What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In both the research and planning for our documentary we used questionnaires in order to firstly asses what are audience wanted, and secondly to assess whether our documentary had achieved this. We asked males and females between the ages of 16-18 in order to see what they expected in the way of music, conventions, openings and voxpops. Through our original questionnaire we established the following things: that our target audience would be between 16-32 which tied in with similar documentaries such as Airline and Passport Control; that our documentary would feature on Channel 4 as BBC Three was saturated with similar shows such as The Worlds Worst Place to be Gay; and that plenty of facts and voxpops would be used in our opening. In our audience feedback survey, we questioned 15 individuals of 17 and 18, to find out the following things. Firstly, we asked questions that related to our documentary. Our first question was if the audience had learnt anything from the documentary. I felt this was important as the documentary was intended to be as informative as possible. Thankfully, all we asked said they had learnt something, with nearly half, 7/15 remembering the specific percentage of the UK that identified themselves to be homosexual 1.5%. Secondly, we asked what individuals liked and disliked about our documentary in order to further evaluate how successful it is. 11/15 people didnt specifically state if there was something that they didnt like. However, 2 people stated that they believed that there wasnt enough negative opinion, which looking back, I agree with, as we needed more diversity in opinion. Another stated that there was too much information, and another that there was too much time filled with factual information. As we wanted our original documentary to be fact filled in the opening it is possible that too many facts where included, although I dont entirely agree that this is a negative thing. The questionnaire also revealed that a third of people liked the piece to camera/presenter and that another third enjoyed the evaluation of the YouTube footage which I believe is extremely encouraging with the positive outweighing the negative.

We also asked a series of questions regarding the overall mise-en-sense of the documentary. Everyone that we asked stated that they believed our sound levels where consistent, our background music was suitable and that our editing was also coherent. Although I believe that there are some slight issues with the sound levels throughout and a few black sections in the documentary, overall I do believe that we produced a high level documentary, though it wasnt perfect.

We also asked a series of questions that related to our radio trailer which we have decided to play on Capital FM in order to reach our target audience. Firstly, we asked if after listening to the radio documentary, would the individuals watch the documentary. 13/15 people stated that they would watch the documentary which I believe is a brilliant response with over 75% of the individuals who listened to the trailer wanting to watch it. If this was applied to the potential listeners who would be exposed the radio trailer of Capital FM we would be able to attract a huge viewership.

However only 11/15 could recall when and where the television programme would be showed. This is disappointing and after reflecting on this I believe we should have repeated this information at the beginning and the end in order to further enforce when the individuals could view the programme as after all, the entire point of an advertisement is attract an audience to the main project which we did not achieve to as high a standard as we could have.

Finally, we asked questions that would enable us to evaluate our double page spread. Once again I believe we had an overall positive response. Firstly everyone stated liked the limited colour pallet we used, which is a positive, with one stating they liked the way it was in-keeping with the theme as we used the colours of the British flag in Homophobic Britain?

13/15 of the people we asked also stated that they would tune in for the documentary after seeing the magazine article. This again is over 75% and could once again help us attract a vital audience for our documentary.

Overall I believe that our audience feedback has been extremely successful in exposing weaker aspects of our documentary and illuminating how it could be improved. I believe these aspects are: some of the minor discrepancies in the sound levels; a lack of negative opinion on homosexuals; too much time being dedicated to interviews and perhaps too many facts in the opening; and a need to reiterate the time date and channel showing the TV show in order to obtain more viewers on the radio trailer. However overall I am proud of the work I have produced and that overall I have fulfilled the brief.