What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Feedback has always been important part of film process, it allows us as film creators to understand what our audiences expect, want and perceive in our film. In ‘String Along’ the audience expectations of the genre and visual attention fits to the dramatic and romance genre, something I feel we met and carried on further with our use of abstract scenes. Feedback at preproduction helped us to learn these expectations and had a large influence on shaping our story and film planning. In our early stages we had initial ideas of stories based on serious topics such as drug abuse when based our ideas on a ‘The Fall’.
From this our first feedback was we needed a story ‘less gloomy’ while retaining our moral to the story, it needed to be lighter hearted for our audience. Considering this as a group we created the idea of quote collecting, were we all decided to find quotes or stories that reminded us of the fall, and we brainstormed from there. One of the quotes I brought forward was from a song ‘I don’t wanna fall, I don’t wanna fly I don’t wanna be dangled over the edge of a dying romance’. Although still a sad subject we looked further into the idea of a ‘dying romance’ and felt we found a balance of a serious message and a brighter story in our two initial treatments. We felt the sentiment of these words can apply to any love between any two things coming to an end. A cheating woman and the loss of trust between a man and pet were our final ideas. Liking both stories we used group assessment to decide on pitch and after realising the issue we may face in using a animal for our film, such as the difficulty in planning what the pet will do and controlling them. Also our time limit to film would restrain us being able to use the pet when they were comfortable and created a risk of us not filming the shots we wanted. Even finding ways to represent it was something we felt we wouldn’t be able to do well and focused on the Cheating woman idea.
Looking back on our first treatments our feedback from our teacher and peers steered our story in a very different direction. We were advised that our character Delilah needed to be caught as a key plot point in the story, and that the message of the story wasn’t clear by her cheating but not facing the consequences for it. Our prospect audience felt ‘there’s no closure if she doesn’t get found out’ and ‘It losses the lesson of the story, that cheatings bad’. With further development into our presentation of the film and story we created our final treatment and gained positive feedback about our now stronger storyline, visual ideas and story pace. Such as our vision of the abstract world representing Delilah’s relationships and how we match the beginning scene to the end scene, but show her loss. We were told this was a good idea to give closure to the film.
From our script feedback I learned the need to use clues and foreboding techniques throughout the film to communicate with our audience, before we had a story in place but the storytelling was ‘blander’ than it could be we needed focus on small visual clues that could help show our narrative to the audience. From this we developed ideas such as the thread being pulled from the dress and the fortune cookie prediction which was similar to our storyboard feedback, that when we experimented more with our shot planning and Mise en scene arrangements it made the film much more appealing by sticking to themes of red, romantic props such as flowers and setting the mood of a drama and romance film. Also the example of our series of shots using the wardrobe was something we created after learning our original shots was ‘too static’.
The post production stage was a vital part in hearing various feedback at different stages while editing our film, allowing us to adapt it to suit the audience. In our films construction we asked media peers and other students there opinion of the film to gain wider criticism. Our original feedback was to firstly shorten or cut down the size of shots that were too long or unnecessary, we learnt this as an important factor of a silent film, that most shots should aim to be ‘too the point’. After cutting down on our rushes and organising our timeline our feedback was mostly positive with 2 main suggests or needs for improvement. Firstly we had feedback from many viewers that the music pieces didn’t flow very well. From this we reviewed our music choices and researched a different piece of music for the beginning scene, we felt the original fast beat to the beginning music didn’t fit the pace of the rest of the film. We found viewers agreed that the new music we used fitted the pace and the genre of the film much better. Also the transition between music pieces needed improvement being ‘blunt’ and ‘sudden’. To rectify this we had the idea of sectioning the long music piece into smaller pieces and changing volume levels to create a gradual fade out of the music into the next piece. In addition we have the idea of using the music in a cycle effect, to fit with the story and pace of the film, how it begins and ends in the same way. We supported this with the soundtrack and found using the music in this pattern suited the story and helped to create the foreboding atmosphere of something bad which we wanted our audience to feel from the start.
The second piece of feedback we learnt from was our opening scenes and their pace. We were told our beginning pace would do better to match that at the end. The shots of Delilah removing her makeup and fallen in the string was praised the most out of the film as the editing pace and cuts were ‘effective and suited well in switching between the two worlds of abstract and reality’. Initially we were sceptical as to whether we agreed with this and if we knew hope to repeat the same pace at the beginning of the film. However we tried to do so immediately, using shots of the abstract world we had throughout the film and cutting them in a similar style to the ending. We then used these shots together as an introduction to the film and found it worked much better for the audience and to our idea of the opening music being repeat at the ending to create the cycle effect. This feedback I feel was the most altering to our film, but also the best as it created something far better and closer to what we wanted to achieve in our film.
The Ancillary task was more interactive when using feedback as we had the opptuninty to receive comments on the blog for both our review and posters. My posters were based on research into different poster art and posters of my desired genre. I attempted to create poster similar to both an older, more classic design, to fit to the idea of old silent films, and a Morden design to appeal to mainstream audiences. My feedback however was a mix of praise and constructive criticism, and I also learned the difference of taste and opinion of people within the same target audience. For example poster 1 ‘seems to appeal to me the most’ for a member of my film group.
I was praised on the use of main title font and positioning of ratings and image on the page. However my main negative feedback was ‘the fonts work but there should not be too many different fonts as it confuses the look and subverts the professional look, the suaveness, looks a bit indecisive as their are a confusion of fonts, same thing in ancillary 3 where 3 different fonts are used and ancillary 2 where 3-4 different fonts are used too.’ This is something I also agreed with on reflection, and would stick to a main housestyle of font if re-editied. Again in poster two my only criticism was the use of font not suiting my film, which came from another media student. These both being based on a older styling of film posters were most popular with my media peers apart from the font suggestion. Although I found when asking someone classed under our target audience of younger women my 3rd poster was most successful in advertising to her. 'This poster is my favourite out of the 3.The woman’s' face being hidden has various effects. It can draw the audience in, creating a want in them to know what she looks like; and it can also put forward the idea that the woman’s' looks are less important than her actions.
The poster is clear and well set out. It is not confusing or distracting, and can easily be understood, that is why this is my favourite.’ This showed that my more contemporary poster will be more appealing to our audiences and if I was to re-edit my posters, I know I would create the series to suit this more.
My review feedback was mostly positive, with little suggestion of change. Again asking both media students and a member of the audience I was told ‘You have really kept to the conventions of the empire magazine, making it believable and easy on the eye. The use of language is of a really high level and at points you forget that your reading a review and feel more like your having a conversation’. This was a convention of Empires reviews I wanted to achieve. The audience review was similar, ‘I love the overall message you get from the film, its something that i feel many people could relate to and perhaps learn from. At times the sentences seemed long winded, but it never confused or made me unable to read it’. This was the most important to know that a average member of the public found the style of the review appealing. However my language was also criticized as ‘a bit of a tongue twister and confused me’ and also ‘you have praised it showing that you like it but there must be something bad about it’. This is something I would change if redrafted, realising that the language may not be accessible to a wide audience, and that I lacked clear points that review both the good and bad elements to my film.
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