Question Three of Evaluation

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout our audience questionnaires we made sure that we had specific questions about the construction of the movie and the way that we produced it. This enables us to break down the film in to the camera angles, music and the feelings of the audience. Overall we had a positive feedback on every aspect of our film and found that the audience enjoyed watching the short film because it has a twist towards the end which surprised them and it was a lot of action within a few minutes.

Although our audience stereotypically on average don't usually watch short films, through our feedback and watching peoples reactions towards our short film, I think we were able to show people the power of short films. Having a meaningful and hard hitting story behind it and creating a tension or strong emotion for the audience creates their involvement. When watching the film with a group of people I heard some saying how they felt sorry for the girl because she was so innocent and kind to the boy. This has taught me that people tend to sympathise with a character if its a realistic setting and story. Which means that the story that we had chosen was a perfect example for these stories.

Camera Angles

Our camera angles were chosen according to the way in which we wanted the audience to see the characters and setting for example we had a range of shots within the meeting scene from the long wide shot showing the natural lighting on the two characters and the contrast of the close up pan of the two characters first look at each other which was put in to connote the romance blossoming between them. The reason that we use these types of shots are to provoke the emotion from the audience.

The image above shows a answer to our forth question that focused on the camera angles. It shows that the audience actually remembered certain shots that were shown through the film, e.g 'the fight scene.' This shows that the audience were effected by the certain shots that we had chosen to show within the scenes that we wanted to effect the audience. The variety of angles used also gives the audience a more entertaining viewing as it creates the tension within the film.

This taught me that the camera angles are also an important component in the production of the short film as they can be used to connote emotions and feelings that they short film is trying to convey, it also shows that a range 0of camera angles grabs viewers attention and by changing the pace and variety you are able to create tension within a film.

Music

Another aspect that we asked our audience about was the music that was added within the film. It was used to enhance the emotions and tension within the film that we were provoking from the audience. The answers that we got in our questionnaires showed us that people felt the music was well timed within the feelings and emotions of the film and that it added to the audiences reaction of sympathising with the young girls character.

Not only was the music well timed throughout the audience also showed that it was extremely effective when it began to crescendo, as it built up the tension within the film and the realisation of the twist within the plot went well with the build up of music. The answer underneath also shows us that the audience felt that even though the music build when you saw the boy it also built the tension on the 'girls bruise' scene and the 'girl crying alone' scene, in turn it provoked the audience to feel more sympathetic towards her.

This taught me that the audience are very effected by the music of a film and that the music can be used to provoke the emotions of the audience for example sympathise with a certain character. It also taught me that within a short film because you only have a little time to convey the emotions and plot of a story the music plays an important role in the development of the film. This in turn creates the atmosphere for the audience and establishes the key themes of the short film.

Impact on Audience

A large part of the development of our film was to create a story that had an important and meaningful message that spoke to our target audience, we wanted people to gain understanding of a 'touchy' issue such as abusive relationships. We wanted the audience to feel the pain of the girls character and the change in the boy.

The above answer shows us the way that the audience have sympathised with the girls character because of the way in which we have portrayed the boy and the way in which we have used the camera angles for example the point of view from the girl so that the audience have taken her perspective of the situation. The answer below however shows that the audience are being challenged about the situation that we have created at Lucy answers the same as everyone else but also shows the different way that the audience could per sieve the situation we have created. She has interpreted the story involving the romantic relationship between the two characters.

This meant that we needed to produce the film in a realistic way to create the best view for the audience and to make sure that the message is sent across properly, it also enables people to relate back to our film as a realistic interpretation of something that happens in real life. The answer below shows that we achieved this by the used of mise en scene, camera angles and music.

This has shown me that when viewing a complex and complicated situation many of the viewers take on the perspective that the directors have wanted them to, for example we wanted the audience to feel sorry for the young naive girl so we showed shots and scenes of her side of the story, as well as showing her weakness against him with scenes such as their argument. A challenging and realistic situation also provokes the audience to feel emotion towards certain characters and with a topic such as 'abusive relationships' it can also grab the audiences attention due to their innocence towards sensitive subjects or issues they have also been apart of.

Criticism

An important part of the development stage is the things that we have done wrong and the way in which we could have improved on the film that we produced. By asking the audience what they thought we would be able to change within the film gives us an outside perspective of the film.

The above answer shows me that one of the key things we could have improved on was the lighting but due to the time of day that we were filming and our inability of professional lighting we were only able to use IMovie to change the lighting on individual shots. Although we tried our harder to created natural looking light with artificial light and when we wanted to use the black and white tint we chose not to do it on the natural bright lighting because it was romantic and connoted the emotions that we wanted to show. We tried to use our lighting to our advantage within the film such as the meeting scenes, but the scene such as the fight scene were very dark because there wasn't a lot of natural light and we were unable, apart from lamp posts, to use artificial lighting.

This criticism focuses on one part of the film, it is about the fight scene which is the most iconic scene throughout the whole film. We wanted to show the fight scene with a variety of shots and angles however its understandable that the fight scene wasn't as fast paced as it should have been however because the music was fitted to compliment the pace of the shots it isn't to obvious that the scene isn't as fast pace as it could have been. The viewer needs to be able to see the detail in the film as well for example Megan in the background when your seeing the film from Luke's perspective and when the close up is on Harrington's hand and the rod slides out, these small details meant that the film couldn't be as fast as maybe we wanted because it would lose its meaning.

We also wanted to know what people felt we had done well within the film to show the aspects that we had excelled through development and hard work. This enabled us to show our strengths and weaknesses through the production of our film and to give us a greater understanding of what worked and what didn't.

The above photo answer shows the reviewer giving specific scenes of the material they thought was good. They stated that the 'love scenes' where the most effective throughout the film, this may be because we decided that with little dialogue we had use other components such as camera angles, setting and music to create the 'romantic' atmosphere and the happy feelings for the audience. However the reviewer below feels that the 'love scenes' are confusing because they don't show a clear change in time and therefore development of the relationship. We could have had added scenes which we filmed that we decided as a group didn't need to be there but now I feel that it may have been a better idea for us to have them to separate the non-dialogue shots.

This has taught me that although our film uses a lot of conventions and is effective we still could have used these conventions to create a better , more effective film which would have been more tense and emotional for example if we had the fight scene at a faster pace, however I feel that although we could have changed parts of the movie overall the audience response was that only a few things could have been done better.

Conclusion

To conclude the audiences response to the film has taught me that the camera angles and music within a film play a large part on influencing the audiences reactions to the film and that although there are times that you may understand whats happening in the film due to knowing the story line it needs to be clear for a fresh audience. The audience reviews have shown me that having a variety of camera angles keeps the audience captured through their viewing, that having a meaningful message makes it easier to provoke the audiences emotions which leads to be able to experiment with music as it can be used in different ways to create different emotions.