Evaluation Q3

Q3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Audience feedback is especially essential towards the pre production, production and post production stages of the making of my film. Audience feedback is crucial to me as it tells me and my group ways in which to extend our ideas, ways in which to connect more to audience’s wants and expectations, and ways in which to improve the film to a better standard.

Throughout my film making process I have gathered feedback from audiences of many ages and of both male and female but majority and primarily females aged 12-30 years range. As the film is mostly directed at women and teenagers but still could be directed at a small minority of men. I have gathered feedback to do with technical aspects, the treatment pitches, and storyboard and ancillary tasks.
When pitching my treatment I had feedback that the story “did not have enough plot point, we should have her getting caught”. In our first treatment our storyline was that she cheated with two men and did not get caught. So, therefore by understanding that many audiences agreed on this issue of the plot point being too light we decided to have the woman getting caught and to focus more on the reaction and the after math of her getting caught which enabled us to challenge and develop other similar stories about unfaithful relationships as we focus on the ‘cheater’ rather than the ‘cheated’.
Another suggestion was made that in our first treatment we wanted to include about 3 men who are being cheated on. However through audience feedback we was told that it would be too many characters to focus on in such little time, also, how will we organise 3 characters and set it up, it may be too much. We also came to another problem where we found it difficult to plot all three men catching the woman (Delilah) out at the same time as it made the story become more complicated and unrealistic. There was also the burden of having to figure how each male character will be shown in such a way that the audience can tell they are in love with Delilah and we realised this may create a problem in time management too as the film is short and their may be too much to show in too little time. Therefore we decided to cut down to two characters that were reliable and available, also and mainly good at acting. We thought this would be the safest approach which also will seem more realistic and would be like a love triangle dilemma.
Other feedback related to the lack of clues in the treatment, a lack of clues to ‘the red string of fate’ and the colour red which is a theme that follows and is dominant in the film throughout. Therefore I decided to draw a mind-map of possible ways to show the theme, we came up with, red props, red costume, ‘Chinese food, fortune cookies’ as it relates to the Chinese originated red string of fate tradition. We also had the location that hinted red all over, even when Delilah walks down the stairs the carpet is red and this represents the theme of red in subtle un-obvious ways.

When creating the storyboard for my film we decided to get more opinions and feedback on the shots and angles chosen in the storyboard. Audience said that shots seemed to be too choppy and ‘simple’, not enough clever ‘cinematography’ is applied and shots just tell the story rather than showing and telling the story in a more interesting unique way. So going back to research on cinematography I gathered and reminded myself some ideas of ways in which I can re-arrange the way the shot shows what’s happening. For example we planned to use a simple shot where the camera waits at the bottom of the stairs for the character to come into the long shot and walk all the way down. We realised this shot would have been too long and boring, so we had a short shot of the figure emerging down the stairs and then a cut to a side view close up of her feet in her red shoes walking down the red carpet stairs. This shot of her going down the stairs is critical to the build up of the plot point as it shows her following the red string of fate (by walking down the red stairs) and the fact that more red is shown shows we are getting closer to the main plot point where she will get caught.
Other ideas we developed by looking at subjects in the frame through interesting shots, for example there is a part where Delilah opens the door and lets James in who then leaves the door ajar as them two walk off to the living room, we choose not to show this through a boring way by showing the actions one after another. Instead we filmed the part where the door is left ajar from ‘outside’ looking ‘inside’ into the house and seeing the characters in dark sinister lighting walk away, they also look insignificant and that’s what this shot does, it builds up to a point where the characters cannot control the situation and something bad is going to happen, we sense that these characters are being watched and they don’t know and that they are exposed, the truth will be exposed.

During post production we gathered feedback at different stages on aspects such as shots, music, and order of shots, length of shots, quality of shots, colour, lighting, audio and visual effects and transitions. From audience feedback after the first few pitches of the film at editing post production process, I was told that some shots were ‘too long’ such as the stairs shots and this wasted time unnecessarily and also in particular with one shot where the shot seemed too unstable and shaky so the length of it had to be minimised, some important shots were also ‘too short’ such as the part where Delilah pulls the thread off her dress and this needed to be emphasised as some audiences said that it did not connect with the second shot enough where the thread falls on the floor seeming as if it fell out of nowhere, some transitions did not match such as ‘dip to black’ did not suit the day dream sequence, so I decided that dip to white is more suitable as it gives a light white dreamy effect.
After getting feedback on the assembly edit we then moved on to inserting music into the film. As we went through this stage we got much feedback from audience as we had few issues, there was too many music pieces in the film and they didn’t work well together. Some music pieces were either too ‘folky’ or ‘country’ like or they seemed too ‘hip-hop’ and less feminine. We then needed to re-evaluate and have more group meetings specifying and researching the music type we needed. After finding the correct music we added that into the film, audience gave more feed back and said that the music jumped from one piece to another too abruptly, the music needs to come in more softly. With this feed back I then looked at editing the pieces of music, the volume levels needed to be altered with for parts where the music is coming to an end we needed to change the volume gradually as the piece ended, we also had to add transitions such as ‘exponential fade’ where the music softly evaporates. These transitions and editing tools allowed me to create a smooth transfer between one music piece to another without looking to abrupt and unsuited.

For my ancillary task I created a review for my film and posters, this is to promote and advertise for my film to my audience. I organised feedback from two group members, to get a good insight from what they know about the film and the connection they can find in that with the posters and reviews, and with 2 external audiences to understand what they can gain from the advertisement and posters and feed back to me how successful it is. From audience feedback I understood that house style was continued throughout all posters and worked well. The split screen effect was successful as it looked professional and had shown the two worlds ‘abstract and reality’ which the film revolves around, it also showed the character who looked ‘innocent’ and then this idea is contradicted in the image below in the poster and ‘works very well’. The colour of the word ‘string’ is in red and this shows a connection between the colour and string which reflects on the Chinese tradition of the string of fate. However, poster 2 and 3 looked too bright and needed a darker contrast to add that drama effect rather than too much of a light hearted romantic effect. The second poster seems to be the least successful poster due to the fact that it creates an image that looks to ‘sweet’ there are not enough hints of any downfall or contradictions to the character that comes across very happy and content where in comparison to my other poster I have a split screen of a sweet image and then a contradicting image which showed more of the world of the film. Therefore, from this comment I now understand what is missing from the second poster are more hints and clues of betrayal, the red string or clues of unfaithfulness and I can show these important elements of the film by adjusting colour and contrast, by adding more images or selecting different and more appropriate images such as an image I had of of Delilah standing with string connecting to both men on either side.
My film review was also successful, audience commented on the strong link between the review and poster that it related and you could match the description of the film in the review with the posters and develop a stronger understanding of the story. Audience feedback said my film had the ‘right balance of chattiness’, this was successful with the audience because it helped the audience develop comfort in a casual atmosphere with the reviewer and therefore trust the reviewers judgement of the film. The image of the review was said to have matched with review however, although it showed a image which contained the main characters and important elements such as the ‘string’, a more different image then the poster images should have been chosen. To develop and improve from this feedback a better image should be one that is not in the posters but looks similar (so we can tell the review and posters come from the same film product), a more dramatic and intense image should be there to highlight the characters in distress, this would create a more interesting look to it and an edge to the film. Another issue with the poster was the layout; unfortunately the layout did not look professional enough and needed to look tidier in order to look like a real film review and in order to make it more presentable to the audience. With this feedback I went back to my review and changed some areas that needed altering such as the text boxes, where I had to line it up so words would not cut off the page. By doing so my review looked more professional and presentable for the audience. In all audience said that both the poster and review worked well together with the film and the two products complemented each other.