Audience Feedback

Audience feedback

Having finished editing our film opening we showed our product to a group of people with a mix of genders and an age range of 16-18 years. They gave us lots of very helpful feedback some of which we acted on and some of which we couldn’t because we do not have enough time so it would be impossible.

What was good/effective?

The audience for our coursework said many positive things about our film opening. They like the first shot where we started out of focus and then brought the shot of me lying on the floor into focus. They also liked the shot of me (as I was the actress) sat in front of the blue door with the flickering light in the corner, this was the most common compliment about our piece. Some of the groups said they liked the time-lapse of the traffic in Brixton. One of the groups said they liked the fact it had no non-diegetic sound, it was all diegetic sounds of traffic. Another positive thing was our locations including the blue door, the park and the Brixton location that we used. Some of our audience members also liked the colouring of the shots, we achieved this by using the colour grading on final cut to achieve the look that we wanted. A couple of groups said they liked the way we had edited the closing of the locket to a black screen as they thought it was effective.

What could be improved?

A couple of people thought the costume and mise-en-scene looked too clean and new so it wasn’t appropriate for the character in our film opening, unfortunately we do not have time to completely re-film everything so there is nothing we can do to address this feedback, additionally someone said the costume clearly presented the girl as a homeless person so we did not feel it needed changing. Similarly someone said they could not see a clear plot but once again it is too late for us to change this. One group mentioned the shot where our character is sat in the underground and the train goes past as we had sped this shot up which meant the man that walks past looks rather strange, to fix this we are going to set the speed back to normal. One of the pieces of feedback was that after the final shot there should have been a close up reaction shot of me so the film opening would have started with me and ended with me. Some of the groups could not work out if it was a film opening or opening credits this is because we subvert conventions of a film opening by using a montage rather than a short scene however we did intend it to be a film opening, however there is very little we can do to make the fact it’s a film opening clearer. One group said the production company was unclear, to fix this we looked at bringing in the original file or changing the footage we had by making it brighter and bigger so it is easier to read. There were a few comments about the sound as some people said they would have liked some non-diegetic sound (music), however we received lots of positive feedback about our use of only diegetic sound and so we decided not to change this. Another improvement regarding sound was that we could have had more background noise, so Natasha (who put this sound in originally) went back in and either made the sound louder or added more non-diegetic sounds. Additionally, Natasha also looked at the volume of the only diegetic dialogue we have, “scum”, because one group said they couldn’t hear it very well. The most common feedback was regarding the titles because they were just the people’s names so it was suggested that we put some of the roles people played in so I changed the credits to say:

·         Starring Emma Fuller

·         Director Caitlin Willis

·         Cinematography Natasha Russell

·         Executive producer Angel Chemjong Limbu

The groups of names were casting, costume and sound teams. I did this by selecting a title and going into the box on the right side of the screen to change what it said.

 

I then aligned it so it was either to the left or the right depending on what side the text was on as it did not look right being centre aligned.

Another piece of feedback regarding titles was that they moved too fast so people did not have enough time to read them. I made the titles longer by clicking on the end of the purple bar that represented text and dragging it out so the title lasted almost twice as long in some cases.

Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback

After the completion of our opening scene 'Cardboard City' we had a lesson in which the groups got together and peer-assessed each others work through a screen viewing of each one. Some sample reviews might be biased as the groups we worked alongside would've known about the genre and if it was a opening credit or scene, we eventually branched out the audience to others who had not known about the project and gave their two cents. The groups did however, manage to differentiate between a film opening or credit in this case.

Some good points brought out by the audience highlight the problems with the actual use of a montage itself, it doesn't provide a sufficient plot device for the story itself, especially considering how it subverts the common conventions of our genre in how the opening scenes are. This had many views question or confused by what the film was actually about. This was partly due to the way the shots were placed and how it ended up, we did have scenes in which we wanted to flesh out the character insight and backstory however due to the nature of the shots being subpar alongside the time limit we had, we decided against using them. Many had brought to light how the ending of the opening scene had been, they pointed out that it was random and sort of forced in a way, there was no build-up of suspense or tension before the shot and so it looked out of place. They suggested that maybe adding a reaction shot of the actors face could smoothen things up, saying "since it started with her, it should end with her' which we can get behind.

There were some mixed reviews on our choice of not implementing any background music (score), some said that the use of diegetic sound and dialogue to drive the narrative forward was a powerful tool however some said at times it got too quiet and felt a soundtrack could've told the story better.

Location was a point which many people bought up as a positive, they liked the variety we had and how every location looked different. This was because we had travelled quite a bit to take the shots we did, from London, Brixton, and around town. Comments on our use of the time-lapse were also made and how they like the use of it, the variety of camera angles we had it done in also was bought up giving the scene some flavour and not the same thing to look at as the montage progresses. Our variety of camera angles was a point many confirmed, especially the long shot in which the character is seen sitting up against the blue door with the flickering light. The contrast we added to the scene was to further the isolation of our protagonist, she is wearing dark dull colours while the colours around her are nice and vibrant. 



Audience Feedback and Corrections

Audience Feedback and Corrections

What went well
Our establishing long shot of the blue doors and the flickering light was, as a group, our favourite shot and also one that the audience applauded. The contrast of the colours was applauded as the colour grading was used to effect.

There was also praise about the sound of the clip, we used mainly diegetic sound as in social realism films there is no score so that the film Is more realistic or relatable, we conformed to this convention and the effect is what we were hoping for as there was no false sympathy added to the scene through a score that would have made the opening feel almost fake and too emotional. It also made it seem like the only diegetic dialogue that is distinguishable was more prominent.

The audience enjoyed the transitions we used for the font and for the fade in at the beginning, this also applied to the black screen when the title became visible. We found that these were suitable for the genre we had chosen and were effective in that they were subtle yet still held presence.

Our lighting was not criticised an was all natural, another common feature for social realism films. Our time lapse was also a feature that the audience enjoyed, the use of a different medium to show time passing was effective in its own way as it showed that we had different techniques in our final product.

The locations were something that we were commended about several times, the use of Brixton, London and Maidstone were effective as it meant that we had a range of busy but different places to choose from, their effectiveness was amplified by the character we used and the situations that were posed.

Corrections
One of the corrections that was suggested to us by our audience was that we slowed down the subway scene that we had previously sped up. This was suggested as when you watch the clip the movement of the pedestrians on the platform look awkward and obviously sped up, as we had seen the scene over and over it did not stand out to us so the audience helped us correct the unseen issues with our work. To edit this piece of our film opening we used the want tool and chose the ‘normal 100%’ option that came down for the drop down list.

After applying this to the footage we were able to edit the clip so that it was back to a regular speed. By doing this we also made our film opening a more appropriate length.

Another point of improvement was the titles, whilst some of the audience praised our choice of font we also had criticism, as we had worked for a while over finding the font we decided to keep it as the mixed reviews were unhelpful to what we would change it too.

Another point was that the titles were too small so we had to enlarge them so that they were the correct size for the screen, this also made them readable, we also had to have titles for the titles so that instead of just names showing we would need ‘Executive producer’ etc. Others said that the titles could be more prominent, this was hard to do as we did not want the colour of the font to vary with different scenes so we just kept to the white text and moved it to a more visible place on our screen.

A major issue that we found with our whole film opening was that the costume seemed too new in some shots. This was not something that we could alter in our footage so we have to look at the possible alternatives that we could have chosen so that in the future we will not make the same mistakes in the costume departments.

As some of the audience was not familiar with the genre and common conventions of the social realism they did not understand the plot of the film opening. This is due to the fat that the genre relies on a character driven film and plotline comes after character development, this also leads to the fact that our opening may seem repetitive. As we wished to capture the life of a homeless person the shots we got did not heavily feature too much variation as there is few things a homeless person can do. To try and edit this we did look at the order of our shots and consider rearrange meant so that similar shots were not too close together.

There was an issue that our production company was not clear as it had been taken from a YouTube version so the quality had been highly degraded. As this issue was evident to us as well we got the original file and put that in the final product instead of the ripped version that caused the complaint.
When we were gathering our audience feedback we noticed that the sound effects that we had added were too quiet to be heard when the clips are played aloud, this gave the thought that the sound was flat instead of layered and dimensional like the final product was when you listened through headphones. Due to this issue, we made the effects louder and kept the main traffic noises the same so that we could hear over them.

Our final improvement was the ending. We were given advice that the ending could be improved so that the film opening started on Emma and then ended on Emma. Although we wished to edit this into our final film opening we were unable as the time frame for the corrections was too small and the location was in Brixton and we didn’t have the funds to go there to just film a reaction or close up that would canonically fit into the scene.