Evaluation Pt 4 - Audience Feedback

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


From the very beginning I have gained audience feedback. I got it from people looking over my shoulder when on a program such as photoshop saying how to tweek it, and also when I ask groups of people around my Age to view my work.
The first stage of which i gained feedback was my Animatic. I showed it to my media class who are all around the age 17/18 which was always, my intended audience. This is because I believed it would always be easier to get feedback if i only had to ask my friends and people around school. Also since I am part of a large network of people around 17/18 on facebook, it is easier to share videos with them.

The feedback I gained from this showing was that they liked the idea of the costumes I would sue, also the fact that there is a slight hint of a character in the background that is not in the focus of the shot. However, I also mixed these with good points from my team-mates idea and added the theory of time going backwards in the morning. This helped improve both our ideas into one main one, which shared the creative flow, not just focusing on one persons idea which means they will take all creative control.


The first piece of feedback I gained for our production was of the beginning. After filming half of our production we thought it would be best to get an idea of how our audience felt of it so far. I posted it onto Facebook but also uploaded it onto Youtube so it could be embedded onto Blogger. The main feedback we got was that they liked the music, but would prefer it to have the video more in sync with it. this meant we would cut it so it fitted with the music and was in time. This is much more noticeable in our new cut of the film. They also noticed there were some camera shakes and other flaws which i did not first notice, which i went back and cut out. 
On a second viewing, now with the rest of the film attached together the audience decided that the beginning was way too long. Also the narrative seemed not very noticeable  and they weren't sure what was going on. The dialogue did not help either as they did not understand it.This was felt by Me and my team mate as well, so we decided to go back and re-record the dialogue in a way they may understand better and clearer. We did this by using a reporters microphone, from school, and then placed it over the top of the original audio. We also tried cutting down what we could from the beginning to make it shorter. Differences seen here before and after.
We then showed our third piece to our teacher and to our class. Some of the feedback came back the same such as the story was still complicated and didn't make much sense. Also there would be some things changed which would leave the film with a much greater impact. Our teacher gave us feedback on how to make the twist much better. He said that if we had more sequences of people doing things backwards it would add a much greater effect and sense of abnormality. Also the Blue Man being able to speak takes away the narrative enigma of who he really is. The audience and our teacher also noticed that we didnt get the backwards bit just right everything was done the normal way round except the walking e.g. he only noticed the person doing the Odd backwards thing, once he's past them.
On reflecting on this advice, we decided we would re-shoot a lot of the footage, Also re-think about the story to make it seem more convincing and less confusing. We decided we would have an object that is connected to both gordon and the Blue Man. This creates more of a connection between the two. Since our main character was playing with army men, an our new narrative had the Protagonists father in the army, we thought a medal would do nicely. We also decided that the Blue Man would be less upfront in the film, and more behind scenes which gave him more of a mysterious atmosphere and a way of getting good shots and framing into our footage. Since problems raised with our main actor however, it ended up we had to re-film the whole film, which ended up making it seem like an entirely different film all together, however it still has the same basic outline as it originally did.
Just before we posted our final cut, a friend told us that they still didn't think it was quite obvious enough that the father was dead. This allowed us to put a voice over at the beginning, pretending to be a teacher of some kind in Gordons life where they tell him that his father has been killed in action. This improved the story as since the opening shot is of his father in an army suit, it instantly clicks with the audience that this man is important to Gordon. We eventually posted our final cut onto facebook, where all our friends and other people of the network could see it and leave feedback on their views of our final product.


Audience feedback is essential for any genre of film, especially if you are a low budget film and would like to create a larger, wider audience appeal to your film. For example Working Title was good at this as they understood what the american audience wanted in a film and therefore would create an aspect to the film they enjoy e.g. American lead role, or a stereotypical english-man(Hugh Grant). Another example is of Bridget Jones (Sharon MaGuire - 2001) the american audience did not get many of the jokes in the test screening, however, they found a part where a character wore a Christmas reindeer jumper hilarious.


(Podcast of My Final Thoughts)