Critical Evaluation Q3

Our original idea was to make a short ‘fly on the wall’ documentary around a student in a ‘Pete Vs Life’ style, with commentators narrating everything and having a 'stat sheet' on characters, like the one below.

With this idea in mind we went out and asked people an initial questionnaire to get an idea of the audience for short films and how they access the films, and to see if they would be interested in this kind of film. People said they would happily watch a short film, and would usually watch them online as they were unaware of any institutes that screened short films. With this interest in short films in mind, we then briefed people on our idea and asked what they thought. A couple of the responses were positive and said they would watch our production, but others said there would be nothing to draw them in to it. For this reason, we changed to a mockumentary, so the humour element would make our production more appealing. We then asked the same people if they would now be interested and they said they would be. We made a video of all the questions whilst doing this, but unfortunately this has been lost as it was never edited by the person who’s job it was to edit it.

During the filming of the production we made sure to keep with the theme of a mockumentary, as this is what the audience said they wanted to see. For this reason we were sure to make things as exaggerated and ridiculous as possible, such as the sleeping for a long time and the being rejected by a girl by simply walking past. 

We presented a rough cut to people and asked what they thought before we finalised the production in editing, and used their feedback to help. 

For instance, the rough cut had been very badly done and rushed by the editor, so the sound levels were very erratic and drowned out the vocals in certain parts such as at 3:32, and certain transitions were wrong; cuts were used instead of fades which detracted from the ‘passage of time’ feel. With this feedback in mind I did a final edit myself to ensure it would be what the audience wanted and produced our final film.

We also asked for feedback on our radio trailer and our poster. Again, this was done in the form of a google questionnaire which was shared around on Facebook and Twitter.
The results of the radio questionnaire can he found here.

Again, not many responses were given which is a problem as this gives us limited views on the trailer, but of those we did receive there was only 1 that was negative. Every response said they found the radio trailer professional, which we are glad of as we put the effort in to using Pro Tools to make it professional.

Some of the people that answered the questionnaire said they felt it didn't give them an idea of what kind of film our production was. I agree with them that the trailer doesn't give everything away, but I feel this is a good thing and so opted not to change it, as if everything was given away there would be no reason to see the film.

We also collected feedback on the poster we did. The overwhelming view from this was that the poster felt too dark and ominous to be for a light-hearted comedy film. Whilst I agree with this and did make an optional poster to use, my skills with photoshop are nowhere near professional level and Josh was unavailable to create a better themed poster, so we made the decision to stick with the one we had to keep the professional feel. I feel this may have been detrimental, as the poster doesnt work well with our film, and in future more time should be allowed to ensure all ancillary texts are correct.

When we presented this final edit to people, we got a variety of feedback via a Google questionnaire, which can be found here. Unfortunately we got very limited responses as group members failed to share this questionnaire. From these responses, every person said they enjoyed the film. 

We got some feedback in regards to the voice over, saying it was a bit unclear. This was mostly down to the accent, as the microphones and techniques used were tested and I know they produce crystal clear sound. Next time someone with less of an accent should be used, or we should ensure the voice over is perfectly understandable so we can still use the accent as a parodical feature. 

We also got feedback saying the audience they think it would be aimed at is mostly 10-19, the age we had in mind as this is college student age. One thing I expected to get but didn’t was a view different to the one of a college student. A student would find this product funny and entertaining, but I also expected to get a response from an older person, with the view that the student was lazy. This did not happen, but this could be put down to lack of questionnaire exposure. This film project has highlighted the importance of audience feedback and keeping in touch with your viewers, and in future projects it would be beneficial to ensure all questionnaires are promoted as much as possible via social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and we ensure the answers can give us full insight in to the audience opinions.