Tuesday, 16 February 2016

TASK 13 Evaluation Q3: What have you learned from audience feedback?




Audience feedback was very vital in the creating of our media product, thought pre and postproduction; even during production feedback was very useful. An example of feedback pre production was drafting various ideas to see which people liked more. The audience feedback was very important during post-production in this project.  As a lot of the content was added in after the first cut, which was still missing some takes and some sound effects and voice-overs.

The first feedback we got during this production was when we showcased a few ideas to our class to see which they liked more, this was very basic and before we had much information about the ideas, just how they sounded. We then pitched our idea to a larger audience of our class, to see their opinion on it. We had rough outlines of what we were doing, which it was supposed to be Crime/Thriller/Detective short film, which from the feedback we gathered the idea would not work as well as it could, in the form of a short film.

As a result of this, we decided to change our idea with something we believed would be much more fitting in the form of a short film, which was purely a Thriller short film, which people liked the premise of the basic ideas. This was a more practical idea that would fit much easier within the timescale of five minutes, which we were limited to. One of the most difficult tasks we faced in preproduction was creating an understandable narrative within the timescale, as we did not have much time to develop characters. We used audience feedback to work on a narrative that was understandable but still somewhat challenging, leaving the audience to uncover the narrative on their own.
After the production of our first draft, which was unfinished as it was missing some footage we had yet to film.  We exhibited this draft to the class, which we then asked for general feedback, rather than feedback on targeted issues, which we did for later drafts. The main feedback we got from our first draft was about the narrative. Members the audience we shown this to found the narrative unclear and confusing, which was not ideal, as this was one of our largest concerns. We thought that we would act upon the feedback and work to create a stronger narrative. Which we were able to do in the remaining shots, which we added more shots and sounds to indicate that the protagonist was in danger. Such as an expansion of the planned fight scene, which was yet to be filmed. We decided to change the outcome of the fight scene and to make it longer, to add more conflict into the narrative. As well as this, we added some sounds, such as the noise the protagonist hears from the outside.
After building on our first draft, we did the same with our secondary draft, which was the final draft before the short film was complete. This time we asked for feedback targeted on our narrative, sound (predominantly music choices) and pacing of it all. The feedback went well, the positive feedback we got about the music was that it fit very well and built atmosphere, and it matched the pacing very well. However there was concern over the narrative. Mostly in the beginning, as people could not understand what the phone call conversation was about. We decided to use this feedback my adding in some dialogue we cut from the script early on in pre-production. We added it in using a voice recorded, and fitted it into the gaps that we left in the opening dialogue. Our audience found this helpful to explain the flow of the narrative.
Over all audience feedback was very important in guiding us in creating a media product suitable for our target audience, as thrillers are a very narrative driven genre, and through feedback we revolved this issue effectively. As well as this positive feedback was useful in letting us know what didn't need to change, with let us know that what we were doing was going in the right direction. 

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