Eval Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After completing my video, I showed it to a group of people and gave them each a piece of paper to write down their thoughts and opinions. Some of the audience I chose were regular students whilst some were students also taking the media course. I did this in order to get a general audience’s perspectives and opinions as well as more media based criticisms, such as camera shots and editing. After collecting the pieces of paper and reading through the comments, I picked out the most common ones and analysed them to find how I could improve in the future.

“The camera shakes a lot and makes it looks really bad”

This comment suggests to me that, despite the intent I had with the hand held camera shots, there was too much hand held. In future, I could use a tripod more within the films but still use some hand held shots where appropriate, giving my video variety and making the audience feel involved with the characters.

“There is a lack of continuity. The old house and low angle shots of the holes in the roof make it appear abandoned and a victim of the passage of time. This is negated by the cars in the film that all look clean and new.”

This comment came from one of the other media students. This suggests to me that the setting of the film was good and that I am good at finding settings but that, when it comes to shots, I need to look at more than just the focus of the shot and more at the surroundings. A shot isn’t good if part of it looks good. The whole shot has to look good and match the style and setting of the rest. It also suggests that I need to plan my locations and make sure they match the setting I am trying to convey.

“There are lots of things that aren’t explained”

I grouped this comment with a few others that pointed out specific things within the film that didn’t make sense.  For example, one commenter pointed out the fact that Lewis’ death is never really explained. The narrator simply tells the audience that he died. From this, I can deduce that I need to spend more time on the script for my films and make sure they make sense. Perhaps even have people proof read them for me and point out any plot holes in the story that need fixing. Most commenter’s that mentioned problems with the story board also said that there was nothing wrong with the script. They said the script for the film was good, but the story line wasn’t up to the same quality.

“The titles are bland, boring and look unprofessional.”

When choosing the titles for my film, I looked for titles that I thought represented my film the most. I went with plain white text as I thought the plainness was good for representing the lifelessness of the world the film takes place in. however a lot of people thought the titles were too plain and said it made the film look professional and that it caused them to expect boring film. This tells me that in the future, I should focus less on the meaning of the titles and focus more on titles that have an appealing appearance and look interesting as interesting titles make the audience expect an interesting film.

“The acting wasn’t very good. The actors over acted and under acted”

Although I don’t have much control over how the actors themselves act, a lot of people mentioned the poor acting and said it made the film seem amateurish. One of my actors over acted whilst the other under acted and it made my film seem like something other than a film. Therefore in the future I may consider a new method of choosing actors rather than choosing people I think are simply going to be convenient. When choosing actors in the future, I may hold auditions so I can choose people who I think are suitable to the role. Although this may be slightly inconvenient in terms of a shooting schedule and availability, it may improve the film in the long term as more time can be spent ironing out the imperfections.

If I take these comments as constructive criticisms and use them correctly, I can incorporate the advice they give me and make a better quality film as a result. Although all the above comments were “negative” there were also plenty of positive comments as well. Although these aren’t as useful as the negative ones in terms of learning and improving, they are useful in pointing out what my strengths were in the recent production and therefore, allow me to improve on those areas as well. Some of these comments mentioned how the music and transitions worked well and that the cuts between shots really helped set the pace for the audience. One comment from one of the media students stated that “although the different light levels could at times, make the scene unclear, it worked well in creating the mood and an atmosphere for the film and audience”. This tells me that although the lighting was good for conveying feelings and atmospheres, it did at times make the film hard to see. Therefore in future, I can use similar lighting techniques to create mood, but make sure that the lighting doesn’t go to the extremes of being blindingly bright, or murkily dark and hard to see.

All the feedback I got meant I was able to get a set of unbiased opinions and criticisms about my film, which I could then use and learn form in order to produce better quality media texts in the future. It has taught me what my strengths and weaknesses are and where I need to improve. Overall, I am happy with the feedback I received and it has given me the confidence boost and inspiration to continue making media productions.