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How Did You Respond To The Original Brief With The Audience In Mind?

During the planning stages of our film we ensured that everyone in our group had the opportunity to put their own ideas forward about the films plot and storyline. Everybody in the group contributed their ideas by writing up their own idealistic versions of the film they would like the produce, then combining the most creative ideas from each story. When we were happy with our final decision, we wanted to ensure that our target audience would also be satisfied with the plot line that we had chosen to follow. This was completed by creating a questionnaire in which people could answer questions on our construction plans of the film and also gave them the chance to suggest any improvements we could make.

After only receiving 12 responses, we decided that although the

feedback was positive, we needed a more thorough idea of whether our film would be successful in reaching our audience or not. Because of this, we decided to take the camera and tripod into the college area and ask people the questions that we had wrote, filming their responses as we went along. This also ensured that we would receive more realistic and honest responses as it was conducted face to face.

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Video Questionnaire:

Here, you can see the results of our questionnaire. We asked 12 Barnsley College students for their consent to take part in the recorded survey. Upon watching the video of responses back, we realised that our target audience had very similar ideas to us. We were satisfied that everybody felt that the film was of the Drama genre and felt that the film was suitable for people aged 12 and above.

This was crucial in our pre production work as we could ask members that were within our target age range how appealing our film would be to them. Many of them gave the storyline a strong rating of a 9 or a 10 and all of them said they would recommend the film to a friend. They all said that they would pay a reasonable price to own the film on DVD and even put their ideas forward about how they would imagine the main character to look. This meant that we could not only push our plot forward but we could also develop on our characters and more specific parts of the creation of our film.

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In Filming And Editing, How Did You Ensure The Meaning Would Be Apparent To The Audience ?

Despite receiving positive feedback from our audience about our final story idea, we knew that the plot was complex and tricky to simplify. We noticed this upon having to go over the plot of the film twice on a few of the occasions when describing it to our audience. When asked about general improvements we could make, some of our audience were concerned that the story may be hard to follow. Upon understanding this, we began to think of certain effects or editing techniques that could reduce the chances of audience confusion to ensure the best feedback possible.

Our idea of a non-linear film had to be considered. We wanted to keep our story this way to enhance dramatic effect, so instead of changing our story to a linear plot, we added a sepia effect to all flashback scenes to make it immediately apparent that those scenes were set in the past tense. Although we wanted to leave our flashbacks quick to add intensity, many of them had to be extended so we could ensure that our audience had fully understood what had happened to Lola. This was vital as the ending of our film is the most important of all the scenes, as the plot of our film is not supposed to be fully understood until the final minute or so of the film.

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Rough Cut Of Our Film:

After piecing together our film, we posted a rough version of what was to be our final project on to YouTube. The rough cut meant that there was no music during the intense parts of our film, which we knew would lessen the effect. It also was not colour corrected and included shots that we knew needed redoing or expanding on. Despite these small details, we had managed to put together most of the shots and we were very happy with the outcome. However, we wanted to know what our audience thought of what we had produced so far and to see if we could improve further in order to make any last minute changes. So, we posted the rough cut of our film onto social media along with a link to another questionnaire which people could provide us with feedback on...

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Questionnaire Responses :Rough Cut

After focusing on the responses we had got from our audience so we could polish up our film, we were content with the amount of positive feedback we received for our efforts. We noted that we had already achieved some success with our film in terms of making our genre obvious to our audience and the emotions we wanted them to experience upon watching our film. People were also giving us suggestions on what music we could include to add to the intensity of the film and to address our genre even further. The general responses to this included songs with a sad tone to them, mainly using classical instruments such as a piano. We were happy with this proposal as we had already agreed to include music of a similar nature as to what they were describing.

Some answers to the questionnaire however, helped us to reconsider some elements of our film. A lot of our feedback suggested that people felt that the film should be rated as a 15, when we originally planned for it to have a 12 or 12A certificate. This may be due to the context of death and how this may scare younger viewers. However, the car accident scene is crucial to our film, so we felt that taking it out may not only ‘spoil’ the film, but confuse our viewers. So, changing the rating of the film may have had to be an option that we could take into consideration.

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Final Cut Preparation...

After analysing our feedback we started to look for music that we could add to our film, as that was the crucial element of our final product which was missing from our piece. Although it was difficult to find music that timed perfectly with the scenes that required background music, we managed to find 3 great songs after a long and dedicated search on Jamendo. The music was relevant to the scenes in which it featured and we felt that it had improved our film on a huge scale, giving it a more professional feel and helping create emotion in our audience. We also added in some sound effects to add to the films authenticity, particularly in the scene of Lola’s death. We added in the sound of car tyres screeching and then a loud crashing sound, to imply that she had been run over without having to go through to overly complex editing procedure of showing Lola’s death. This also helps reduce the films certificate as no blood or graphic imagery is incorporated into the film. After colour correcting a few more of our frames to achieve better continuity and replacing shots with more clear and more experimental ones, we published the final version of our film. To see if our improvements had satisfied our audience, we made another questionnaire.

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Final Cut : Questionnaire Results.

After viewing the results, we were delighted with the positive feedback we had received from our audience. We were relieved to find out that everybody who filled in the questionnaire upon watching our film understood the story. This was particularly important to us as we had had comments before that our story line could be viewed as confusing if it wasn’t filmed correctly. Everybody also agreed that the music that we included fit well to the scenes in which it featured. Music was something that we had only added on the final cut of our film, so it was crucial that the audience agreed with how we had adapted our film to improve it.

We also asked our audience what they felt Lola’s character was like. We wanted to ensure that we had developed and portrayed Lola’s character successfully in the film. Our audience responded with personality traits that we intended Lola to show in our film, showing that her character was successfully depicted.

At the end of the questionnaire, we decided to continue to ask if we could have improved our film in any way. Although this was our final cut, we knew that we could learn from the comments and suggestions of other people for future tasks. Many people suggested that no improvements were to be made, but the key proposals made from our audience were to put more emphasis on Hannah’s death to make it more apparent to the viewers. We knew this was an issue during editing but due to the limited time duration our film was allowed to be, we had to make it apparent quicker than we would have originally have liked. We also had a comment which said that they would have liked to have seen more on how the parents came to terms with her death. Again this was a time issue which we were aware of. Overall, we were extremely happy with the feedback we recieved and felt our hard work had truly paid off.