What have you learned from your audience feedback?

By Annie Roebuck

PlanningDuring the planning stage we had to make sure that the film we wanted to create would be appealing to an audience. Even if this audience was niche, it needed to be an audience. So with this in mind we considered our option. What genre would we like to create? Will it appeal to a certain audience? Who would the target audience be? It was definitely something that needed to be thought about.

We decided that because we did a horror film last year that it’d be best if we didn’t do a horror film this year and we all felt like it’d be interesting to do a thriller of some sort. We all created at least two plotlines that we would like to create and we sat together as a group and created a final storyline. This was a creative mix of all the plotlines we created, which was a difficult job but it was the best thing to do when there was around 6 plotlines to choose from.

The final story line we created can be found: http://bca2media2014group8.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/decided-plotline.html

Although, there has been various changes to the plotline since this post but they can be found on the group blog.

Questionnaire

To find out whether this was suitable storyline a questionnaire was made on Google Docs to ask members of the public what their opinions on the storyline was.

Doing this gave us a basic idea of whether the storyline was good or bad or average. It was the first chance we had to see what an audience thought about the film we wanted to create.

This was great in that we could also get a basic idea on who our target audience could be. From this it was easier to create the treatment for the film.

Video QuestionnaireWe thought it’d be a good idea to create a video of members of the publics reaction to some basic questions we wanted to ask them about the public.

Again, It was a good way to see what kind of people were interested in the film and what kind of people weren’t. This was a good way to see their reactions because they didn’t have time to think about the their answers, like on Google Docs, so their reaction was raw and real which is what we needed to apply any changes to the plotline.

The full length video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePJa3l-WAAg

Analysing

After the video was published me and another group member thought it’d be a good idea to analyse the results to see if any patterns appear. For example if a majority of the participants answered differently to others or didn’t understand a certain part of the storyline then it is probably a good idea to make changes to the storyline.

We didn’t receive any answers that were extremely different to the next so that was a positive factor. Full analysis can be found here:

http://bca2media2014group8.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/review-of-video-questionnaire-results.html

Changes made throughout the editing stages

Throughout the whole process of making the film we, as a group, noticed flaws in the storyline that an intelligent audience would most definitely pick up on, like we did when we started to create the film.

We noticed little aspects such as the use of the ring that we originally decided on wouldn’t work during filming so we changed this to necklace because overall, it would make a better scene if a necklace was to be ripped from Kyle’s neck.

All the small changes we made were made with the audience in mind. We didn’t want them to watch the film and pick up on small errors that would make the film less enjoyable to watch. We wanted the film to have a perfect storyline that the audience had a thrilling viewing.

Changes:• http://bca2media2014group8.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/plotline-update.html• http://bca2media2014group8.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/title-of-film-will-need-

to-be-changed.html

Rough CutAfter creating the rough cut of The Employer we needed to ask the audience what they thought of it before we made the final changes to the final film.

Rough cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELL-GHHXIjc

We created a questionnaire for audiences to fill in on Google Docs after they watched the film on YouTube. This gave us the chance to see what their opinions are and what we can change so that the film is suited more to the audience than us as the film makers.

ResultsOne question we asked, which was the most important one is ‘Would you change or adapt anything about the film, what would that be? Why?’ The answers to this question are the vital to know because these are the changes that we needed to make. Some responses we got were:

It was clear that there was some confusion in the middle of the film so there needed to be some reshoots. We needed shots to show that Kyle got the box from one of the houses. This would then clear up the narrative slightly.

Some sounds needed to also be sorted out which we could very easily do.

We all decided that we needed to do something that would clear up the storyline so that it was clear to the audience so we decided to add a voice over from The Employer so that it became clear what Kyle was doing in the middle of the film.

Final FilmAfter posting the final film we gave the same questionnaire to be filled in after a viewing to see if we had succeeded in perfecting the film for the audience.

Here we can see that we have done well in making the audience happy. The audience have admitted that

there is nothing to be changed with the final film after the changes

were made. So in conclusion I think we have succeeded in making the audiences response a priority as their opinions were vital for the

success of the final film.