Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The involvement of audience feedback played a vital role throughout the whole process of the creation of my short film and ancillary products right from the start.

The first involvement of audience was when I posed a questionnaire towards teenagers (since they were to be my desired intended audience) so as to act as research to discover what my audience is like, in terms of interests and their consumption of media products. The results have been posted in one of my previous entries: http://ryokeichi.blogspot.com/2011/03/short-film-audience-research.html

Of course, by carrying out such a task, this is what established the basis for my short film - the results acquired from the questionnaire helped set the conventions for my products as I then took these into account as a means to use them to accommodate to my audience.

In terms of my ancillary products and short film, since I uploaded these online onto global web2.0 sites such as Facebook and YouTube, people were able to comment on what they thought. This revealed to be highly productive as viewers commented on their opinion of my products, as well as left critical comments so as to help me improve on areas which they felt could be adapted for the better, or to help me with decision making.

With my short film, I also received a number of 'likes' on Facebook (10) and many positive feedback comments (full feedback from Facebook can be found here: http://ryokeichi.blogspot.com/2011/04/short-film-3rd-party-feedback.html). YouTube also showed that my film had been well received as it had been viewed 98 times, and had also been given one 'like'. These results go to show that my short film appeared to be quite successful since those who commented and liked my short film were within my target audience age range. Also, the view number showed me that since it had a high viewing frequency, it was definitely being watched by a wide number of people.

The same applied to my short film poster; I uploaded draft versions of two designs which I could not choose between onto Facebook, and I asked for people to comment on which they preferred and the reason why (http://ryokeichi.blogspot.com/2011/04/ancillary-task-poster-3rd-party.html). Doing this helped me establish which design was more popular with my target audience and let me know whether any changes or adaptions needed to be made to improve either of the two posters.

Within the feedback, this also showed me whether or not my products linked in successfully with eachother or not. In the feedback on the poster drafts, advice was given in some comments as to how the designs appeared to work in line with the narrative of my short film. These were considered as valuable comments as it helped guide me into making sure that there were strong links and connections between each separate product.

In relation to my target audience, the feedback further showed to what extent my short film was enjoyed. As I focused heavily on the comical aspect of the short film, it appeared that this feature deemed to be rather popular with my audience, and was one of the main reasons as to why my short film was enjoyed so much.

Overall, this goes to show that the inclusion of audience feedback, research, and consultations both qualitive and quantative, is perhaps one of the most important factors needed when considering creating a media product. Carrying out surveys and asking open-ended questions enables one to understand their audience to a better degree, gather a range of opinions from a number of different people, and consequently, means all this information can be used constructively in terms of areas of improvement and therefore accomodate to the intended audience to a greater level.