Question 3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback, is a type of interaction associated with the use of audience response systems, to create interactivity between a presenter and their audience. Throughout the process we have had to record and work on feedback given to us by audience members, class mates and a variety of others. Audience feedback has been a key part of my pre-production work, for example, the design process for my postcards and film, i drew and number of designs for my postcard and posted them on my blog, i then showed my fellow class mates and asked them which design they preferred, after this i displayed the results in a pie chart, shown on post 16 and worked on the information i had been given, then deciding to continue on with the most popular design. As well as this, an element of feedback has been incorporated in our lessons when we look at each others blogs and stating how we feel certain people could improve on things and what we feel are their strengths and weakness's so they can work on improving them and understand where they went wrong and why. Feedback for our short films began when we first wrote our initial scripts, Becky Knapp came to one of our lessons having read our scripts and sat us down individually and gave us personal feedback.She commented on what we needed to improve and why, asking questions about how we felt the whole script writing process went and also saying what our straights were and how we could improve on these further.

'Fleeting' is the film that myself, Matt Stewart Smith and  Rebbecca O'Brien have been producing. We initially received feedback for the script from our class mates, here people stated what they felt could be worked on and one point was that the ending of the film needed to be clearer, showing whats going on. Therefore, Becky added an extra scene at the end showing Jonathan taking down pictures of everything he's photographed at the bench, and one of the pictures shows and image of him and his wife who passed away. When it came to filming, we tried to keep in mind all the previous feedback we had received. After completing the editing process we showed our final film to class mates and teachers, and the following video shows their feedback.

Final Film Feedback

Below is the feedback that we received from our fellow class mates about our final film of 'Fleeting'.We viewed each others films in class and wrote down notes about the films strong points, negatives, and what we felt could be improved on. After we'd watched all the films we then went away and recorded each others feedback on a Flip Video Camera. We asked our peers the following questions..

-What message did you feel was being portrayed ?

-Did you feel there was a particular style or evident genre ?

-What did you feel were the straights and weakness's of the film ?

-Could you give examples of what we could improve on when working on future projects ?

The feedback given to us was extremely insightful, they not only commented on what they thought was successful, but they gave us constructive criticism, stating what they felt could be improved on, what the weakness's of the film were and what we achieved successfully. By creating questions to ask our peers it meant we received concise answers, a point that kept being repeated by a variety of our class mates was that the plot was confusing and it was not clear what genre the film would fit into. As well as this one member said there was loud and prominent traffic noise throughout the film, which meant that the actors dialogue was hard to hear. Reflecting on this it seems clear that if we were to produce this film again we would have picked a quieter location because we ran into various problems with the traffic noise, both when filming, and also in the post-production stages. A straight of the film that was pointed out was the use of music, our class mates stated that the music used both at the beginning and end of the film really complimented the storyline and made you feel for the character of Jonathan. As well as this some said that the use of various camera angels at the beginning of the film looked effective and made you curious about the main character of Jonathan.

If i were to produce 'Fleeting' again i feel that we should have done more research into our location, i would therefore pick a quieter location so that the traffic noise wasn't so prominent. As well as this i feel we should have made the plot of the film more evident for the audience, maybe through the use of a voice over or an extended time limit, leaving us more time to establish the plot. Overall i feel receiving this feedback really helped me to understand where we went wrong as well as our strengths.

Postcard Feedback-
In the Pre-production stage i completed many postcard designs, and also carried our research into the codes and conventions of postcards and why they were appropriate for the short film industry. I received feedback from my designs and then went on to complete a final product, attempting to stick to the conventions, and also make it look as realistic as possible. I asked various people about what they thought of my final design and asked the following questions...

-Do you feel the postcard i have designed sticks to the conventions of the short film industry ?
-Do you think it portrays the tag line of 'Things aren't always what they seem' ?
-Do you think it would fit in to the short film industry ? Does it look realistic and professional ?

This is one example of the feedback that I received from my class mates about my postcard.  Firstly, Carolynn stated that the film did stick to codes and conventions of previous media texts, she stated that the use of Jonathan as the main image is successful as the audience realize that that film revolves around him, as well as this the image is the focal point of the postcard and thus grabs your attention. As well as this Carolynn stated that I stuck to codes and conventions through the use of the title, production company name and logo and the director’s name. After this I asked the question do you think it portrays the tag line of ‘Things aren’t always what they seem? She states it does as the image could convey to te audience a number of meanings, thus creating a sense mystery and enticing the audience to go and watch the film. Finally I asked it the postcard looked profession ad would it fit into the short film industry, Carolynn said it did through the use of editing and sticking to conventions on both the front and the back as well as this she stated that the front and back worked well in conjunction with each other.