Evaluation Question 4 - Abi

Who are your audience and what have you learnt from audience feedback? The intended outcome of our production was to create a trailer that would appear to be a thriller for teenagers due to the coming of age elements also involved. I think we were successful in our endeavour, as the first 30 seconds mainly involve shots of teenagers behaving in a stereotypical and somewhat relatable way to our audience of teenagers from the age of 15-21, including parties, relationships and education. We should the thriller elements from then onwards, such as explosions, blood, chases and the authorities being called, however we still kept the coming of age element by showing flashbacks of relationships and our main cast being teenagers themselves. Our intended audience for Fallen Grace are mixed gender teenagers from the age of 15-21. This is shown by the elements of coming of age which usually appeals to a young adult audience, the cast being relatable due to them being a similar age, and the certificate of 15 that we gave the film, which also helps with the thriller element of our genre as it is rare for thrillers to be below the certificate of 15. We also chose this target audience as it is the one we can relate to most ourselves and therefore could portray our own emotions and experience and so help the audience relate more to our production as we have a better understanding of them. To attract the audience, we include two titles plate in the trailer which states “from the makers of Sweet Revenge”. This helps to pull in the audience as it will interest fans who enjoyed Sweet Revenge, which was another 15. It also gives some indication to the style of the film, including how we filmed and edited. Sweet Revenge is in this instance intended to seem like a well-known film, which quite a few people watching the trailer would recognise. This is also supported by the fact that both films are mid budget which means that a similar audience would be interested in them. To check for any mistakes and places that could be improved, we asked our friends and family to view our second to last edit and give some constructive criticism. This is because we felt that since we knew what every shot meant and the plot, we may be biased about the outcome. The qualitative data we received was very helpful as it allowed us to see mainly where more sound effects were needed, which we then added in for the final edit. This included the heart beat at the end and the gasp-like sound effect at the highlighter floating back into Grace’s hand. Out of the feedback we received, one particular comment noted was peoples love for the explosion. This comment particularly pleased us as we had gone to a lot of effort to do the explosion and a lot of hard work happened to make it possible – and look good. We decided to use an actual explosion rather than use legal accessible already filmed material as we wanted to ensure it was right for our production and we as realistic as possible. We also wanted our main actress Clare to be in shot which would not be possible without filming the explosion our self or using a green screen, however it would be hard for Clare to reaction to an explosion by falling to an explosion that wasn’t actually there. To do this, we contacted local business Lancashire Militia who had previously worked with our director Emma and so agreed to do the explosion for free in a safe environment. The explosion worked perfectly for the transition from equilibrium to disruption, as an explosion is a physical disruption and would shock the audience and make them more excited. Conforming to conventions of trailers, we only included shots of the equilibrium and the disruption, and none of the resolution. This is because the point of the audience going to see a film is to find out what the resolution is and how the characters achieve it, so showing the resolution would be pointless and would make us lose a large viewership. We did however, have a very fast montage of shots at the end of most the previous shots already shown, however due to the speed of the montage it is very difficult to see each individual shot in the montage. The montage also reverses the shots. This was inspired by the trailer for “How I Live Now”. We included this as it was a very good way to end the trailer and close it without ruining the end of the film. It also gives a very dramatic effect and the speed makes it quite thrilling conforming to the genre of the film. We also included Claude Levi Strauss’ theory of binary opposition, which is a common convention of thrillers. Binary oppositions which we encompassed include good vs evil, young vs old, fair vs dark, supernatural vs natural, innocent vs guilty, life vs death, happiness vs pain, love vs hate. These are Grace vs. Mr Eastwood, Grace vs. everyone, Grace’s emotions, Grace’s life and Charlie’s death (which was not seen in the trailer although there were subtle hints to it) and Grace’s emotions vs Mr Eastwood’s emotions. We also collected quantitative data so we could have statistics on how successful our production would be. We showed our trailer to the year 12 media class and gave them a set of questions to answer with yes or no, which could then be tallied and placed on a pie graph. The questions included; 1. Would you go and see this film 2. Do you find the storyline interesting and does it leave you wanting to see more 3. Would you like us on facebook or follow us on twitter? 4. Do you like and think the soundtrack is appropriate 5. Do you like the characters and find some relatable 6. Do you find the characters realistic 7. Could you easily identify the genre of this trailer The feedback we received was very positive, such as 85% of people saying that they would go and see the film at the cinema, meaning that our intended outcome was achieved as the students we asked the questions to are in the age of our target audience. We think this is due to contributing factors such as most of the people being able to identify the genre, which we achieved by the conventions and codes placed into our production. Also, our relevant use of mise-en-scene further helped as we clearly identified the thriller element with locations such as basements and the use of the explosion, and our coming of age element with locations such as house parties and the theme of young love.