Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we had conceived of a plot, written our script and put together a shot list, we decided that it would be best to craft a pre-production survey, which we were able to do very easily using the website SurveyMonkey. We thought that this would be a great idea as it would enable us to engage with a possible audience for our film, as we were interested in knowing what kind of demographic that a film of this type may appeal to, and hear feedback from that particular demographic. We had an idea of what the main audience may consist of e.g. a more film literate audience, considering the fact that this is a short film, and more drama-heavy than a lot of mainstream films. We were also aware that they would probably be teens and younger adults, as the demographics that we wanted to portray within the film fit this age group. However, we wanted hard evidence of who, in particular, we should market the film towards, while hearing what exactly will appeal to that group. We then sent the survey out to some trusted friends and family members over Facebook.

The majority of people that chose to answer the questionnaire were female, however not by much, and everybody that answered were between the ages of 15 and 30, with the overwhelming majority being in the 15-21 age bracket, as expected. Out of the fifteen people that participated, only one person stated that they weren't particularly interested in short films, proving our point that this kind of project was probably going to appeal to a more film literate audience, that would have a significant interest in short films. Further evidence of this would be that only four people noted that they preferred high-budget films, with the other eleven saying that they either preferred both, or mainly low-budget. All fifteen thankfully answered that they are interested in films revolving around our thematic concern of death, which reassured us that we were heading in the right direction with our product. A large chunk of the respondents noted that they mainly find out about films through TV advertisements and social media. Obviously, it was not within our capacity to air TV adverts, but, from this, we learnt that marketing and sharing the film over social media would be the best direction to go in. When asked what they prefer in short films, the top two answers were, much to our surprise, surrealism and symbolism, which helped us in shaping our overall tone of the film, as we tried to incorporate more of those aspects after seeing the survey. From this initial piece of audience feedback I learnt quite a lot. We were able to easily gain knowledge on which particular demographic that the film should be marketed toward, although we already had somewhat of an idea. In addition, we also learnt how the film should be marketed, with most of our potential audience spending a significant amount of time on social media platforms, which is where they are most likely to come into contact with our film, and so the film should be marketed accordingly. The interest in the theme of death, coupled with the apparent popularity of the surrealist genre and symbolic imagery (among our respondents) allowed us to become more aware that the film we had been crafting, which was in the pre-production stages at this point, had been the correct choice, over our initial idea of a short revenge thriller.

After taking a lot of this initial, pre-production, feedback on board, and learning a lot from it going into the actual production, we decided to create another survey straight after we had finished and edited our film, in order to learn from our mistakes for any possible future tasks. This time we only managed to get four people to participate in the survey, but we were still able to gauge a lot from it. We once again used SurveyMonkey to create this questionnaire, as it worked to great success the first time around. We had multiple possible questions ready to ask, but narrowed it down to the six that we thought would provide us with the greatest opportunity to understand how the audience felt, while also providing us with the biggest capacity to learn from. Out of the four survey participants, all four of them found the film's plot interesting, proving our audience research surrounding the theme and tone to be correct, as the majority also appeared to be interested in the direction of our film back then. The second question asked if they thought the film looked nice, with only one answering yes. This was one of the biggest takeaways from our survey, as it was apparent that the respondents found the cinematography to be quite poor. This may be due to us deciding to use a Pixel 2 instead of a DSLR, or our failure to use artificial lighting outdoors and struggle to remove the grainy look of some indoor shots. From this we have been able to learn that it may not have been the best idea to use a phone for filming, or to dismiss the usage of any form of external lighting so quickly. Three respondents believed that the film's audio and music were good, with one answering 'kind of'. This has made me more aware that our decision to dub the audio, and to have Eoin create the music, were the right ones. Initially, I was unsure and doubtful of dubbing the audio, as it was probably the weakest aspect of my film from AS. However, from watching the final version of our film, and listening to the audience feedback, it has now become clear to me that dubbing the audio was the best decision. Only half of the participants appeared to think that the style of editing that was used added to the film's overall quality. Although this does not appear in the survey, I was able to speak to one of the respondents about this, in person, and I was informed that they did not believe that certain techniques used, such as the elliptical effect, meshed well with the film's overall tone. They stated that it did not fit with the more serious tone of the overall product, or the style of comedy used elsewhere in the film. From this, we have learnt to be more careful in the future, when it comes to combining multiple different genres and tones, throughout the writing process of the film, which is where this idea originally came from. When asked to score our chosen actors out of 5, one participant chose to give them a 4, while the other three gave them a 5. This positive feedback was expected, as all four group members are in agreement that every actor (that took part in this project) preformed exceptionally well. The only real takeaway from this is that our casting choices were the correct ones. In terms of the overall film, one participant gave it a 3 star rating, while the other three opted for a 4 star rating. This is pleasing to see, as a filmmaker, however it is clear that certain aspects could have been improved on to enhance the film, as a whole. Although, with some experience, I believe that these issues could all be easily improved upon in the future.

Overall, I feel as though I have learnt a lot from our audience feedback, whether it be through discussion with friends, or through the use of the two surveys. I believe that both surveys were equally as important; with the first allowing us to have a better understanding of what an audience may be seeking, and how we should go about getting our film seen by as many people as possible, and the second providing us with the opportunity to learn from our mistakes so that we can go on to complete such tasks to a higher standard in the future.