How did you respond to the original brief with the audience in mind?
We had decided that we wanted to produce a horror film but before focusing on a specific storyline I posted some questions on my Twitter account for people to answer. All they had to do was click on the answer anonymously and I would receive the results. I decided to do this because the majority of our generation is on social media. I asked for their age, occupation and gender so that we would have a more clear idea of who our target audience is. I also asked their favourite horror sub-genre since horror films aren't just horror films now, they're more complex and specific. I also asked what's the main reason you watch films so that we knew which area we would have to focus on more. From these results the majority of our target audience are students who are young adults, a majority of these students were also female. The most popular horror sub-genre was psychological with Thriller being a close second. The most popular reason as to why our target audience watch films is because of the storyline and less than half of the voters is for escapism, therefore it was clear that our film had to have a good storyline with a plot twist. Our film has mainly female characters who are close friends which will appeal to the female audience as many young females, such as our target audience, have friendship groups therefore they can relate to these characters as they are also young students. Although the target audience prefer psychological films over thriller films we are unable to apply this genre to our film due to the lack of time we have to portray a psychological storyline. In fill length, psychological films are able to present a psychological idea to the audience as they have time to inject the idea and build a climax. For example, Shutter Island describes the effect of a psychological illness through the use of restrictive narrative as we only know what the protagonist knows.
Rough Cut of Presence
We decided to upload a rough cut of our film in order to receive some feedback of any improvements or adjustments we could make. We created a questionnaire for our audience to answer, we asked; what genre they think our film is, what certificate they think our film is, where they'd expect to see our film, what they like about our film, if they understand the storyline, if the music suits the film and what improvements there could be. From our questionnaire we can infer that the majority of our audience thought the genre of our film was a supernatural thriller, this is an answer we expected because in our film there is a greater presence which brings supernatural into thriller. We can also see that 5 out of 10 people said that our film should be given the certificate 12A, we also expected this as our film doesn't show any death and meets the guidelines of a 12A certificate by the BBFC. Most of the people who completed our questionnaire expected to see our film online. Since our film is a short film this is the outcome we wanted, allowing it to be watched online would give our film more chance of recognition. When people were asked what they like about our film, four people answered the plot and storyline, which is the main focus of our film. We can also see that six people told us they didn't understand the storyline. This is something we had to fix because we need our audience to understand the storyline therefore we decided to include more scenes of Jake so that it's clear that he's friends with the three girls, we had to establish him more as a character. Everyone who participated in the questionnaire said the music does suit the film which we were pleased to hear since we chose our music and use of sound carefully, ensuring that it suits each particular scene. When asked if there should be any improvements with our film, 50% suggested that we add more scenes, with two people inferring that we should develop our characters more. The feedback we received was beneficial and helped us decide what improvements we had to make. 
Video Questionnaire
We conducted this questionnaire to gather results about our film and ways in which we could improve the film. The questionnaire gave us the opportunity to engage our potential audience and understand the elements they wanted to see. A final important question we had to gain feedback for was "what kind of setting would you like to see in our film?" The majority of people we asked described how they expect to see dark settings using low key lighting. We decided we will use low key lighting in order to portray suspense and tension to the audience.
In filming and editing, how did we ensure the meaning would be apparent to the audience?
The most important meaning of the film which we ensured during filming and editing is the end scene where Mellissa, Olivia and Ruby place flowers on a lamp post in memory of Jake. The final frame shows a long shot of the three friends in the bottom left corner of the screen with a path dominating the rest of the screen. The path portrays the three girls walking away from Jake's death to their new reality, a reality without Jake. This is the new path to their future and the fact that they walk away together shows they keep their friendship in memory of Jake. Another scene would be when Mellissa is showing Jake the Ouija board in the car park, we purposely placed the parked cars in the shots to foreshadow Jake's death as he gets hit by a car. During the editing process we carefully chose the correct music and sound to use for each scene. In the scene where Mellissa begins to shake and we show a close up of her face we added the sound of whispers to portray that she hears these whispers and she is either becoming possessed or a supernatural presence has appeared through the Ouija board.
How did the audience respond when you trailed aspects of your film?
When we had posted the final cut of our film we handed out another questionnaire. The majority of the people who participated were aged 18 with half of the majority being 17 and the small minority being aged 19-25 and the majority of these people are students. When asked what genre they think our film is a high percentage of the audience answered thriller, with supernatural horror being a close second and the minority vote was horror. These are the results we were hoping for since our target audience is young adults and the genre we aimed for was supernatural thriller. Half of the people voted that our film is aimed at young adults and the rest voted teenagers, both these age groups are our target audience and we're pleased that our film shows that. Around 25% answered that they would not see our film in the cinema where as the rest voted that they would, we had considered showing our film online so that it could reach a bigger potential audience. However, the majority answered that they would expect to see this film online and rest voted either at a film festival or the cinema. Everyone who participated in this questionnaire said that they do understand the storyline which is what we expected since we included more scenes which introduce the relationship between the characters. When asked what they like about our film, 50% answered the music, 12.5% answered continuity, 12.5% character development, 12.5% locations and another 12.5% said the storyline. I believe that the use of music and sound we have edited into our film is one of the strong points of our film. The final question we asked were what improvements could be made to Presence, 25% said that there could be a bigger twist, 37.5% said the plot build up could be improved and 37.5% said character development. I understand why people said this but since it's a short film we don't have much time to include a big climax so I believe we have included a good enough storyline with a twist considering the little amount of time we have to show our film.
Overall, I have learnt how important audience feedback is and that the audience's reaction to the film should always be considered. We wanted to achieve a preferred response with our audience so after some audience feedback we managed to achieve this by including more footage which was defiantly needed. I also understood that everyone interprets things differently so creating a film to make the audience have a specific response can be difficult as everyone is different.
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