A2 Media Project

Evaluation:

3) ‘What have [I] learned from the audience feedback during this project?’

Sam Lockwood.

Media coursework

Evaluation 2012/13.

Wha

t are

we

eval

uatin

g?

We’ve reached the evaluation stage of our film project and

must now reflect on how we approached different facets of

the production process as a whole.

for this we have been given 4 evaluative questions with

which to discuss multiple aspects of our project– they are as

follows:1) In what way(s) does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

4)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning

and evaluation stages?To make this process more efficient we originally decided in

our group to each tackle one of the 4 evaluative questions

individually and present an extended answer to our own

question before answering the remaining three in brief.

I have chosen question 3). As my role in the group largely

consisted of constructing the films narrative, ‘audience’ was

something that I had to consider frequently and carefully.

Who

wer

e th

e au

dien

ce? Before production on our Short

film began in October of last

year we had to decide exactly

who we intended on targeting

our product towards.In other words, who did we

expect our eventual viewing

audience to consist of; girls,

boys, adults, teenagers etc.

3) ‘What have [I] learned from the

audience feedback during this project?’

Who

wer

e th

e au

dien

ce?

As we decided upon our films genre as a ‘Horror/psychological thriller’ it became necessary to research the most common age and gender of that genres audience.Standard ratings for films of this genre were 12A, 15 and 18 the simple reasoning behind this being that films of a Thrilling or Horrific nature have the likelihood of evoking distress or fright in an audience not yet mature enough to understand or endure its content.

Who

wer

e th

e au

dien

ce?

In regards to age though I noticed in my research there was an almost 50/50 balance between the number of male as opposed to female viewers of Horror films; as this graph, taken from British Film Institute(BFI) website displays.

Feed

back

.

It was of great convenience that

audience which we were targeting

was of a similar age to that of

ourselves as I think this allowed us

to more naturally anticipate the

viewers reactions towards our

product and cater to preferred

tastes (likes/dislikes) of said

audience with a greater appreciation.It also meant that we could pitch our

film to our peers and effectively use

them as an ideal test audience in

order to gain feedback that would be

the most genuine on how the future

consumers of the film would react.

Clas

s Fee

dbac

k.

In response to the rough draft of our

uncompleted film – which can be seen at this

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature

=player_embedded&v=B44s4rcxqzI

We received mixed feedback upon showing it to

our group of media peers.Classmate Ernie Limbo:“Really good opening shots. I like how

there’s a sense of ambiguity in the

beginning. Shot transition between outdoors

and in doors was really good. I'm not sure

whether there are too many shots in the

beginning. There’s a risk of losing the

audience’s attention.

I think you should sync the music with the

shots in the beginning for definite but I don’t

think you need to do that for the whole of

the short film.Some shots were also a bit dark, but as your

filming at night and its low budget so I guess

it’s difficult to have a good quality footage.

But maybe film near streetlights? It might

give a good dark orange look to the whole

thing.”

Clas

s Fee

dbac

k.

Classmate Tas Mahdy:“Loved the changes you’s

made!I think maybe put sound of the

creaky sound of the chair in

the shot where Alec leaves the

room!I think title board will make a

big difference, and love the

idea of the cliff hanger!I like the last shot actually,

and maybe do some colour-

synchronizing in the next bit?”

Clas

s Fee

dbac

k.

Subject Teacher Mr. Wroe:“My view is that you should

include the rhythmic editing

right up until Alec [Keith]

leaves the house.Titles. Watch a couple of short

film case studies and explore

their titles and timings,

consider this with rhythmic

editing.Make a study of how you

address your themes in the

first two minutes. Use this

study to inform future

storyboards.”

Feed

back

re

spon

se.

Upon reflection the main thing we

learned from the class feedback we

received was a greater understanding of how much of a

key role editing plays in communicating the films style and

genre.While student Tas suggested a

greater synchronization of colour in

our film, student Ernie as well as

our subject tutor Mr. Wroe both

found progression of our soundtrack

early on in the film to be most

effective and suggested that we

use the technique of ‘Rhythmic

editing’ to a further extent.

Chan

ges m

ade

afte

r fee

dbac

k.In response to feedback we received from our peer group upon watching our short films 2nd draft We decided to change our filming technique – opting to use a tripod for our next shoot with the intention of gaining smoother transitions between shots.

The use of a tripod added greater stability to the film – most effectively in our establishing shots in which we were able to zoom and refocus between back and foreground for example in these screenshots.

Chan

ges m

ade

afte

r fee

dbac

k. The decision to use a soundtrack and most crucially, rhythmically edit it with the shot transitions in our film, was a key decision made during post production and perhaps the most effective. In the post production of our 2nd film draft we had

experimented with this technique without actually knowing its technical name.When syncing the soundtrack(‘the Thing’) with the opening couple of shot from our film it had a noticeable impact. We were encouraged by this and applied some of the suggestions we heard during feedback – changing the rhythmically edited section of our film from the opening 4 shots to the opening 12 instead.

Impl

emen

ting

of

‘title

s and

cred

its in

re

spon

se to

fe

edba

ck.

In both the 1st and 2nd drafts of our

short film we neglected to include

any titles boards or credits.

Upon receiving feedback to our

piece we were reminded this

something we had to consider.While most films of both the short and

feature-length format traditionally open

and close with the said productions

‘credits’, this was something we avoided as

we did not want there to be any kind of

visual distraction in the opening shots of

our film – it being paramount the tension is

sustained throughout its entirety.

Impl

emen

ting

of

‘title

s and

cred

its in

re

spon

se to

fe

edba

ck. For these

reasons we decided that all of our titles would be shown at the end of the film with traditional white on black wording fading in and out of screen.

Though not being clearly stated at the start, throughout its duration there are subtle implications made that the films title is in fact ‘Screen’.We eventual decided on the font ‘Synchro LET’ which works in couple of ways: firstly it is slightly computerized font which fits with the technological theme of our film; secondly, it being all-capitalized font meant it worked extra effectively when Rhythmically edited with the bold soundtrack when appearing on screen.

Feedback to the initial ident concept: Upon showing the 'SDFX3'

formatted ident to one of our subject tutors, Ms Bird

she had this to say:“The speed and image quality of the Ident was very poor and choppy; so I

would choose an alternative method using much less technically taxing and all in all more user friendly.”

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to it

.

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to it

.

This is a snapshot taken from our 2nd ident concept in mid January using Serif DrawPlus X3. The first design consisted simply of a single sheep jumping across the screen past a crescent moon; but I later changed this idea to incorporate the name of our production company. This was done by turning the crescent moon 180 degrees vertically so it would resemble a letter 'C'.

I also had a few similar thoughts on the initial format of our ident – personally finding it difficult grips with the intricate technologies of the ‘Serif Draw-plus’ program.

Our 2nd ident design consisted of a very simple stop-motion animation made up of several small drawings using chalk on black paper which could be easily rubbed out and redrawn leaving only a slight white smudge on the paper.

I also had a few similar thoughts on the initial format of our ident – personally finding it difficult grips with the intricate technologies of the ‘Serif Draw-plus’ program.

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to it

.

In retrospect the typeface looked quite cheap which in a way worked with the grimy and intense tone of our film, but I would still preferred it to be in colour and overall more sleek. we contemplated possibly making a final draft using a proper LCD Camera rather than just my IPad - as shown here. We decided an alternative to this format issue was using a newly developed app for the IPad ‘Do Ink‘; which would allow us to quickly develop stop motion images through a duplicating system.

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to

it.

Having had prior experience in using Ipad supported software, I found it quite simple to use ‘Do Ink’ to create the simple sheep logo in our ident.There were some concerns during the production of the newly formatted ident that may seem too detached from our primary product – the short film.The ident having a colourful, almost childlike tone about it, while ‘Screen’ itself is strikingly darker and presents a much less fantastical image.

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to

it.

Our final ident for ‘Counting Sheep Productions’is one of many examples of how constant feedback we received during the production of our film helped us to perfect its overall identity.

As our ident would immediately precede our film itself, it was vital that it projected the right image.

In evaluation we decided that the juxta-position in moods between the ident and the short film works effectively to highlight the sense of unease in our films narrative; we also added a ‘vignette’ video effect to make ident slightly darker.

- Con

stru

ctio

n of

our

pro

duct

ion

com

pany

iden

t and

feed

back

to

it.

Finished ident can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4prvOSsu984

In su

mm

ary…

The feedback we received during the

production of our film was of great

importance as principally, it gave us

the capability to have our work

reviewed from a neutral perspective.The feedback we received greatly

influenced our consideration of

Soundtrack, Titles and the overall

visual style of our piece.The process of implementing these

features in our film and receiving

regular audience feedback throughout

have not only giving me an advanced

understanding of how to make our film

but has also reminded me why we are

making it and who for.