What have you learned from your audience feedback? XO-PRODUCTIONS

Gaining audience feedback has been a crucial aspect of the production of this short film. We produced an animatic of our story board which helped us to picture what our final film outcome would look like, we used similar shots and shot angles and the planned locations for the animatic in a hope that it would give us a real insight into what our overall film would look like. Here is a link to the XO Productions website where all of our production materials have been presented. The link takes you to our original questionnaires that we produced and then presents the outcomes of those questionnaires with a summary of all the feedback that we collated. Here is also a link to the YouTube page where our rough-cut is shown. THE ANIMATIC

After producing our animatic we created a small questionnaire, we used short simple yes/no questions In order to obtain more feedback in a quicker manner. We used questions such as ‘did you understand the short film?’ and ‘can you think of a good name for our film?’ we wanted to incorporate a variety of questions which analysed all aspects of the film to make sure that the feedback informed us of other peoples views of the film, start to finish, and to see if the overall story line would be successful. The overall screening of the short film and the feedback we gained was very successful, seeing the views that other people had on our ideas and plans for the film was extremely beneficial and it gave us, as a team the confidence and encouragement to work as hard as we could to continue to develop our ideas and the ideas gained from our screening to produce a good quality outcome.

The question that benefited us a lot from our questionnaire was ‘can you think of a good name for our film?’. As a team we were struggling and finding it hard to think of a good quality name that would define our whole film, asking this question resulted in a wide variety of feedback and some very good potential titles. The name that stood out to us the most was ‘Turn Tables’. When the whole group saw this we instantly all loved it, it really represents the whole film and the way in which the tables do turn in the twist towards the end of the film. Asking this question really did help us and we are very pleased with all of the feedback we gained from this question.

Question 10 from our questionnaire was ‘rate our story 1=good 5=bad’. From this question the results ranged between 2-4 instigating that we did have a lot of room to improve. Although this did knock us, it did encourage us to work harder and to ensure that for our final outcome we would be receiving at least 4’s and 5’s when we asked this question again. To act upon this feedback and to ensure that we could increase the quality of the film we decided it would be beneficial to analyse the script in depth to look for cracks and weakness’ within it and add to the script where we felt improvements needed to be made.

Another question which we asked was ‘did you enjoy the twist at the end?’. As much of the feedback came back positive for this question with people stating that they did enjoy the twist there was however some constructive feedback. One person felt that we needed to include more shots during the scene of which the twist occurred. Instead of ignoring this criticism we came together as a group and discussed all the possible ways that we could improve this scene.

Overall the feedback that we produced from this screening and questionnaire really did help the process of the production of this film. It gave us a real insight into the depth and analysis that needs to go into every aspect of producing a film. It also taught us about how much other people’s views can be valued and how much of an impact an audience has on the outcome of a film. We learnt that gaining feedback from an audience is a crucial aspect of film production and can have a massive impact on the way films are conducted, feedback like this can really define a film and the ideas and developments created through feedback results has significant importance.

THE ROUGH-CUT After taking on board all feedback, criticisms, negatives, and positives from our questionnaire results from our animatic we started to develop our short film, whilst including the new ideas and constructive criticisms that we gained. The whole film production process was extremely interesting and as a team we worked well together and learnt the importance of each role played throughout the production process. After planning, shooting, and editing our short film it was finally time to screen our overall outcome to an audience. In preparation for this screening we produced another questionnaire, which asked in-depth questions on the thoughts and overall views of our film.

The feedback we produced from this screening was very good but did however present us with ways in which to improve on film production in the future, it gave us a real insight into the overall view of our film, and what a range of other people thought of it. It not only gave us ways in which to improve the film, but also gave us aspects of the film that people liked which gave us a real sense of achievement. From these results we want to go back and review the film, we wish to add flash backs of pictures of the two characters together before the stalking incident occurred to make the storyline clearer as a few people during the screening were unsure of how and why the one girl was being stalked. When screening our rough cut we also noticed that in one of the shots ‘action’ can be heard, in order to make sure that there were no other mistakes like this we analysed our film thoroughly and edited where was appropriate. Below is a link to YouTube, where our rough-cut is presented.

Within the questionnaire for the rough-cut we asked whether the audience would like to have seen more of something, if so what. The feedback that we received from this question gave us several options and ideas of ways in which we could add to our film. Feedback consisted of people suggesting that they would like to see more of the chase scene and the relationship of the two girls before the incident occurred. From this we decided to add photographs of the two girls from before when they were friends, we felt that this would help to make the storyline more direct and understandable.

Question 4 asked the audience what there highlights were from this film. The main things that we learnt from this question was that our plan to try and build up mystery and suspense was successful as the audience enjoyed the chase and fight scene. The overall summary of this question is that all of the audiences that watched this screening enjoyed at least one aspect of our film, this created a sense of achievement within the team and we felt that all of the effort and hard work that we have put into this production was appreciated.

The next question asked whether there were any moments throughout the film that they felt confused or lost in the story/plot. The feedback from this question was mixed, some people followed the story through however it became clear that the confusion lay with people not understanding why the two characters had a feud and why the one kidnapped the other. This taught is that every audience has a wide range of opinions, some people understand things and follow things better than others, with media this can be a significant issue as you need to consider appealing to every audience possible, we have all learnt from this and will ensure that we remember this in the future.

To the right is a screenshot of our website, this screenshot shows the feedback we gained from screening our rough-cut to an audience and getting them fill in a questionnaire about what they thought of our film. We wanted our feedback to be presented clearly and we therefore chose this layout. We are overall very happy with the questionnaire results and the opinions and constructive criticism that we gained from them.

Overall the feedback from the rough-cut was extremely beneficial to us all. We not only learnt about the importance of targeting an audience correctly but also how effective feedback can be on the construction of a film. The main thing that the feedback taught us was that the audiences can pick up on aspects that the production team can easily miss and never realize, and the more eyes that view the film will ensure that all errors can be picked up on and improved. It gave a wider opinion and helped to finalize and develop the film to improve the overall quality and the final outcome. We have all defiantly learnt about the importance and emphasis that feedback can have not only throughout media production but also in general aspects of life. Below is a link to the XO Productions home page where all feedback materials have been presented and directly analyzed.