Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 3: What Have You Learned From Audience Feedback? - Connor Hilton

For our short film, the target audience is for people aged between 17 and 25. To ensure that a film is good, sometimes film makers will reach out to members of their target audience to give them some feedback on their work.  This is a key step in making a high quality short film. Audience feedback allows the film makers to improve upon the film before it is fully released. There are many techniques used to get audience feedback such as:

• Recording the comments of the viewer after they have seen the film, acknowledging any mistakes pointed out.
• Record a video of a the members of the target audience during a live screening of the film to see which parts that people like.
• Set up an online survey with questions about the film and analyse the answers to see common themes within the answers. 
• Reach out to members of the target audience personally and ask them a few questions. 

To get the audience feedback for our short film, we created a group chat on the social media platform Facebook which allowed us to communicate with 10 members of our target audience  via text. After we had shown them  our film we asked them a series of questions to see what they thought about the film. Before we started editing the actual short film, we created rushes for the key scenes. Rushes are the key scenes put together with little editing. Rushes allowed us to see how the key scenes would look and if the film would flow correctly. 

Before the filming of our short film, we explained the overall plot of the short film to a few members of our target audience. Here is the feedback that we collected:

Questions We Asked:

1. Would you be interested in watching this short film?
2. Do you think the message of this film is realistic?
3. Is the story relatable in any way?
4. What improvements do you think could be made to the story idea?

Feedback:

Fraser(17):

1. Yes, the story sounds interesting but it's a bit dark.
2. In some ways yes, however the reaction seems a bit extreme.
3. Not for me personally, but I could understand why some people might see themselves in the characters position.
4. I think that there should be some background into why the friend commits suicide in the first place. Like, explain why the character is depressed.

Matt(16):

1. It seems like an interesting idea, but it's not for me.
2. It seems a bit far fetched, without any knowledge of why the character commits suicide in the first place.
3. As I mentioned, I think it's unlikely to happen. It would seem more relatable if your friend died in an accident.
4. I think the death of the character that commits suicide should be an accident as that seems more realistic to me.

James(18):

1. Yes, it seems intriguing
2. I think it is somewhat realistic, it's hard to say without knowing the whole situation surrounding the death of the first character.
3. Somewhat, in a real life situation it's not normally your friend dying  but usually moving on. Or you might get separated by going to different schools.
4. I think the idea is good, but maybe add some more detail to show the reason the character was depressed in the first place and why he chose to commit suicide instead of talking to his friend.

Summary:

I think that the feedback that we received was useful moving forward. I think that the points that have been made about improving the story are important and we will have a discussion about this as a group. It seems like most people think that the overall idea is good, but they need more information about the death of the friend at the start of the film. This was a sacrifice we made for the length of the film otherwise the film would end up being too long. We will look into a way of telling the audience more information about the characters death.

Later in the production stage, after we had finished creating the short film we collected this audience feedback:

The Feedback

Below is the feedback that we got from the sample group that we showed the clips to.

Scene 1:

• They felt that the character in the blue trousers (the protagonist) was very happy. This is how we wanted the character to come across in this scene.
• We had to explain to the sample audience that this scene was supposed to be a montage and once we told them that then they all understood that it was supposed to show the protagonist being happy with his friend.
• Also, they said that the friend appears to be sad which is made more apparent by the happiness of the protagonist. This is good because the audience will be shocked by what happens in the next scene, however, they will then be able to understand why the friend looked so and maybe they will be able to connect the dots to realise that the friend killed himself.

Scene 6:

• They understood that this was the part of the story where the protagonist is trying to fix his loneliness by connecting with other people and trying to make new friends.
• They felt sympathy with the character as he is trying to fix the problem he is having. This is good because it helps the audience connect with the character on an emotional level because loneliness and depression is something that can affect people within the target audience of the short film.
• On top of this, we explained to them that this scene was originally planned to happen on a computer, however, we changed it to a phone because we thought is would be more relate able. They agreed with us because they said most of the time people use Facebook on their phones to talk to other people which meant the target audience could relate to it more than if we had used a computer.
• They did have one negative about this scene which was because the atmosphere of the scene is happy they felt that the costume of the character was very dark and sad. They said that the costume should have been lighter to match the happy atmosphere. We do agree with this, however, at the start of the scene even though the character is determined to find a new friend he is still grieving over his dead friend.
• Finally, they said that the characters facial expression showed that he is determined which is good because we want the audience to know that the protagonist is determined to overcome his problem.

Scene 8:

• When we showed this scene to the sample they said that the character appears to be happy with what he is doing.
• Also, they said that it is very clear what he is going to try and do, additionally, they said that they really like the cliff hanger ending because to makes them question whether he will actually kill himself. They said that is is effective because it makes them think back to the other parts of the short film and think whether he would go through with the act of killing himself.
• They did say that it looked good with the fog in the background of the shots which helped the scene seem more mysterious, however, they said it was very light out which gave the scene a happier feel than we wanted it to.