research focus groups that show we used the quantitative research I collected with the Survey Monkey well as the people involved in the filmed focus groups all highlight how these three factors are strengths in our trailer. As well as the two pictures below which are of our penultimate and final draft of our trailer where I added a credit block to the end as many people said that was a typical convention of film trailers.
Qualitative Research
We also collected qualitative feedback on the first draft of our Sight and Sound magazine cover. We used Padlet to record this feedback. Below is a Quicktime recording I made, in which I summarise the key feedback we received and how it was addressed by changes made in our final magazine cover. The Padlet I used is pictured below.
We also collected qualitative feedback on the first draft of our Sight and Sound magazine cover. We used Padlet to record this feedback. Below is a Quicktime recording I made, in which I summarise the key feedback we received and how it was addressed by changes made in our final magazine cover. The Padlet I used is pictured below.
Changes made to the poster as a result of feedback
Below is a presentation that I made were I talk about the minor changes I made to our poster based off of audience feedback.
Conclusion
Overall, audience research was vastly important in helping us create the most professional, effective and well done multi-modal advertising campaign for our original Neo-Noir text ‘BLACKOUT’. This is because the audience research for both the trailer and poster package and the Sight and Sound cover were done on an appropriate target audience, which meant they gave us the most accurate feedback in what we needed to change to conform to the typical conventions of the media text they were being asked to feedback on.
