What I Have Learned From Audience Feedback

By Lorna Dean(Group Four)

Rough CutBelow is some of the feedback we got back from our audience after our first screening.

It was suggested to us that there should be an addition of music at the beginning of our short film to set the mood. Due to our film being of a serious nature and rather a dark subject – despair and loss - we used a piano piece which wasn’t upbeat as to not confuse the audience at the start of our film. The same piece (sovereign from incomputeach.com) was also used at the end to loop the story back around and to prevent it from ending abruptly. To set the mood from the very beginning can be better because it will initiate the audience’s expectations.

Several members of the audience didn’t understand what was happening in the narrative – we believe that was due to the key element of the Sister’s voiceovers based upon her diary entries being absent.

Throughout the whole of our rough cut of our short film we had Issues with sound levels. At some moments the voices were incredibly loud and in others almost absent. The buzzing of the camera was at a different level for each scene – perhaps if we had recorded the sound of the actresses speaking with clip on mics this problem could have been solved easily.

Audience feedback at this stage was very helpful because our initial rough cut of our short film Bringing Back Hope was twelve minutes long and we weren’t sure which

scenes to remove or trim down.

Sometimes little is more in

accordance to the connection to

the audience. If something if over

emphasised or goes on for too

long the audience can become

disconnected.

Near the beginning of the short film Hope is seen in several places in her sister’s room passing the time by fiddling with objects.

The audience felt that these scenes were not necessary – a couple of shots could indicate her despair and the passing of time.

The audience found that a lot of the scenes in our short film were too dark to understand

entirely what was going on. Hope was masked in shadow due to having the light source

behind her; so we moved the light source in front instead and reshot all of the scenes of

hope in her Sister’s bedroom. From this I have learnt that in the future I should check

different lighting set ups rather than assuming the first light set up will work perfectly.

Left – The footage before

reshooting

Right – The new footage with the light

source in front of Hope.

Hope is silhouetted (Right) to emphasise her feeling of despair – which is a dark emotion.

Second ScreeningThere was some delay between the two sister’s dialogue which doesn’t clearly flow and doesn’t appear realistic. There was also an issue with some of the scenes being unnecessarily long and some which weren’t required to be there at all. To fix this issue we tightened up the editing as much as we could.

For example the last scene of the film shows Hope getting ready for her sister’s funeral - she spends around thirty seconds combing her hairwhich kept the audience waiting for no apparent reason and thenabruptly ends – which could lead to a lost message.

The flashback scenes each had different filters and variation in colour – this lead to further confusion for the audience. We did not wish to confuse the audience – our film is not a thriller it is a drama and confusion would not adhere to the conventions of a drama.

Originally the flashbacks were all going to be black and white but a some of them were too dark to see the characters clearly.

We decided to keep a uniform combination of desaturate and soft focus filters to keep it clear that they were flashbacks. (Right)

The desaturate filter was brought down to a lower setting where the colour of the scene seeps through showing the warm colours of Hope’s past.

Audience’s ThoughtsAfter our first screening the audience was confused and unsure of our film’s narrative but once the voiceovers were added in and the scenes were clearer to see, the audience understood the narrative.

The audience felt that the film’s theme of despair came across clearly through the use the crying scenes which played a

strong part in the emotional pull of our target audience.

Tighter editing helped our short film become a stronger and more captivating media product.

We have reached our target audience of fifteen to twenty five year old women and young people well through the use of

young actresses to play the sisters.

Overall I feel without the feedback from an audience during our screenings our short film would not be as successful as it is at this moment in time. An audience’s opinion and thoughts can make a huge difference to whether a media product sells and gains the attention that the producer has intended itto. The audience can be the make it or break it point in a product’s lifetime because they can create a divide and cause a domino effect through the use of communication – if someone had recommended friend see to a film or spoke highly about it they may be more inclined to see it.

If I were to recreate Bringing Back Hope I would initially plan where everything would be in the mise en scene including the type of lighting whether be it ambient or natural and where the light source would come from and the effect this has on the camera itself. I have realised that the planning of our actual locations wasn’t as thoroughly thought through as much as I wished it was and in turn this caused us a number of problems.