Media Evaluation Question 4 A-Level

1. What have you
learned from
your audience
feedback?
Evaluation Question 4 –
Poppy Frost

2. Contents;
1. What I learned about conventions
2. What I learned about target audiences
3. What I learned about the importance of
music/audio
4. What I learned about my rough cut
CONTENTS

3. Originally from conventions;
From asking target audiences, I found out more
about the stereotypical conventions of a
documentary than I originally did in the beginning.
The conventions of what I thought of documentaries
originally can be seen here:
http://poppyfrosta2media.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/ge
nre-documentaries.html
As seen on the mind-map, my original knowledge
was very limited on documentaries.
CONVENTIONS

4. What I learned from the audience
feedback;
The audience feedback helped me see the other
conventions of documentaries.
For example, documentaries don’t always necessary
have a presenter; in some cases, it is simply the real
story of someone, and not the presenter explaining
the narrative. This notion is something which added
to the inspiration of my short documentary. While
there is still a presenter, the documentary is
primarily the story of the interviewee, and is not
dominated by the narrator.
CONVENTIONS

5. How the audience feedback
helped;
The audience feedback helped with my
documentary as it opened up ideas and options that
I had not previously considered; primarily the one I
had mentioned before.
The audience feedback helped me also through
making me think about how to challenge the
conventions of documentaries, primarily through the
lack of having any sort of faces within the film, and
so helped me expand my mind and helped me be
more creative with a genre of film which is usually
considered straightforward.
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CONVENTIONS

6. Originally from target audiences
Originally, I thought that target audiences were
very straight forward; children watched things,
naturally, aimed toward children like CBBC
videos and such, young people watched music
videos and feature films, and elderly people
only watched things on the television. While
many of this was true, I was also shown other
things which were surprising.
TARGET AUDIENCES

7. What I learned from the audience
feedback;
I conducted a survey using the website “Survey
Monkey”, and used social media to advertise the
survey which can be viewed here:
http://poppyfrosta2media.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tar
get-audience-survey.html
All together, I got 24 responses from both people my
age (17-19) and adults (with ages ranging from 20-
50). With the results I gathered, I created a video
which displayed the results.
TARGET AUDIENCES

8. Audience survey video;
TARGET AUDIENCES

9. What I learned from my audience
feedback continued;
Something which I found interesting was how many people
thought that children were a consumer of short films, when I
originally considered children to mainly consume feature
films and television series. However, with the constant
increase of technology, this actually makes much more
sense as children have more access to the internet, and so
can have access to websites like YouTube which broadcast
short films.
In documentaries, which is the area in which I looked at,
children didn’t come into the equation. Instead, people
believed that the older people are, the more likely they are to
watch documentaries. I found this interesting, as this made
adults and the elderly my target audience.
TARGET AUDIENCES

10. How the audience feedback
helped;
The audience feedback about target audiences helped
me in my final product as it gave me a clear vision as to
who my target audience was; adults and the elderly.
With this kept in mind during the production of my main
product, I made sure that the documentary could be
relatable within these age groups. To do this, I had the
voice and story of an elderly person, which meant that the
elderly could relate to the story. Adults could then also
relate to this when remembering the stories they would
hear from their parents who would have had similar
experiences to my grandmother.
TARGET AUDIENCES
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11. Originally from music/audio;
I originally did realise the importance of music
and audio, however didn’t quite realise as to
how powerful it could be.
AUDIO/MUSIC

12. What I learned from audience
feedback;
Originally, I had no idea what music to use within my
documentary. After asking for people’s opinions, I
learned that documentaries have different kinds of
music dependent on their sub-genre; for example, a
historical documentary may have orchestral music to
evoke excitement about some sort of historical
event. As mine was about fairies and nature, an
orchestral piece wouldn’t work, and so I had to look
into something more fantastical.
AUDIO/MUSIC

13. How the audience feedback
helped;
Without the audience feedback, I feel like I would have never have
made the right choice of music for my documentary. Instead of
choosing something orchestral like I said earlier, I instead went for
something fantastical; after searching “fairy tale music” in YouTube,
I found a piece by Brendon Fietcher called “Castle in the Clouds”. It
fitted the tone perfectly; it was soft enough for the voice over to be
heard, yet mystical enough to go well with the story being told.
Through audience feedback, I also knew when to turn down the
volume during speech, as well as fade it in and fade it out. The
voice over was also commented on, with people enjoying how
“genuine” it sounded as nanny relived her stories and memories,
with this adding to the quality of the documentary. Many said that,
without her sounding so genuine, they would have considered it to
be a spoof or a mockumentary instead.
AUDIO/MUSIC

14. Originally from rough cut;
I thought it was good enough to be my final cut;
I thought the editing was fine as well as the
selected shots, though the editing techniques at
the time was all rather basic.
ROUGH CUT

15. What I learned from audience
feedback;
The first error I made in my rough cut was that I
placed a collection of shots of the same type all
together; I placed walking shots next to walking
shots, close ups next to close ups, and so forth. I
tried to make the documentary look too rigid rather
than a story, as well as the editing techniques,
again, being very basic. I was originally scared to try
new things, however the audience feedback
motivated me to try out new things.
ROUGH CUT

16. How the audience feedback
helped;
The main thing I learned from audience feedback of both the
conventions of a documentary and audience feedback is that
editing was a huge part of documentaries. It motivated me to try
new things, and learn how to use the “track matte” effect on
Premiere Pro. The post in which how I explain how the effect is
done, with the video I used and screenshots, is here:
http://poppyfrosta2media.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/zooming-on-
footage.html
ROUGH CUT
Here, the video in which
the technique is used:
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contents

17. Over all;
From my audience feedback, I have learned
numerous new skills which have helped me in my
final cut. This includes;
1. New conventions of documentaries
2. About target audiences, and who target
audiences really are
3. The importance of audio and music
4. The importance of editing techniques
Without my audience feedback, I never would have
tried new things or even have considered some of
the things which I was given insight to.
CONCLUSION