What have you learned from audience feedback?
Questionnaire
In order to conduct feedback for our film, we created a questionnaire for viewers to complete post-viewing of the film.
We made sure to select sujects from a range of backgrounds. Six of our candidates were female and the other six were male. They came from Dagenham, Mile End, Tottenham, and Kingston-Upon-Thames. All subjects were aged between 16-36.
All of the subjects selected ‘Yes’ when asked whether or not they could follow the storyline. This is crucial in gaining any understanding of the film so we were pleased to see that the story came across clearly.
Despite our film being based on a married couple, half of our subjects selected the young adult age bracket as the one which would find the film the most appealling. This showed us that the personal level of this film was felt strongly by our audience. Our audience mostly related to the themes and messages in the film rather than the characters themselves which was our desired intention for the film.
Using non-professional actors and actresses in the film meant that we ran the risk of lacking any naturalism in the performances displayed in the film. However, subjects mostly rated the performances given by the cast highly which tells us that the performances were believeable.
It was interesting to see that most of the people who filled out our questionnaire believed the main theme of the film to be self-obsession. We were glad to see that only a few people chose romance as we wanted our audience to read deeper into the film than something superficial like romance. The fact that most people either read the main theme of the film as human mentality and self-obsession told us that our psychological themes were clear in the story.
The questionnaire not only worked to collect quantative data, but also had open questions which asked about our audience members’ own personal interpretations of the film.
With regards to improvements on the film, we noticed some trends in the questionnaire. Subjects noted that they wished the pace of the film could have been a lot quicker at times than it was. Although we intended to have a slow pace throughout the film in order to draw on the emotive mood, we can see how audience members may sometimes find parts of the film a lot slower than it is recquired to understand the story and the emotions. A lot of the candidates wrote that they wanted more characters involved in the film. Although we disagree with this, we interpreted this response as our film lacking enough of a stronger connection between the characters and the audience.
Social Media
The response we recieved from our social media websites also provided us with a good insight into the way our film was percieved.
The commenting function on both Facebook and YouTube allowed us to gather the opinions of some of our viewers.
The response we recieved on Facebook was all positive. This is not only seen through the positive comments but also the growing number of likes on both the page and the film post. One fan even posted up her own short review of the film on her page. She outlined her personal interpretation of the ending and gave us positive feedback on some of our visual techniques such as the tea shot and final reflection sequence.
The comments we recieved on the YouTube video were both positive and constructive criticism. Once again, the tea shot recieved positive acclaim. Also, the performances delivered in the film were commended. One commentor noticed our cut-off in sound and said that the technique struck him. One commentor told us that the shots at the start of the film where we see the details of the character’s clothing should have stayed a little longer as he said it was “a little quick for the eyes”.
Another fan contacted me directly through Facebook’s inbox service to tell me what he thought of the film. He commended a line in the voice-over sequence.
Looking at our YouTube statistics allowed us to see how are video was being recieved by the public. Statistics show that 28% of views are from outside of YouTube such as our social media websites. 47% are however from YouTube which indicates that people are directly making an effort to watch the video.
The geographic statistics of the video show us that not only has there been a good response in the United Kingdom, but our video has spread on an international level. We have had viewers from part of South Asia, East Asia, The Middle East, and The United States of America.
Audience Feedback Video
We asked some viewers their thoughts on the film and asked them to rate it out of ten.
We asked the subjects three questions:
1) What did you think about the short film?
This question was asked in order to get a general response from the subjects who had just seen the film. Most of the subjects found the film interesting to watch because of its unique nature. Some said they were able to relate to it and learn from it. This shows that our desired sentimental effect was achieved particularly when one subject commented on it being “touching”. One of the subjects did note that it was lacking in action and it was not gripping enough for him.
2) What was your favourite scene/aspect of the short film?
We wanted to get a more personally specific view from the subjects. Most of the subjects spoke about particular scenes and how they interpreted them as viewers. The final scene was commended by three of the subjects who spoke about the change they noticed in the protagonist. We also recieved answers which commended the themes and messages in the film. On subject said he was able to consider relationships in his own life more seriously. Another subject appreciated the idea of an OCD protagonist and was able to relate to this kind of mindset.
3) What would you rate the short film out of 10?
We asked this question to summarise the subjects’ overall view on the film. Subjects rated the film – 6.5, 7, 8, 8.5, and 9.
Through conducting audience feedback, we were able to learn what we did well in the creation of our film and what we could have changed to improve the final result. What has been most commended is the thinking behind the conceptualization of the protagonist and the themes which surround him. Audiences enjoyes the fact that they were able to connect with the messages of methodology and focused more on the film’s psychological aspects rather than the characters themselves. This was our desired result as we wanted to use a short space of time to make the audience think deeper than a story on screen. With regards to improvement, we did notice that a lot of people felt that the film was paced very slowly and althought that was our intention, they found it to be quite flat at times. If I were to remake this film in the future, I would only focus on long takes during scenes where there is responsive action. Overall, the film was recieved really well.
Frame 