Thursday 19 January 2012
Evaluation Question 3
What have I learned from my Audience Feedback?
Audience feedback is a key part in not only evaluating work but also adapting work if it is necessary. For my short film and ancillary tasks, I had two lots of professional feedback and two lots of audience feedback.
My professional feedback was given to me by two university students, one who is studying Media and the other who is studying English. They watched my short film and looked at my print texts individually and then gave me points of strength within my work and points for improvement that they had seen. This allowed me to feel confident about my work but also be able to change any minor issues that there were.
The first person who gave me professional feedback was called Brendan. He watched my short film and told me that my film had a realistic slow pace which suited the quiet tone of the piece along with some good close-up shots and an original story. I was happy with this feedback as they noted all key things that I had purposely tried to portray in my short film. Brendan also noted that my sound effect of waves throughout my film was at a constant volume and his suggestion was to vary the volume so that the sound effect seemed more realistic. It was good to have his view on this part of my film, however I decided to leave my waves at the volume I had chosen as the reason why I had done this was because my dialogue sounded a little inconsistent I added the ocean waves in as a constant sound to level out the entire sound of the film.
Brendan also gave me feedback on both of my ancillary tasks that I had completed. For my film poster he said discussed that it was professional with a good amount of writing, that I had good shots of both characters and that my poster was simple but effective. This gave me a sense of achievement within my work as the print designs had been the hardest to analyse and come to a clear professional design for my work. Brendan also gave me some great points for improvement within my film poster. He said that in his opinion the title needed to be more prominent that the endorsement on the right hand side was too long and that there could be too many fonts. Again I took Brendan’s points on board and adjusted the title size to increase its visibility. I also shorted the endorsement to stop the poster from looking to busy. As for there being too many points, I understand that it could be viewed in that way however I decided to keep it as it was as this is what I felt looked the most professional in what I had made.
When commenting on my film review page Brendan gave me the most points for improvement on this piece of work. This matched with the fact that I found this the hardest task to complete with realism. The positive comments were for the image, the layout and the conclusion. I was happy for these points of my work to be pointed out but I was also even happier to be given improvements. Having someone independent look at my work gave me a chance to have some advice in how I needed to improve to make it look and read better. So this really helped me and all the improvement points that Brendan gave me for the review I acted on. Being an English student naturally the points he picked up on were English language and the way I had phrased certain things. I adjust my work accordingly as I felt that Brendan was correct.
The second person to give me professional feedback was Rebecca. The amount of positive feedback that she gave me after watching my film gave me great confidence in the film that I had made allowing me to feel happy with my work. The positive comments that she gave were that she liked how there was very little dialogue in my film but yet it was still completely understandable. She was impressed with the wide variety of shots that were included within my film in particular the shot of male character which was darker than all the rest because of the angle that I had filmed it in. She discussed my editing and the use of still images also as positive points. What I learned from Rebecca’s positive feedback was that everyone can have different opinions of something. The shot that was her favourite in the whole film was a shot that I wasn’t particularly happy with so I was quite shocked when she said this to me. It showed me that one thing that someone can dislike can be something that someone else will love. For improvements to my film Rebecca suggested that the second part of the music in short film came in to sharply that perhaps I should fade this in. Whilst I had already faded the music in after re-watching the film again I realised that Rebecca was right so I changed the volume of different parts of the first section of the music to allow a gradual increase in sound volume. This improved the sound of my film greatly.
When Rebecca looked at my film poster it taught me how important conventions are to media products. Within the majority of my positive feedback they were conventions that are usually seen on film posters. She commented on the award that I had placed in the corner and said that it made the poster look realistic. Also that the text and features were very conventional as well as the addition of production credits at the bottom of the poster. This feedback emphasised to me that people are aware if not consciously then sub consciously of the conventions of certain media products such as films and poster and this is how they recognise them, showing how important it is to follow some, not all, of these conventions.
Rebecca when looking at my review gave me the opposite in advice. Being a Media student she gave me the advice of perhaps my image needed some colour alteration to improve the general look of the review page. I understood what she meant but I decided to stick with the way the image was, as I had purposely chose this image because of its darkness on one side and its framing. What was good was that she commented that it looked conventional to a review page in a magazine. Also that it looked realistic.
Even though in some instances I chose not to act on the advice for improvement that was given to me it was fantastic to have two unbiased independent people who knew what they were about and were able to take the time to sit and look at my work.
I also during my project got the feedback of two potential members of my target audience for the short film. However the difference was that I knew these two people and that I had to be aware that sometimes people close can not give accurate honest feedback. On the other hand saying this as I will come to later these two did actually give me some honest improvement feedback.
The two people that I asked were called Zoe and James, once they had watched my short film, they both gave me positive comments such as good mise-en-scene, the music and the characters amongst other things. All of these positive comments taught me that even though I know these people, there are strengths of my short film that can be picked out from it, it also helped me to see my film in a non director way attempting to watch it as an outsider. The comments on improvement were things like continuity and varying the camera angles. They also commented on my print work acknowledging what they liked and what they didn’t and in one instance also spotting a spelling mistake which I was able to go and correct. Although I didn’t follow some of the improvements mentioned to me as either it was too late or I thought they were not necessary I did with the mistake and also the opinion that perhaps my production credits on my poster were too close together overlapping and on closer inspection they were.
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Final Film - Been There Done That
This is my final film - Been There Done That. All of the previous work on my blog the research, planning and work that has led to this completed piece.
Been There Done That from Yasmine Rich on Vimeo.
Been There Done That from Yasmine Rich on Vimeo.
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