Evaluation Activity 3: Audience Feedback 2

 This is the second audience feedback session that we hosted - asking a sample audience of our key demographic to view our trailer and offer their opinons. One of the first points they made was that it looked very much like a Hollywood blockbuster and felt very professional and high budget. This was exactly what we were aiming for, so was clearly a successful part of our production. Another of the audience members commented that it was very 'clean cut' and 'to the point', meaning that we revealed enough of the film to intrigue the audience, but not too much to give away the storyline. We feel that we especially achieved this in the opening with the poem taken from Percy Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound', which hints at the storyline rather than explains it. The dialogue throughout helped create this enigma code with lines such as 'you're not the only one left with a  stake in this world'; the line doesn't explicitly say what the 'stake' is, but it's clear that it's something big. The same audience member also mentioned that he found many of the shots interesting.

However, it was also remarked by one viewer that they felt the final shot didn't match the music very successfully. They felt that with the slow music at the end, a shot of someone shooting a gun was somewhat inappropriate and they felt it should be a slow reflective moment, with perhaps someone injured or dying. We countered this by saying that the character was, in fact, injured as they crawled along, and the rest of the trailer had had many emotional moments, so the last moment should finish in a more exciting fashion. The other audience members also disagreed with this particular viewer, approving of the subtlety of it and the juxtaposition of music and visuals, so it appears that his is the minority view.

One part of our production that received especial praise was our use of many locations. The viewers were felt that the use of multiple locations in multiple countries gave the film a feeling of 'space', and made it seem like more of a global phenomenon. It was compared to films such as 'Skyfall' in this aspect. We were also very happy with our use of locations, as we had enough so that the film didn't have to keep cutting back to the same scenes, but was able to use a wide variety.

A slight criticism that was noted was that it was sometimes hard to distinguish between the different characters doing the voice over. This is probably because Philip did the voices for two of the characters, none of whom were his own. However, we feel that perhaps this confusion comes from the fact that our sample audience knew what each of the characters were supposed to sound like, so found it difficult to give them Philip's voice. A more artistic reason for the similarities in the voices is that we did it to blur the boundaries between good and evil.

The sole female character in our film, Eleanor, also came under discussion. The audience questioned why she was always seen running, however we felt that this point was rather invalid, as she's only in two shots, only one of which she's running in. To add to this, the one where she's running you don't see her face. However they also asked what role she had in the film and we responded that she was there to conform to the Male Gaze Theory to address a male audience and she also worked as the 'princess' character as described by Vladimir Propp. We also feel there is something of a 'female gaze' aspect to our film, as women would be attracted to our film because of the manly feats that the male characters in the film undertake.

As aforementioned, the audience praised the wide variety of shots used in our film.We were questioned about how we made more characters more prevalent. Some of the characters in the film, such as Thorne, appear many times in the trailer, to establish them as the lead character. However other characters such as Zubasu only appear for split seconds at a time to create an enigma code and make them appear mysterious. At the beginning of the trailer the audience is only shown silhouettes and random body parts, without showing anyone's faces. This creates an enigma code, and makes the audience want to watch on to find out who the characters are. They are finally shown Lucas Thorne, firmly cementing him as the lead protagonist of the film. Later in the feedback session, one of the viewers commented how they wanted to know more about the characters.

Overall the feedback session was very interesting and we learnt a lot from it. We realised more about our trailer than we thought was actually there and it helped us to think through our ideas and why we did some things.