Evaluation 3 - Sam McLeish

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My Target Audience

The demographic that was targeted for my short film was men and women aged between 16 and 24. Due to such, we gathered target data from people that are categorised into the above throughout all phases of the project. This was done in many different ways, but mainly via in person interviews. 

Short Film; Planning

The audience research, that was conducted during the planning stage was on the location that the film would be filmed at (original post). During such, it was highlighted that some members of the audience, in this case both Hashmath and Lydia, found it relatable for some of the film to be filmed on trains and at stations. This is more relevant for the local audience, as we live in the part of the country that is used for commuting to London and Brighton, and therefore, students use the network as well. As Hashmath points out, this can be seen as a "reflection" on our everyday lives, making it more relatable to our audience. This is then especially useful when conveying our message of equality to the audience, because there is no reason for the audience to be hostile towards the ideas we are presenting.

However, we also took Hashmath's advice as he pointed that "the route looked complex with a lot of stops". Combined with the fact that Govia Thameslink Railway (who manage Southern) never replied to our messages on where we can and cannot film (even though we got permission for Balcombe station), we wanted to avoid filming on the train for the least amount of time possible. This was because we didn't want to make any other passengers uncomfortable and get in trouble if a guard came along (even if this is unlikely due to the RMT strikes). Therefore, the fact that Hashmath felt that even minimal time on the train would still make it relatable, we took the advice from the feedback, and in the end the filming went smoothly.

What I also learnt from this audience feedback is that it is incredibly difficult to record an audience feedback interview when the people you're interviewing would prefer not to be on camera. As this is totally understandable and Blogger doesn't allow you to just upload raw audio files, I improvised and used Final Cut Pro to upload as it as a MP4 file with nothing but the above for the visuals. I would like to think this was done successfully. 

Short Film; Editing (rushes)

This audience feedback came from after we had the initial order of the shots, so this was without the texts added in at this stage. 

I feel that this audience feedback was a lot more constructive than the last because it shows that constructive criticism is incredibly useful. For example, the feedback that we received from Amy suggested that it would be better suited to apply a filter to the bedroom scene to make it look more typical for a 'romantic' film, also shown under Altman's Semantic Codes. Although this criticism was perfectly valid, we made the decision not to take this advice because if we applied the filter, the film would look like a typical cliché of a rom-com. Due to such, this allows for more of a surprise element to be shown to the audience, which is then a lot more useful when relating it back to the audience.

What I learnt from this is that it is a lot easier to receive audience feedback on a one to one basis rather than interviewing two people at once. This then allows the people we're interviewing to not use the excuse that they've 'run out of ideas' when they hear all of the facts that the others have mentioned, which seemed to happen in the first audience feedback interview above.

Short Film; Final Product (Editing and Imagery)

This audience feedback, in my opinion, was actually incredibly well received after the struggles we had during the editing process with the text messages. The fact that what we've done during the editing process was approved by an audience member gave us a sigh of relief so that we wouldn't need to go back and change any more elements that we thought didn't needed to be obviously addressed. For example, Amy still suggested that we added a filter but again, we thought against it for the reasons above.

In my opinion, this style of audience feedback via text is probably one of the least effective methods in gathering data because;

• You cannot refer to images and you have to rely on memory
• The response you receive is more open to interpretation
• You're not guaranteed a quick response, which can sometimes be needed ASAP

Short Film; Audience Review of Final Product

This audience feedback came after the deadline when the films were reviewed in class. I feel that the reviews were incredibly useful because it sort of confirmed that the fears that I was feeling when the film was completed. However, I did go back to combat some of these mistakes. For example; 

• I incorporated a second backing track into the sequence to make it less repeititve.
• I readjusted some of the foleys in post-production to make sure they are all synced.
• I readjusted the legnths of the texts to ensure that they could be read by the audience. 

This is now incredibly useful as I could highlight my mistakes, rectify them as best as I can to my ability and what I couldn't have done better could have been talked about in the evaluation.
 

Poster; Initial Design (Planning main image)

The audience feedback that came from this section in all honesty was entirely unplanned. When I was choosing my main focus image, I asked my friend who was sitting next to me to review out of the two and this became my audience feedback. If I was more prepared, I feel that this audience feedback could have been recorded in a better way but due to time constraints, I felt that this would suffice. 

The photo that was used

The other photo considered

The actual feedback was incredibly helpful because I was stuck between the images on which to use, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to get a outside party to look at it too. I personally thought that the less formal photo to the bottom would be more appropriate for a short film poster, but as Lauren pointed out, the photo that was used was more "arty and poster-like out of the two". Therefore, I followed her advice and it was clear that it paid off in the end, because like she said, it looks like a poster that has typical conventions that are used in the industry. 

Poster; Draft

The following came from when I submitted my poster draft. 

The poster draft

This audience feedback was taken in a normal interview style, but for extra effect I printed off the poster to give the audience more of an idea of what it would be like if this was out in circulation. In doing this, the poster received nothing but positive comments which was nice but I wanted more constructive criticism so that the poster could be improved more. However, I was satisfied that there wasn't any obvious things that needed to be addressed pointed out by the audience so I would leave for the final alterations made by the whole group, as seen below, so I learnt the importance of the balance of following recommendations and following gut instinct.

The final poster with alterations from the group

Poster; Final

This was the audience feedback for my final poster. I feel that it was more appropriate to get this feedback from people that we interviewed earlier in the process so that they can understand the sense of development that our products have undergone. I am glad that we got, on the whole, positives reviews on the poster because I was rather proud of how much effort went in. However, what I do regret in hindsight was not separating the interviewees so that we would have two sets of both positives and negatives but more variations of both. Overall, I feel that what we achieved in our final poster allowed us to avoid the need to change, especially as it clearly conforms to industry-standard conventions. We also followed the advice from Amy in previous feedback and applied a filter to really imply the romance genre, so overall I am happy with the outcome.

The review

Vauge quantative data

The audience feedback for the review was conducted via Survey Monkey, that can be found at the link above. Overall, I feel that gathering this research was harder than the others because there are few people in the college who recognise the conventions of LWL reviews. However, the main advantage of this research was that it was conducted via Survey Monkey, meaning that I could gather some quantative, rather than qualative, data. I would like to think that this was successful but there is a clear limit on what you can try to put a number on, but in actual fact, I think that the other methods that I've used for audience research were more successful. For example, interviewing provided us with feedback with a lot more detail. Therefore, I am happy with the research via this medium, as I explored in the link above, but I have learnt that I could have improved the feedback by conducting it via another medium.

Conclusion

To conclude;

• I learnt that audience feedback is incredibly useful when pitching a product, but it is clear that it is best to use them as recommendations as at the end of the day, you are the one with a more varied knowledge of industry-standard conventions.
• You are more likely to receive higher quality feedback from multiple people if they are interviewed separately.
• The most direct and easy to use format of audience feedback comes from a videoed interview that can be reviewed from a later date, with the context provided for both parties.