During the post-production stage, I exported a rough cut of our project - making it screen-able and viewable to my audience. Whilst watching our rough cut, I asked the audience to take notes on what stood out to them throughout the film. After presenting the rough cut to my audience, I filmed each of them reading out their feedback. From this feedback, I edited the audio, along with my explanation onto a relevant place on the rough cut.
The feedback given by my audience was extremely helpful, considering they were picking up on things that, as a group, we may not have noticed. However, not picked up on by our audience was the lighting - which we tried to use different gels and strengths of lighting to set the mood around characters.
Part 2:
After editing and finalising the product, I had it burnt onto a DVD so I collect audience feedback on the finished short film. To collect my feedback, I wrote up a questionnaire consisting of 6 questions - when collecting up my data after showing my audience, I had to take into consideration that my audience know who I am and might be soft and lenient with their feedback.
This questionnaire was given to an audience of 10 people, all varying in age. However, I made sure my prime target audience (older teenagers) made up the majority of my audience. By varying the age of my audience I would be able to see if the difference in age will affect my feedback.
For the first question, all of my audience bar one put 'drama' as the genre for the short film. The one result that was different was 'thriller'. After my audience had filled out their questionnaires, I asked the participant why they answered thriller, and their response was that they expected more to become of the film, expecting a twist. This lead me to assume that the person had not understood that this was not an opening sequence, but a resolved short film. As no one answered 'other', question 2 became obsolete.
With question 3, understanding the change from day to day through the repetition and long slow fades, the result was split down the middle. The majority of the younger audience, including the media students, understood that the repetition and fades represented day change, however the other 5 participants were unclear and unsure of the day change. When asking why they were unsure of the day change, they felt that it was only really clear when the lighting was different between day and night time, lighting being used more appropriately.
With question 4, eight out of my ten participants felt that the short film had realism at it's heart and presented realistic values. However, as two of my audience said no, they stated their reasons in question 5. One of the audience felt the acting could have been better as "you did not follow and get involved with the idea of her being the mother". The other felt that they were "unsure of which character's story they were meant to be following".
With the final question, question 6, my audience all picked up on similar things that they liked about the film. These included:
- The use of hangman to represent the breakdown of the brother.
- The close up of the items that Leon is left to pick up.
- The realism of Leon's aggressive attitude with excessive slamming of doors.
Part 3:
Considering I had successfully got together an audience of 10 people, I was also able to take a few extra minutes of their time to show my ancillary texts to my audience. Firstly I showed them 4 of my designs for my postcards. These included:
Design 1: Leon's looking at his reflection in the blade of a knife.
Design 2: Lily sitting writing brother on the hangman game.
Design 3: The close up of all Leon's items on his drawers.
Design 4: The portrait of Leon's beaten up face.
I asked each of my audience to chose the postcard which they felt stood out most of all to them out of the four designs, then I collected the results and created a chart. The names on the chart relate to the design number above:
From the pie chart, you can clearly see that the more simple of the designs were the most effective: Both the design of Leon beaten up and Leon's items getting 4 'votes' each. Firstly I asked the 4 that chose design 4, why they chose that as their favourite design. Responses included 'liking how well done and realistic the make up is', considering they felt they were unable to see it fully in the film; other responses included "Oh, I miss Josh". Sadly, I feel that people may have chosen this as their design as they are good friends with our actor, Josh Rose.
For design 3, I asked the same question and received more appropriate answers. These included "I really like how I can get an insight into this boys life just through the items on his desk" and "Even though having cigarettes associated with a knife is majorly stereotyping, I feel that it is appropriate and adds to the character".
After finding out the two favourite postcards, I felt that by choosing design 3 as my final design was the right choice because it received the most appropriate comments and only subtly adds to the plot unlike giving it away with design 4.
Alongside my postcard designs, I also showed by final film review to my audience. I asked them if they agreed or disagreed with my film review, then placed it into a chart - placing it as either positive or negative.
The results about my film review were almost split down the middle with 6 having a positive response about the review, and 4 having negative responses. Even though 4 had negative responses, they all agreed that the layout for the review was realistic. The positive response agreed that my criticism was fairly placed and the star rating was correct. However the negative responses felt that their could have been more criticisms brought up within the review, feeling that "reading the review could give 'too much hype' to the film".
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