Eleven: Final Magazine Review

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Development: 
We learnt a lot during the development stage of making our film. The idea has changed numerous times which has led me to re-write the script for the past two months. Talking to people about narrative theories and what they enjoy in a film has been hugely beneficial, as the people we talked to will be our audience. I've asked a majority of family friends what they thought of the idea and overall they had a good response, they felt sympathy towards our central character Blake.

Later there were a few complications with the story and characters. I was concerned about how they were going to come across to the audience, here are some of the concerns we had -

• To have an emotional or happy ending - was a debate one that kept on changing. 
• How intimate the relationship was with the Dad and the piano teacher. 
• To construct the Dad as a bad man or a sympathetic man. 
• Blake throwing piano books away or under his bed. 
• Blake's inspiration coming from Duke Ellington. 
• Every concern I had in the storyline and character arc's were discussed with our tutors, family and friends. 

Here is our original treatment. Our story idea has changed dramatically. Most of the changes have come from very useful feedback our classmates and tutors especially. 

Here is a small example from the first draft of the script: The opening has changed from Blake's last day of school to a football match with his father and best friend Tom. The feedback we first received was to immediately set up the subject of divorce, we made these changes after discussing it with our tutors.

Pre-production: 
Location, cast, props- Planning the film- What would suit our film. Storyboard.
Here is our storyboard for the opening scene. Our audience feedback said that a drama should involve an opening scene that establishes a settled environment. Blake is in a happy situation until a start of a breakup begins. 

We also received useful feedback on our location choices. The two houses we chose for our film were approved of by friends and family who I asked. Each house has a very different atmosphere and feel to it. This is exactly what we intended to achieve when location hunting. We wanted the piano teachers house to be arty and quirky. On the other hand Blake's family home would be more modern and tidy with good lighting.

Post-production: 

We have just finished our rough edit and have received some very useful feedback. One of our tutors has told us which scenes didn't work and how we could improve them. We have cut a few scenes which don't have much relevance to the story. Despite the script being finalised weeks before shooting and the edit, our tutors didn't see relevance to certain shots or lines of dialogue. Taking this on board I was immediately able to take these away to make our film slicker and more interesting. After our first rough edit I showed my family and tutors who were very quick to give specific feedback. We received some very important feedback which was vital to our story and visuals. When making this film, I was very aware about taking other opinions on board. I didn't want to get carried away with my own style and had to accept what was wrong about ideas and visuals. 

Audience Questionnaire:

Here is a survey for our audience to fill out. This will give us great feedback towards changing certain aspects of our film.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?PREVIEW_MODE=DO_NOT_USE_THIS_LINK_FOR_COLLECTION&sm=C8QwUMs8cIRGvj4l75%2FcUE8%2BUe4H%2BAJi7SlI%2Bd%2FM4h4%3D

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

http://prezi.com/ksmcyevxbrj0/evaluation-question-2/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy#

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

http://prezi.com/vrmlkbobbhay/evaluation-questions-1/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Eleven: Film Feedback

Our finished film has been released on Vimeo. This has given us excellent feedback. Overall the response has been very positive! Twitter & Ask.fm have been the best sites for receiving feedback. The anonymous option was there on Ask.fm so people could comment without feeling offensive towards us. Fortunately we didn't receive any personal or negative feedback.

Eleven: A Survey

During the final stages of the edit on the film, we wanted to show a small select group of people the film that we had cut together so far to see what people thought of it. We decided to show the film class in our school to see what they made of it, what they liked best, which character they related to if any and what there favourite element of the film was. This was a fairly generalised questionnaire although in some ways quite blunt and specific. This was really helpful to me and my partner Jacob. If there was anybody who misunderstood the film or didn't relate to the correct character we would have to make changes in the edit.

Here is an example of one of our questionnaires. Overall the film received great feedback. We gave these out to ten people and looked over what they enjoyed/misunderstood in the film. The feedback was fortunately all positive. We used these questionnaires just in case there was any technical errors or parts of the film people didn't understand. We gave these out early so if any errors, Jacob would easily edit them before the release to all audiences.