Individual Feedback Sessions

Here is a compilation of the responses from the individual viewers we interviewed.



In terms of the viewers' first impressions, I feel we have achieved what we set out to. The interviewees mentioned that it was the visuals and the lighting that initially stood out to them, and one said that it was the combination of visual style and the dramatic voiceover that drew them in. In our Research Presentation, I mentioned that, due to the time constraints for our OTS, we would, 'really need to focus in and ensure that almost everything that we do; we put into it, is a signifier.' In using conventional film-noir lighting styles and including a dramatic and mysterious voiceover, I feel we have done exactly as I suggested, and it has paid off; our audience are drawn in to the world we have created.

Drawing the audience into our imagined world is important, but it is no good immersing the audience if you can't follow through and convey the correct ideas and emotions. To see whether we had made people feel the way we intended, we asked questions about the style and tension in the OTS. Our interviewees commented that the sequence had a 'dark atmosphere' which contributed to the mystery of the piece, and one person said that it was clear to them who the protagonist and antagonists were. I am glad that someone felt they benefitted from this clarity, as this is what I was trying to achieve when writing the dialogue; clearly showing the Femme Fatale as the antagonist whilst remaining vague on the subject matter of her speech. 

The people we asked rated tension as above 5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most tense), and there was evidence to suggest that the tension did indeed build as we had intended; one person said that the revealing of the Goon (towards the end) made them tense, and another said that the musics helped to build the tension towards the end. We also asked the viewers if they would have wanted to continue watching the film, and all said that they would, but for different reasons. One person mentioned the relationship between the voiceover and the final moments of the OTS, suggesting that this made them curious, and another person said that they were drawn into the story of the Femme Fatale. This is good, because the narrative purpose of the OTS was to introduce the Femme Fatale, and the viewers' recognition of her importance shows that this has worked.

When asked about the power of the characters, most of the interviewees talked about the authoritative nature of the Femme Fatale, but one person did state that they thought the Victim had the most power. Although this means that we failed in conveying our ideas correctly to all of our viewers, the varying interpretation doesn't detract greatly from the OTS; it is intended to be mysterious, and a variety of audience interpretations can only enhance this sense of doubt.

The general opinion of our interviewees was that people above the age of 15, but mainly those of late 30s to early 50s, would enjoy the film most. Some justified this by stating that younger teens and children may be put off by the monochrome visuals, and would most likely be confused by the relatively complex plot. In terms of place of exhibition and genre classification (disregarding film-noir), the general consensus was that, based on the OTS, our film would be shown at an 'art house' cinema and would be classified as a 'thriller' or 'psychological thriller.' 

Overall, I feel that these individual sessions worked well, and much of the feedback confirms that we have succeeded in achieving what we originally aimed to. What has been interesting is hearing the in-depth personal feedback that cannot be extracted from large audiences. I feel that listening to the viewers' opinions of the OTS has highlighted the importance of our collegiate method of approach; tackling different factors of the OTS individually and then piecing them together has resulted in an overall high-quality product that meets the standards we set. The result may have been very different if we hadn't clearly distributed the workload and had simply started contructing our piece from all angles.

Audience Feedback Questions

With the final cut of our OTS just finished, we decided that it was time to go out and get some audience feedback that we can use when evaluating our OTS.

For this to work, we needed succint and suitable questions that we could pose to individuals as well as larger audiences. They needed to be phrased in such a way that they weren't daunting to those without experience in media, and they had to extract useful information. I wrote down some questions, and then we added to and tweaked them to ensure that they were sound.

Here is a list of the questions we used:

• What are your first impressions of the film? Did any specific moment stand out to you?

• How tense did the OTS make you feel on a scale of 1 - 10? 10 being the most tense.

• Did you find the ambiguity and mystery of the piece intriguing? Did you feel curious enough to continue watching the film?

• Which character did you feel had the most power?

• Based on what you have seen, who would you recommend the film to? What age-group?

• At what kind of venue would you expect the film to be shown, Art House or Mainstream cinemas?

• How did the film's visual style make you feel? How did this contribute to the overall atmosphere of the film?

• Aside from film-noir, what genre would you classify the film as, based on what you have seen?

After writing these questions, we asked a few people from our media class to watch the final cut of our OTS and then answer some questions whilst being recorded. These individual sessions allowed us to get in-depth views and opinions from people who knew what they were talking about in terms of the construction of the OTS.

Whilst we know that this in-depth, media-conscious feedback will help us a great deal when we come to evaluate, we are also aware that we will need to hear the opinions of general viewers in order to attain a more accurate overview of the film's reception. Yesterday, Tom and I showed the film to our AS Literature class (ages 16-17), and then I asked them the above questions, re-phrased slightly to address the entire group. James, Daniel and I have another audience feedback session with a Year 11 form group (ages 15-16) planned for Monday morning, which will hopefully allow us an insight into the opinions of a slightly younger audience.

Footage of the individual feedback sessions and also those with a group audience will be uploaded and posted soon.

Daniel has posted our OTS to the National Preservation Forum, of which he is a part, so that we can get some feedback from mostly middle-class people up to the age of 60, and James is posting it to Playstuff, where most users are students or academic creatives within the age bracket of 18-40, who hould be able to give some good, articulated views.

For in-depth written feedback on the OTS, please look to the completed questionnaires in Tom's post on Showing the Consumers.

Film Viewing Statistics

In order to try and predict the potential success of a film, it is essential to look at the success of recent films. The film that our OTS represents would be a UK independent film, so I looked for the top 10 UK films for box office gross in 2009.

Top 10 UK films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland, 2009:

1. Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Sherlock Holmes*
4. Fantastic Mr Fox*
5. St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold*
6. The Boat That Rocked
7. Nativity!*
8. The Young Victoria
9. Harry Brown*
10. Planet 51*

Source: Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council RSU analysis
Films with an asterisk (*) were still being exhibited on 10 January 2010.
UK and Republic of Ireland are a single “territory” for film distribution purposes.

Taken from:
http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/media/pdf/k/s/The_UK_box_office_in_2009_Final_Version.pdf

Whilst there is only one close match to our psychological-crime-thriller genre, Harry Brown, the list shows that UK audiences for UK film are interested in post-modernist peices with a mixture of historical and cultural influences. These include Slumdog Millionaire, Sherlock Holmes, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Boat that Rocked. Therefore, a film influenced heavily by film noir, such as that which our OTS preceds, may actually find quite a large audience; the ambiguity of trailers would appeal to hedonists, and the influence of classic film-noir would appeal to both post-modernists and traditionalists in different ways.



Whilst looking at past statistics can be a real help, it is also wise to look at films that are currently being shown. I chose to look at films showing currently at cinemas in the city of York. York a modern, diverse, and culturally dominant city, and so I felt it would accurately reflect traits of the UK overall.


The films on show at least 3 times everyday this week at Vue are:

• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (U)
• Daybreakers (15)
• Edge of Darkness (15)
• It's Complicated (15)
• Ninja Assassin (18)
• Sherlock Holmes (12A)
• The Book of Eli (15)
• The Road (15)

The films on show at least 5 times this week at the 'art house' Picturehouse are:

• A Prophet (18)
• Avatar 3D (12A)
• Precious (15)
• Up in the Air (15)

What these figures show is that, at the moment, both large and art house cinemas are endorsing more adult films of thriller-related genre. It is particularly surprising to see the BBFC's '15' rating dominating the list, along with two '18's. Although it could indicate a rise in demand for such films, it may well be the result of York's two popular universities, creating a large student population that regularly watch such films.

Overall, the conditions of the film industry are promising for the success of a '15' rated film that endorses the classic film-noir style and fits into the psychological-thriller genre. I think that, if the film that our OTS precedes were to be released soon, it would perform averagely, but not better than most, because it fits into the thriller genre, which is quite densely populated, and would have to share audiences with other films within this category.

OTS Review & Revision

After filming as complete group on Sunday evening, James transferred the footage to his computer and set to work editing in Sony Vegas. The result was a basic workprint which we could review and criticise in order to revise; to make improvements.

Although a workprint version is simply intended as a rough 'test-copy' to convey a film's basic structure, theme and chronology, the first edit surpassed expectations, and I was incredibly happy with the way our footage had been composed into a high-quality piece of film. Although there were still problems we needed to address, I am sure that the initial high-quality of the piece will save us time when we come to perfecting it, as the changes we make will only need to be very small.

In order to clarify our next steps for the production, we all gathered for a group reviewing session, in which we discussed our respective views and opinions of the film, and how we thought it could be improved. The first problem we noticed was that of the film's duration. It lasted around 3:00 minutes, whereas ideally it should be 2:00, but could go up to 2:30 maximum. To get feedback from the perspective of newcomers to the film, we asked various people from our media class to watch our film and tell us what they thought. One problem that arose was that of a white van that crossed the shot about half-way through the piece. Some people said that it detracted from the tense atmosphere; one moment you are watching a man fearing for his life, yet trying to remain inconspicuous by walking at normal pace, and the next you are watching an everyday van rattle along the street. The tone was not maintained. During the reviewing session, we took note of these and other, less noticeable problems so that James could go and implement the changes.



The video above is the first revised version of our OTS, with the main changes being the exclusion of the white van and other pieces of redundant footage to reduce the length of the peice. We will recently held another small review session, and the main criticism was that the Femme Fatale's voice didn't fit the character; it was not stern enough, and so her role as leader of a crime syndicate did not seem legible.

To solve this problem, Tom and I have been sampling different female voices by recording them saying some of the Femme Fatale's lines. I have produced some mock-ups of the OTS with the new Femme Fatale voice overlayed using Sony Vegas, and we have determined a suitable actress. Now, all we need to do is to record the new actress saying the lines, extract the audio, and James will overlay this as best as he can with the existing footage of the original Femme Fatale. Syncing the speech shouldn't be such a problem, because most of the time you cannot actually see the Femme Fatale's mouth moving prominently. Aside from helping with recording, Tom is in the process of writing a questionnaire which we can use to get feedback from a wider range of age-groups and audience types.

Target Audience: 'ists' and 'isms'

In the modern world, it is almost impossible to look into the media industry without coming across the concept of a 'target audience'. Every media product produced, whether an advertisement, newspaper or film, has a defined purpose with a specific target audience. An audience is a collection of consumers, and the creators of the media product target a specific collection of consumers with regard to the product and its appeal. For example, the creators of a magazine entitled 'Gardener's Monthly' would most probably focus on gardeners as their target audience, and would need to seriously consider a career change if they had done otherwise.



To simplify the process of determining a particular audience to target, the media industry has resorted to categorising and labelling certain types or groups of people. Just as a blissfully ignorant school-child might define a dislikeable cohort as a 'chav' in order to make their social stance clear, a media company will label types of people depending on certain factors, such as aesthetic preference or yearly income, in order to clarify their aims. Over the latter decades of the 20th Century up until now, this categorisation system has developed in complexity, and can describe almost any comprehendable type of audience with a smothering range of terminology.

When defining an audience, the media uses two main types of categorisation. The first of these is know as the Quantitative Method. This method of categorisation looks at aspects of individuals that are determined by amount or quantity. For example, yearly income and age both fall into this method. Accompanying this method are 'socio-economic-brackets', which classify areas of society into grades, making them easier to target for the media industry.

social grade	social status	occupation
A	upper middle class	higher managerial, administrative orprofessional
B	middle class	intermediate managerial, administrative orprofessional
C1	lower middle class	supervisory or clerical, junior managerial,administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	skilled manual workers
D	working class	semi and unskilled manual workers
E	those at lowest level of subsistence	state pensioners or widows (no other earner),casual or lowest grade workers

This table is provided by the NRS (National Readership Survery), and is funded by the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA), and Periodical Publishers Association (PPA). Copied from http://www.businessballs.com/demographicsclassifications.htm

The other type of categorisation is the Qualitative Method. This focuses on the actual qualities of the audience, such as their asthetic preferences and consumer habits. Film audiences are generally split into three sections, which can be used to define what films might appeal to them. Here is a list of the three categories, along with a definition and some example films:

Hedonist: Purely devoted to their own pleasure and are likely to take risks for this purpose. Such a person would probably watch films like Cloverfield and Final Destination 3D for the thrill aspect, and might chance watching an independent film such as Little Miss Sunshine or Gangster No.1 without really knowing what to expect.

Traditionalist: Sticks to conventions for safety and security. Traditionalists like to have their expectations fulfilled, and would go to watch movies with rigid conventions. Such films include Disney Pixar's Finding Nemo, the original James Bond action films, and almost any romantic comedy.

Post Modernist: A person with intellectual interest, who will revel in intertextual references and enjoy analysing the way in which the film has been constructed. A post modernist would enjoy watching films like District 9, which transposes a science fiction story over South Africa's troubling history. They would also watch movies such as Pulp-Fiction, Run Lola Run, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so as to enjoy the thought and creativity that has made the film.

Whilst these categories generally work for the media industry in areas of research and marketing, it is important to remember that the definitions are not set in stone; a predominantly Hedonistic film may appeal mainly to Post-Modernists, for example.

On top of this, any consumer can be labeled as either Active or Passive. Active consumers will purposefully consume a specific media product, whilst Passive consumers will happen to consume it because it was either forced upon them, or they were guided into it. For example, a woman going to see the latest romantic comedy would be an Active consumer, whilst the poor man being dragged relentlessly along behind her would be a Passive consumer.