Audience Research For First Render of Short Film - Audience Research

Audience Research For First Render of Short Film - Audience Research

We have created a first render of our short film. This is not the final product that will be submitted, however, it is very close to how the final product will look and sound. What we are going to do is show the rendered short film to 10 members of the target audience. We will show each member the short film multiple times. Then we are going to ask them a few questions:

• What did you think of the short film?
• Could you clearly understand why the protagonist wanted to kill himself?
• Do you think the protagonist ended his life?
• Was it clear the protagonist was lonely?
• Was it clear that the protagonist was content with killing himself?
• Are there any issues in the image editing that stood out to you as you watched the short film?
• Are there any issues with the sound editing that you noticed when you watched the short film?
• Were there any parts of the short film that didn't make sense or made the short film boring?

Before we showed the short film to the group of the target audience we had a group screening with all the group members. During this, we had a look at some aspects of the short film and made sure that we were happy with the final product that we had created. The main thing that we changed is we got rid of the text that said "The next day". This is because we felt that it made the short film look less professional and it is not normally seen in real short films. This meant that we had to create a black screen between scene 1 and scene 2 to make it clear that it was a different day between the two scenes.

The Video We Showed:

The Feedback:

• What did you think of the short film?

All the people that viewed the film said that they enjoyed watching it. They said that it wasn't too long which could have made it boring, however, it was not too short so that information could have been missed. Also, lots of the viewers noticed the subtle repetition within the short film which was used to emphasise certain parts of the film, for example, in the scene where the protagonist sees his friend again and then the friend disappears. 

• Could you clearly understand why the protagonist wanted to kill himself?

All of the members of the audience understood why the protagonist wanted to kill himself. However, some of the members of the audience thought that the protagonist killing himself  was very extreme. They felt that if the story was more explanatory showing that he has been lonely for a very long time then it would have made more sense for the protagonist to think about suicide. 

• Do you think the protagonist ended his life?

The short film left a cliff hanger which all of the members of the audience really liked about the short film. They liked it because it left them some uncertainty about whether he would have actually tried to commit suicide or not. This is what we wanted the audience to think. Also, we asked whether they think that he went through with the suicide or not. Some of the people said yes because they assumed that this person didn't have any friends for a long time. On the other hand, most of the people though that he didn't kill himself they just thought that he was thinking about it. As a group, we felt that the protagonist wouldn't have killed himself because it would have been a very drastic thing to do.

• Was it clear the protagonist was lonely?

All of the members of the target audience said that they could clearly see that the protagonist was lonely. Also, they said that they liked how the protagonist was doing things on his own that he used to do with his friend, however, he is doing them on his own. This adds a good element of repetition to the short film.

• Was it clear that the protagonist was content with killing himself?

Most of the audience could tell the protagonist was content with killing himself. They said that the final shot in the short film showed that he was content with killing himself. We were worried about this shot because it was very hard to convey to the audience that the protagonist was content because the protagonist was not played by an actor. However, some of the audience were a bit confused with the last shot and they said it would have been better to show that he was content in a better way. Also, they said that once we told them that the protagonist was meant to be content with killing himself then they could see it more clearly from the final shot.

• Are there any issues in the image editing that stood out to you as you watched the short film?

They said that they couldn't see any major issue with the image editing in the short film. However, one thing they did say was the during shots where there is a lot of movement the was a slight blur or ghosting around the movement. This was an issue with the camera and the export that we did notice, however, there were a lot of still shots in the short film that were in focus and not blurry so we decided to leave this issue. Also, it would be very hard to get rid of all of the blurriness that appeared in the short film.

• Are there any issues with the sound editing that you noticed when you watched the short film?

They said that there was only one noticeable issue with the audio of the short film. This was that at the end of the short film the car screeching sound only played through the left speaker of their computer. This is not a huge issue because the sound is still clear, however, this is a small detail that makes the short film seem less professional.

• Were there any parts of the short film that didn't make sense or made the short film boring?

The final question that we asked the group were any parts of the short film boring. All the people that view our short film said that none of the parts of the short film were boring. This is good because during the editing process we made sure to be thorough when choosing what should be in the short film to make sure that anything that was in the short film was relevant to developing the story or intriguing the audience.