Around the Block trailer, poster and TV listing front cover results and analysis

Audience feedback

Feedback from our soap opera trailerFor our audience feedback we got together a focus group of 20. We have created the final piece of audience as partners however we used the fact there was two of us to our advantage. We decided the best way to find results would be to split the 20 people between us so we could look more in depth to our results then collaborate together to create an audience feedback overview. Together we asked a number of questions:1) How effective to you find our trailer?2) Criticisms of our trailer3) What did you think of the music we used within our trailer?4) How effective do you find our soap opera poster?5) How effective do you find out TV listings magazine front cover?

We believe that from these questions we would get a true understanding of how people felt when they watched our trailers and looked at our ancillary tasks. This way we would get a snippet of whether or not the soap opera would be a success or not.

The next step...

We got together a selection of teenagers ranging in ages within our Sixth Form to watch our trailer and look at our ancillary tasks. From

this we then asked our focus group to individually answer the questions we had asked them to answer and the come together as a group of 10 to discuss what the rest of the group thought. This way individually we would be able to notice any patterns from the focus

group in relation to similar features they liked and what they thought needed improving. It was important for us to initially focus on

surveying teenagers as they are our target audience and their initial opinions we felt mattered the most.

We felt we received a range of answers that benefitted us as creators of the soap opera and it was interesting to acknowledge some of the

focus groups opinions individually and then as a group

These were the results we received...

Question 1)How effective do you find our

trailer?These are the various answers we received..

“I found strange how there was not speech throughout the trailer. However the girl only speaking at the end ended up being extremely effective and I felt that the suspense and build up was worth the cliff hanger ending.”

“I feel that the quick jump shots fit in well with the music..”

“You could tell from the trailer exactly what the soap is going to be about... I like the fact there is s build up of suspense and then faster action throughout until it reaches the cliff hanger.”

“I think the trailer effectively portrays modern teenage life within urban surrounding.”

“Very effective, it is clear to see what roles the characters play and that they are the main characters also.”

It is effective in the sense that you never know what’s about to happen.. I love the various camera shots.. Id definitely be hooked if I watched this.”

These were just some of the results we got for question one, we used these snippets as we felt they gave an overall view of what the

majority thought of the trailer. It was clear to see that the majority liked and thought it was effective that we left the trailer on a cliff

hanger leaving the audience wanting more. Most respondents also felt that they can see the relation between modern teenage life and the world we are living in now. It is clear that we are not portraying 21st century in a positive way to get the true understanding of how

the minority live. For teenagers watching this it will also make many teenagers feel more positive about their own lives, this is a way in which we have

followed typical codes and conventions of a soap opera as their main objective is to make audiences shut off from the problems they may

be facing in their lives and show what could possibly be happening in others. This is why soap operas are so exaggerated yet follow typical

ideologies of a UK society.

Our focus group also picked up on various camera shots we used within the trailer. The following ones

they noticed and they described why they thought they were effective.

They liked the medium shot to show her emotions, the camera looking up at her they thought showed clearly how the audience may see her as a powerful figure when really she is portrayed as helpless

They thought that this over the shoulder shot perhaps showed a conversation between the characters. It also showed that from the males expression that he holds a level of power over the girl.

Our focus group liked that in this shot the

audience could clearly see the girls expression

and then you can see the males figure in the background. They

thought that this scene connoted danger and

there is also a sense of dramatic irony as the

audience knows something that the character may not.

They also liked the close up shot to show the exchange of a business card. They felt that this showed an important moment between the characters and that this was potentially a scene that needed to be focused on.

The focus group when it came to this part of the trailer liked the fact the when the music changed in beat there was a jump shot to show the girl knocking on the door and that it was an important part in the trailer as it came to the conclusion of the intense build up.

This was the only part of the trailer where there was diagetic sounds, the focus group liked the fact that the story was left on a cliff hanger, this made them want to carry on watching what was going to happen.

The focus group thought that this was a clever was to show

what was going on and linking the characters together

showing that the male character was after the girl. They also thought it created

realism to the situation using typical props that a teenager would have. The blue phone

case also connotes masculinity.

Question 2)Criticisms of our trailerThese were our

various results...

“My only criticism is that the first half of the trailer was quite slow and I didn’t know when the build up was going to occur”

“I thought it was unusual that there was barely any speech within the trailer.”

“I wasn’t too sure where the story was going in the beginning.”

“I thought the trailer revolved primarily around just two characters, it would have been better if more characters were introduced.”

As you can see there were very little criticisms and the ones we did receive were all along the same lines. After analysing the results as a group and speaking to our focus group we explained to them why we did the things that they did not necessarily like. We thought it was essential to show our focus group the trailer without any added background information so they gave us their honest opinions of what they thought of it.We then as a group watched the trailer again, this time we made them aware of why we had done the things we did and they agreed that it does in fact make the trailer more effective. For example the reason why the trailer mostly involved two characters is because they would be seen as the ‘main characters’ and that we wanted to show from the start that their story would be a big one.We understand that for our soap opera we are not going to be able to explain to everyone the reasoning behind how we created aspects, in a way this leaves it up to the audience to interpret the soap however they want. We also understand that not everyone is going to necessarily like it however we hope that we have captured the needs of our desired target audience and they will go on to want to watch it.We may have got the answers we got because we focused on a particular type of group. Although they do not have the same backgrounds they all revolved around similar friendship groups maybe suggesting their answers were bias to the way the feel. If we were to survey again I believe it will be more beneficial to us to sample a random selection for more precise results.

Also we made our focus group aware of the longer build up in the beginning. We were not creating a trailer for an already existing soap opera so we could not make it appear as if we were showing a well known storyline where the audience will know already what is going on. We had the more difficult task of creating something completely knew that no one would have seen before. We needed to clearly state at the beginning of our trailer the main outline of what the soap would be about and who the main characters would be. We had created mock trailers on a range of software's to discover how long our trailer could be. We had many ideas with various scenes included that lasted over 5 minutes. Our final trailer we managed to get down to under a minute and a half cutting out unnecessary scenes and cutting shots. Within this more suitable length of time we managed to fit in two storylines where it is clear to the audience what exactly is going on and a brief outline of the characters and their status. We did this effectively through use of camera angles, camera shots, props and costumes to give a sense of realism throughout.

Question 3What did you think of the music we used within our

trailer?These were our various results...

“I feel you have fitted the footage well to the music.”

“I love the way the music links in with the action happening and the camera shots.”

“The soundtrack gives the trailer a more professional look, I love it!.”

“Perfect song choice, fits in with the genre.”

“The song isn’t too well known meaning it doesn’t take the glory away from the filming.”

“I feel that I am involved with the characters listening to this song.”

We got a lot of positive results in relation to the soundtrack, our focus group felt that it fit in perfectly with the footage and created bigger suspense through the trailer. Music was definitely an important aspect for us to focus on as it brings the whole trailer together. Music is a very powerful thing and can make an audience feel a mix of emotions. We really appreciated that the whole focus group were in agreement that it was the perfect song choice for the image we were going for and they can relate it with the ‘urban’ image that we wanted to portray. They ideas they came up with as a group were also very helpful for us. Some of the focus group felt that the music brought everything together and without it we would not have been able to create such an important message. From the beat within the song they felt they got the true understanding of less economically developed societies as rap songs normally involve a lot of emotions and peoples feelings meaning the song had power to make the audience feel sympathy for the characters.

Question 4 and 5How effective do you find our soap opera poster? and How effective do you find out TV listings magazine front cover?

When creating our ancillary tasks it was important for us to be able to make a link between them and our trailer so that the audience can connect with them all. We also wanted to use effective, bold images so that all three final outcomes would compliment each other and send out a powerful message. In terms of our poster we used one bold image to represent our soap opera to connote the genre we were aiming for. Whilst at the same time for our magazine we followed similar norms of a TV listings magazine.Whilst surveying our focus group we wanted to find out from them whether they could make the link between the ancillary tasks and also the trailer. A main focus point for us was for our target audience to start to gain an interest in the soap. We left question 4 and 5 quite open so that our focus group could interpret it in their own way. We wanted to spot trends within the results we got so that we knew we were catering for the right market and we had used all the skills and tools we had so that our target audience would build an interest. We put together two groups of ten to discuss what they thought of our soap opera poster, this way each individual could then build on others ideas to get a true understanding of what they thought.

These were some of the results we got…

This is a copy of our soap opera poster..

One group commented on the rigid edge around the recognised E4 logo saying how it gave the poster an edge to it. We did actually not cut around the logo image ‘neatly’ on purpose. We connote distress through multiple ways on our poster. Never before has this distorted logo been created on an E4 promotion poster showing that we are breaking the boundaries and going against the ‘norms’. This is one way that we challenged the codes and conventions of an ordinary soap opera p0ster.

The focus group also commented on our minimal use of colour, they said that they liked the fact there were very few colours. This made in look professional and appealing to the teenage market. We felt that colours would be important within the production of our poster as they send out powerful images. We used yellow and purple on our poster as they are clashing colours, this connotes that our soap may seem out of the ordinary and different from anything else., this could possibly suggest that I-AM-ME people would be attracted to our soap opera. This group of people are overall a minority in the population and they like to break the boundaries.

Our focus group said that they also liked the fact that we used on bold image on our poster as this does not take any attraction away from the name of the soap. As our soap is newly launched onto the market we wanted the word captions to be noticed just as much as the image itself. They also said that it was alluring as they were attracted to the unusual image making them want to discover more. We felt it was important for us to focus on the advertisement side of the project as this is what would get people interested.

Linking in with the bold text, the focus group also picked up on the fact we had used the same font on the poster and also the magazine front cover suggesting that our audience are picking up the basic norms we have used within and also recognising the soap as a ‘brand’.

This is a copy of our TV listings magazine front cover..

Our focus group picked up on the use of predominant colours which for us our blue, red and white. They said that these colours reminded them of being ‘British’ (colours of the flag) and they worked well together. Also the bold black text complimented against the lighter background colours.

We showed our focus group a range of already existing TV listing magazine front covers so that they could see why we followed some

similar codes and conventions.

They also recognised the subtle use of frames around the images, this thought this in a way made things look neat and organised on the page as there is a lot of space to fill and these individual frames looked effective. They thought that it also made the images easier to look at and they were able to focus on the various storylines.

This was one of the front covers we showed our focus group as this was one of the inspirations for our own.

Our focus group also said that they liked the way the colours of the logo liked in with the overall predominant colours of the magazine front cover. Also that much like soap life, the logo acted as a brand image and would be recognisable to many audiences. We did not want the TV listings front cover to only seem as if it was being aimed at the audience our soap is aimed at as it is much more of a niche market. TV listings magazines contain many genres of soap so that is why we followed very similar codes and conventions.

Also that we have made ‘Around the Block’ a main

feature on the page, alerting new audiences. We wanted to make the

soap appear available to all audiences as it could

potentially attract anyone. They also liked the

positioning of the caption ‘Around the Block’ as it

looks unique. We felt that it allured mystery that

would be recognised by readers of the magazine.