Final Evaluation

Media Evaluation Question 1 from NIKKIBURTON123

Media Evaluation Question 2 from NIKKIBURTON123

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We used audience’s feedback in our planning stage in order to reach our final treatment for our project. We made a questionnaire for our audience research; we tried to interview as many different people as possible to find out what appealed to them and what they didn’t like. We did this so we could include/take out some of this feedback and put it into or take out of our film. The feedback was useful due to our questionnaire being mostly qualitative, we set our questionnaire like this as qualitative is the most efficient and helpful way of getting feedback. It allowed us to gain detailed feedback instead of questions that only lead to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers which doesn’t give us much to evaluate. This method of audience feedback helped with creating an effective film idea.

After the research into what our potential audience may like, we got them to view our two ideas and give us feedback to which we should use as our final project. We found that our audience liked that our ideas were 'interesting', had 'depth' and the plot was something they could 'associate with'. Also they said they liked the 'unexpectedness' of the outcome on idea 1. click here to view our final treatment

This feedback from our audience influenced us to merge both our ideas as it would suit a more mainstream audience. In doing this, we took into account the constructive feedback we were given, and came up with a storyline that appealed to a range of different people. This was useful in our planning as we knew what the audience wanted and what we had to do next was film. click here to view our audience feedback video!

Using these important words from the first feedback given, we made sure they applied to our final project as this showed these appealed and interested our potential audience. As for any film, audience feedback is important as films are made for audience’s pleasure- to watch, without them, there is little point in making one.

We knew the audience liked films that they could relate to/associate themselves with; we applied this to our film through the characters, the narrative and location of our project. Characters are believable and one character includes a common stereotype which people are always guilty of- thinking people in hoody’s are trouble makers-stereotyping people or prejudging them. People can associate with this as they are the ones judging or the ones being judged. Our narrative is also relatable as it is based around people “jumping to conclusions” about others before knowing facts, a common thing that most people are guilty of. Also, the crime in the project is something that could happen which makes it more relatable. The setting is also important as it wouldn’t be something they could relate to if it was in a different setting, such as in a castle or in the desert, we used a local setting and a real home to make it all believable and relatable.

I think that the unexpectedness involves the depth and the interest of the audience into the film, as the audience has to have an interest for the film in order to allow it to have depth. Also, the audience has to be interested in the plot to expect something from the film in order to be surprised at the end. We filmed and edited our project to lead the audience into thinking that the hooded girl

was a trouble maker. We did this until the ending, to then show that in fact she was the “hero” and returning the stolen phone from the unexpected girl who she had just bumped into. We think that this is a surprise to the audience and something that they didn’t expect and also that was interesting for them to watch as they learnt something had more in it that what they thought. click here for our trailer

Not only were these words important in the planning and editing of our film but they also influenced our advertising product, because the main aim for advertising is so to make your potential audience want to watch our film after seeing posters, trailers, adverts ect. We made character posters, teaser posters, official posters, two teaser trailers and a radio advert. We included questions, parts of our film to lead the audience into wanting to find out what it’s about and wanting to know more.

We used Facebook to gain audience feedback from our teaser posters, we asked which they liked the most in order to have their favourite as our main poster idea. This was successful as we were able to be creative in different ways and have the non-biased opinion of an online audience to tell us which they thought would be the best idea for our official poster.

This feedback gave us confidence that we were doing the right type of film and that we were making it exciting for the audience to watch.

We also used Facebook to reveal teaser trailers, this allowed our audience to make their own minds up to what they thought our film is about as we have not made any direct link to what our film is about or what it involves. We’ve added ‘text’ into our trailers to add mystery and hints to what happens but it is open to interpretation, however, once the film is revealed it shows to have a closed ending. Looking at our audience’s feedback they like the open to interpretation of what’s going to happen in the film as they like the ‘mystery’ of wanting to know what is going to happen next.

Once we had completed our final project, we conducted a final questionnaire in order to find out if we had used our previous audience feedback wisely and to see if our film was understandable and easy to follow, due to the last minute alterations of adding a narrator to our film.  We found that 100% of the audience understood the message we were trying to achieve as this was our main worry, this was crucial that we knew this so we knew that we didn't have to re-look at our film at try to change it. We also know due to the feedback given, that the majority liked the film and understood the message, through the question of asking why did they enjoy the film, not just if they did. This made the answer more evaluative as it is not a straight yes or no answer.

To view more of our questionnaire and the feedback given click here

Overall, the audience’s feedback was crucial in the planning, making and even after our project was finalised. We applied what the audience thought was good about a film into ours, in the planning, in hope that our audience would enjoy it. We took simple ideas from the feedback and used our creativity and imagination to both come up with a story inspired from the feedback. We also used their opinions into our adverts; we kept the mystery and unexpectedness to tease the audience so they want to find out more. I have learnt that our feedback is important because if you’re planning a film that your target audience aren’t going to enjoy, there is no point carrying it out. Feedback is important as you know what to and what not to include and also you can get ideas from other people’s opinions which we learnt to do in putting both idea’s together to create one. Even after our film was finished, we still felt it was important to ask the audience's opinion on if we had successfully achieved what we set out to do, after encouraging feedback we believe we had. Here is our final film:

 

YouTube was particularly useful as I found the TV advert for the guardian that gave me the idea of the twist in the narrative about jumping to conclusions, this allowed us to be creative and use what we had learnt and give us an idea on how to carry out our production of our project.

Click here to view our audience feedback video!

 

Once we understood the narrative of our film, I then looked into sound for our film to include in the production of it. This website was really useful as it had a variety of sounds/music/effects which allowed us to be more creative when making editing it together. However, this website had limited sounds and we were limited to what we could chose which restricted us being too creative with our film as we were only able to choose what was available.

This sound is used both in our project and in our trailes, it is used to introduce the title to the film and also to show tenseness in our trailers. Click here to listen to the sound

 This sound was used in our Radio trailer and in our film to show the journey of the girl. This brightened up the project as it clashed with the tense atmosphere brought by the previous sound. Click here to visit the website and listen to the sound!

                         Click here to view our filming diary!

Also, this captured all our mistakes when filming and were able to make a blooper through FinalCut Express, which allowed our mistakes to be something positive contributing to our film project and allowed us to use our imagination and creativity to present it how we would like. Click here to view our blooper video

Click here to view our evaluation video