Evaluation 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For Evaluation 3, I have written a blog post:

Audience Feedback had been essential to the overall effectiveness of the Short Film I have created. Throughout the stages of Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production and my Ancillary Tasks, gaining audience feedback has allowed me develop my Short Film further and meet the requirements of the films target audience. My target audience, was males and female between the ages of 15 - 40 years old. 

PRE - PRODUCTION

Throughout the planning stages of my Short Film, the most crucial audience feedback came here. Throughout planning my Short Film, I struggled to think of a storyline, I knew I wanted my film to be in the thriller or drama genre, so I drafted several different storylines. These storylines included; one on mental health, one where the character was struggling to pay the rent of his council house and ended up being evicted and one where the character was homeless. After going through these ideas with my Media Teacher, we made a list of pros and cons for each. At this point I was wanting to do the idea where the character faces eviction after not being able to pay his rent, so my Media Teacher suggested to watch the TV programme 'Can't Pay? We'll take it away' to gain information on real life issues like eviction and people being unable to gain rent.

I also gained audience feedback on my other idea on mental health, where my character is homeless and suicidal. However, eventually I decided not to go through with this idea either as I was worried about whether I would portray Mental Health in the right way as it is a very sensitive subject. In the end I pitched the idea of the character being a homeless guitarist to an audience, and eventually after receiving feedback I decided to go through with the storyline of the homeless guitarist who eventually finds luck through winning the Talent Show.

I also watched lots of different Short Films on 'Shortoftheweek.com' in the drama genre for inspiration and what techniques they used in their films in order to keep an audiences interest in watching their short film. 

Here are some of my initial ideas I had for storylines, which I blogged,  before I came up with the idea of my character being a homeless guitarist who finds hope and luck: 

PRODUCTION

Throughout the process of actually filming and producing my Short Film, audience feedback was again extremely useful. I spent a duration of two days filming my Short Film, so once I filmed the first day, I put together what I had done so far and showed an audience and my Media Teacher. The feedback I received was extremely useful as they spotted mistakes that I had not seen initially. The main problem they pointed out was that I did not look like my Actor was playing the Guitar, so therefore looked unrealistic. This mistake I was able to re-film and fix on the second day of filming.

 Here is an example of the mistake I made when filming this shot for the first time:

 Also, another mistake that was pointed out was that some of the shots were not straight. Getting shots at the right angle was difficult as the location I filmed on was on a hill. However, some of these mistakes I could fix through editing and some of the shots I had to re-film.

Here is an example of this mistake: 

Once I had put all the shots I had filmed together and edited into a Rough Cut, I showed  a small audience. Here another mistake was pointed out, both my audience said that the guitarist would not use gloves to play the guitar. Therefore, I decided to take these shots out and either replace them or just leave them out. However, this did not decrease the overall effectiveness of my film. 

Here is an example of the mistake I made with the gloves: 

Overall, throughout the production stages of my Short Film, I found audience feedback very effective  and allowed me to fix mistakes I had made and create an effective Short Film.

POST-PRODUCTION

After I had completely finished editing my Short Film. I showed it to a focus group of around 22 people around the age of my target audience to get feedback. Here is the form I asked them to fill out after watching it:

Here are the results for each question asked: 

For Question 1, most of my results laid in the 4/5 category, however the results for this question was very positive. The message of the Short Film seemed to have got across to my target audience effectively, which I am very pleased with. The majority of the audience did not comment, however, some of the audience members who commented said that they felt sympathetic towards my character which is what I wanted the audience to feel. 

Question 2: What type of genre do you think this categories in? 

For this question, most people left it blank, however, the majority of people who did fill out this part of the table said that the genre of my Short Film was Drama, which shows that the film does fit in well to the conventions of a Drama. However, some people said that is could of been social realist as some of the conventions and part of the story does also fit into the social realist genre, even though it is mainly Drama. 

 

Question 3, got more 4/5 and 3/5 ratings, which again I was pleased with. The audience members who commented again mentioned how they sympathised with the character. However, some felt that the music was quite repetitive. After this helpful feedback I listened to the music again to see if could do anything with it or replace it, however, I decided to keep the music as I intended for it to be quite repetitive in order to reflect the repetitive lifestyle that my character leads. 

Question 4 got a varied response, with the rating 3/5 being the most rated by audience members. Some of the audience who rated 4/5 or 5/5 said it was really nice to watch and that they would watch it. However, those who rated lower, did not comment , however part of the reason that the film may not be the type of genre they would go and watch. Even though the majority of the audience was my target audience, some of the members may not have fit all of the categories of my target audience.

Again, Question 5 also got a varied response, with the majority of the audience rating my Short Film 4/5. I am again pleased with this result. The audience members who did comment stated that too many colours and filters would make the film less realistic and would ruin the message. This was my intention to put as little colour in as possible in order to keep the film as realistic as possible. However, one audience member did want more colour grading, however, as said I do not want to ruin the message by putting too many filters over the top. 

ANCILLARY TASKS

As well as my Short Film I also got audience feedback as to whether my Ancillary Tasks - Film Poster and Magazine Review were effective in advertising my Short Film and whether they were conventional. 

FILM POSTER

From my first draft of my Film Poster I decided to use this image as I felt it effectively reflected the mood and atmosphere of my Short Film. I got audience feedback from my Media Class who agreed that the image was effective with how I wanted to portray the atmosphere of the Film. Initially, for the credits I used the font 'Times new roman', however, after Audience feedback, I realised that this font for the credits was not conventional for a Film Poster. So I looked on the website 'Dafont.com' and found the font 'Universal Accreditation' which is typically used in the credits of a Film Poster. Furthermore, I also changed the font of the titles on my Film Poster from 'Voga' to 'Century Gothic' in order to create synergy with my Magazine Review so that the advertisements would be easily recognisable for an audience. 

MAGAZINE REVIEW

Initially, I found it difficult to create a layout for my Magazine Review, however, after drafting a layout that I would think to be conventional, I got some feedback from an audience and it was suggested that I read some of 'Empire Magazines' for ideas on how to lay out my Magazine Review and what the typical conventions of a film review were. I then drafted another layout and decided to use the same picture as my Film Poster on the front page to create synergy. I then added some behind the scenes pictures of myself filming scenes from the Short Film. I then placed a bullet point explains what the director of the film was filming, inside of the image. I then read another 'Empire Magazine' to confirm that placing a bullet point in an image was conventional to a Magazine Review, which I found out it was. After this I showed my Magazine Review to an audience, which was met with positive feedback. 

OVERALL.......

Audience feedback throughout the pre-production, production, post-production stages and Ancillary Tasks, audience feedback has been extremely useful. Audience Feedback throughout the planning and creation of my Short Film as well as my Ancillary Tasks has allowed me to learn and improve on each product I have created. Therefore, allowed me to produce an effective and successful Short Film and two effective Ancillary Tasks.