Receiving audience feedback is important within our production process as it clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of our piece from a different perspective. It also allows us to notice small errors that we had mistaken and also the things we worked well on and the things that may need improving to make our production better.
We received audience feedback by showing a screening of our production to the whole class including our teachers. They then gave us verbal feedback on what they found conventional about the piece and also what they think we could change and work on to make our production more successful and the ways in which we could do this. Following the class's overall comments our teacher then concluded on what she thinks worked well and was effective within our piece and also the things she didn't really like and understand and how she thinks we could improve these to suit the thriller genre and conventions more successfully. We also uploaded the rough cut of our production onto YouTube where anyone worldwide can view our piece, like subscribe and comment what they think. We received a lot of informative feedback on different elements of our piece with constructive criticism on things we need to improve on.
This type of feedback will benefit my groups production and also the film industry as it will help us to understand how a stranger to our production feels about it as they watch it for the first time. Due to the group continuously editing our piece we have become used to it and we don't sometimes catch silly mistakes that a viewer would who has never seen it before. This means we can understand some problems we found new viewers would experience such as if viewers don't understand our piece first time round or whether they wouldn't class the production in a thriller genre by just watching the first few seconds of our piece.
The main positive feedback that our group received was to do with the soundtrack and sound effects that we used within our piece. The comments mentioned that the sounds we used were very conventional to the thriller genre and was therefore effective in making them feel scared throughout the production. They said the sound we used on our point of view shot was very intense and created tension making them feel scared and worried for what was going to come next. We found the majority of our sound effects and soundtrack from copyright free websites on the internet alongside including some sound effects from the programme we used to edit our piece Final Cut Pro X. The second piece of positive feedback that we received was the low key lighting as they felt that this was very conventional and made it clear to an audience that the production was from the thriller genre. They said the lighting gave the scene a gloomy and eerie atmosphere which is conventional to the genre. We inserted filters over our shots to create a continuous colour scheme and dark aura to hide any complications of when we filmed different shots at different parts of the day. We also adjusted the brightness and opacity to make sure of a constant flow throughout the whole production. The final piece of positive feedback that we received was our choice of cinematography. A popular shot that was mentioned by the audience was the point of view shot that we used to create tension. The shot consisted of a point of view hand held technique that followed up behind the antagonist. The feedback we received mentioned that this created an intense moment within the scene and the audience felt themselves becoming frightened at what might happen.
The main constructive feedback that we received was that some of our shots were a bit shaky. The feedback voiced that some of the shots were noticeable unstable which sometimes put the audience off causing them to loose engagement from our production. Therefore we have understood that we may need to film some shots using stable equipment for example the tripod to ensure that this problem doesn't effect the audience's experience whilst watching our production. The second piece of constructive feedback that we received was the understanding of the narrative. Due to the two male characters wearing similar clothing it was hard for the audience to tell them apart and therefore understand the two different roles in the narrative. Therefore we may have to change the clothing and make a definite stand between the two characters to make the narrative easier for the audience to follow and to ensure they understand the two different characters and their roles in the narrative. The final piece of constructive feedback we received was that one of our shots was much darker than the rest of our shots. The shot was noticeable that it had been filmed on a different day with a different brightness and opacity. This shot disabled the constant flow of our film and therefore created our film to look unprofessional and sloppy. Therefore we will have to arrange a period of time where we can ensure that we will be able to film for a long period of time and get all the shots filmed with the same background and brightness to make sure there is a flow of shots in our thriller production.
Here is some photographic evidence of some of the feedback I received on YouTube.
