What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
Our audience feedback was important as we were able to see what parts, depending of whether it was the research and planning, or the product and ancillary tasks we needed to improve. We conducted our feedback by holding a screening of our test shoot.
At the time we had first screened our film, it was incompleted as no voice-over had been added. Also we had not finished filming the enitre film due to scheduling issues. Therefore, it made it harder for the audience to fully understand the narrative and themes of our film. It was because of this that our film had not achieved its purpose. However, not all of the viewers who watched at the time agreed. The main positive note was that the score we had used fit very well and was clearly suitable with our target audience of 18-25.
This helped us to figure out what exatcly it was that we needed for film. We decided to go back over our storyboard and see what else we needed to film.The main reasons for this was scheduling issues with the cast and the quality of the DV camera we were using at the time of filming. .
Our audience feedback helped us a great deal in terms of our film as it helped to realise we would have to re-film certain parts to add to what we had at the time.
In terms of research and planning, the feedback again was quite positive, although this time we had less to improve which included adding extra detail here and there to certain blog posts. It, therefore meant our blog was in a good position, which helped us as we knew exactly wht we needed and how to develop our posts. In relation to the feedback we recieved for our research and planning one form had mentioned the fact that our blog posts were hard to locate due to the naming of them. I disagreed and this was something I went back and checked each post had a suitable and rememberable title.
One of the feedback form on our research and planning
Since we felt there was no problem, we had no chose to change as we found it no problem in navigating around the blog. The names of the posts were simple and related to each subject for example, Magazine Planning- Magazine Layouts was one of the names of our posts, and this was one negative the we did not change because we felt there was no problem.
List of Blog Posts
We did not see the problem with our blog and found this it was easy to navigate. We tried to make sure that the titles were simple and easy for us when it came to adding more detail and information to our blogs.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Thew new media technologies I used to help with my A2 coursework:
Reseach and Planning
Internet- research into other existing media products- BBC Film Network etc
Youtube- finding outher existing media products
logger-document research and planning
Production
Digital Camera- for location shots
DV Camera- for Test and final shoots
Post-Production
i-Movie
Image Manipulation- Photoshop CS4
Desktop Publishing- Pages
Internet- findind cpyright free music, spound effects and other images
Evaluation
Internet-finding images and specifically Blogger to post evaluation
Youtube- distribution and audience feedback
i-Movie-creating podcast
For the research and planning, I found that using Youtube was quite easy to find the things we needed, for example a range of short films. This is because Youtube is available to anyone and veryone, therefore allowing everyone to post thier own video freely for all to watch. It helped me with my rescerach and planning as I was able to find a range of short films that all had different versions on experimentation which helped to give clear ideas in influencing our short films. For example, our oringinal idea was to have the 4th wall broken. This idea came from the short film Sign Language by Oscar Sharp.
It was this film where we wanted to have a light-hearted film that was in some way 'happy-go'lucky' and made our audience feel uplifted. The problem we found was creating an idea that broke the 4th wall aas well meeting those 'guidelines' we set.
We next looked at Gone Goodbye by Keith Rivers, this idea gave us the idea of how we could use a voiceover to tell our story to our audience.
This film helped us to look at the idea of Melodrama and how it might be another possible idea. The problem I found with Youtube is that there is not really a way of advancing your search unless you just click on a number of different videos until you find the video that are satisfied with. Which is very I resulted into using the internet to try and find a site that was soley for Short Films. With using Google, I managed to find the BBC Film Network.
This site helped to find films that were of any genre and any length. The maxium of which was around 16-17 minutes. This helped as I was able to find a film that used nothing but sound such as Get Off My Land byDouglas Ray and a French silent made completely with Lego called Malhuer. It was helpful and also has the features that Youtube has of embedding videos. The site was a lot easier to use because it was soley dedicated to short films. It helped us as it gave us great ideas to see what the purpose of short films and how we could use that in the creation of our short film.
The search engine Google helped us to find offical film posters so we find how what conventions to follow for the layout of our poster.
They helped us to see that the use of white background was effective and it something that we used in our poster layouts and creating the poster itself. The search engine became very useful as you can easily advance your search which made it easier when looking into magazine articles as well. We were able to find images of magazine articles from well known magazines for films our such as Empire, Total Film, Prevue and Sight and Sound. That allowed us to get a feel of the magazine and how and what they focus on when it comes to the article.
Sight And Sound article of Daze of Wonder
Empire article on Twilight
With Blogger, this helped us as due to the fact it is online, it made it eaiser to document our research and to see what else needed to be done. The fact we could embed videos and add images made it eaiser as we did not have to write down the film and try to find it at another date as it was already uploaded to the blog. This meant that our decisions in what we could add to the blog became slightly more variable in comparison to AS. Also the new layout of Blogger, although it may not seemed to be very important made thre site easier to use, and it allowed us to expand our experience with the site even further. Such as being able to add links and embed videos.
With the the production of our film, we used DV Cameras, for our test shoots. The main problem we encountered was the DV Cameras we had were not very high quality. As well as using tape to record. An example is with our test shoot. Albeit technically and creative wise. We were also able to become more confident in filming Point-Of-View shots as we wanted to try and connect the audience with the character. One of the main forms and conventions we followed was the one plot twist. Which in most short film is usually revealed at the end of the film. As well as the circular narrative. We created a simple twist that when revealed at the end of the film would be more effective and have a greater impact on the audience once revealed.
It was because of this that we had to rely on voiceover, we were going to add to it. But the dialogue with Claire (Payal's character) when she says the line, 'It's not easy, you know. But you learn to get by' is just about heard.For this part of the research we only used basic shots and it helped to give us an idea as to how we would create the other angles and different shots when it came to actual filming.
One of the location shots taken on a camera
For the poster shots, however. We converged technology and used our mobile phones to take the shots. There was not much of a difference with the quality because most phones have mega pixels of 3 and upwards. Therefore it meant we could get a good quality photo by taking a simple picture from our phones.
Poster Shot taken on a phone
Although however, we did not use the photo in the end because of scheduling with the cast.
In terms of Post-Production, i-movie was used for our test shoot. The consumer based product was easy to use and to break down what we needed from our shots we had filmed. The problem, however was that it was limited in what we had wanted to do with our film due the fact it was consumer based and therefore limited the amount of experimentation we were allowed to add to our film. Our poster was created using the image manipulation software, Photoshop. However, the problem that we found with Photoshop is that there is so much that you can do with it, that we did not have enough time to go through the entire software. So to a certain extent our ability was limited because of that.
Our Film Poster
Where with most mainstream fiilm posters, they tend to have a large photo of the main star and then the background and rest of the film relies on small element of the film. Take the 2003 epic historic film, The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise. The poster has a picture of him in the background and a slightly fading image of a scene from the film. Yet at the top in wide letters in his name. So it suggests that rather than main focus of this film is Tom rather than the genre and the film itself.
Film poster for The Last Samurai, 2003
This was something that we chose to ingore and again the use of the internet allowed us to find posters which helped influence our decisions in the creative process of our film.
The use of Blogger for my evaluation was useful as most of my coursework had been posted on here so it meant that it was easy to access. Again, the internet provided useful with the search engines and gathering the right information for putting my evaluation together. Throughout the production of the coursework, certain technologies we used had affected our decisions.
