Evaluation Question 7

Audience Responce Survey

In addition to our focus group, I decided to create a survey similar to the one we as a group created when we were conducting research into planning our film. I thought this would be useful as we only included people within our primary target audience profile in the focus group. Although this is still useful I thought it would be useful to also get some feedback of people in our secondary target audience and people who were not in our target audience profile at all. Therefore, I created this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KBQ333R

from the survey I had 18 responses. The first question was 'what is your gender' I wanted to ask this so when I was looking through the responses I could analyse the data to see if there were any trends between what the males and females enjoyed. 10 responses (55%) were from females and 8(45%) were from males. Although this is not an even number, our primary target audience are females so the lack of male responses didn't affect the results.

Question two was 'How old are you?' and 11(61%) of the eighteen responses were from people within the 16-21 category which again is our primary target audience so I know that the feedback is relevant. The rest of the responses were from 3 10-15 year olds, 2 22-27 year olds and 2 28-32 year olds.

The third Question asked what genre they thought the film would be in. (83%) of the responses said within the thriller genre which is pleasing as it means we followed clear codes and convention of the genre. 2 of the responses said 'horror' and one said 'other' which although neither are the genre we chose, horror is similar to thriller so the opening sequence could have been misinterpreted.

The next question asked if our film conformed to films within this genre that the person had seen before. (94%) of people said yes which again confirms that our research and planning as a group was accurate and effective as we have conformed to the codes and conventions of the genre.

The next question asked if the person understood the opening sequence. In this question (71%) of people said yes and (29%) of people said sometimes but nobody said no. However, although some people only understood the sequence sometimes, when we create dour target audience profile, we specifically decided to target people who enjoyed complex narratives. Therefore, people who enjoy that type of film are more likely to understand it than those who don’t so it shows we have targeted our audience correctly within the opening sequence.

When asked if the opening sequence makes you want to carry on watching the film, (94%) of the Reponses said yes. However, although one person said no, when I looked at their reason, they said because it was too scary so they were clearly not within our target audience profile.

When they were asked what emotions they felt whilst watching the opening sequence the most popular answer was tense which I tried to achieve with the music. The other popular answers were: scared, confused excited and nervous which are all emotions you would expect to feel whilst watching a psychological thriller.

when asked what the audience particularly enjoyed the responses were:

And when asked what they didn’t the responses were: 

Overall, i think the survey proves that we achieved what we wanted to as a group. The responses show that we have utilized codes and conventions of the genre well and clearly as the genre was clear. We also achieved targeting our audience well using the complex narrative and allowing them to feel emotions that we tried to portray.  

Target Audience Feedback: Focus Group

Now our final product is finished and published, we decided to get target audience feedback to see weather our opening sequence was effective in terms of what we set out to achieve. We decided to do a focus group using two females and two males who fit our primary target audience profile (16-21 year olds).

Editing Session Ten

In this session Liv and I decided to work together before she has to leave, to carry on editing for as long as possible because as a group we hadn't finished.

Firstly, Liv and I realised that the credits that other members of the group had integrated under the plate in the males sequence and behind the head of the females sequence did not run smoothly across the screen. The credit under the plate appeared on top of the plate instead of appearing to have been hidden underneath it which ruined the representation we had tried to create around the credits. The same had happened with the credits behind the females head when she is lying down as the text begun too far right on the screen so by the time her head had been fully rolled the credit should still have been hidden underneath it. Therefore, we fixed both of the credits together moving them both and blading them frame by frame to ensure they rolled smoothly along the screen.

Next, I had realised that there was a continuity issue with the male character walking outside from the kitchen to the females room as we had filmed it as a hand held shot. We had not realised before that this was a POV shot from the females perspective even though she had not yet reached the window. As we didn't have any other footage of the male walking across the driveway, I decided to crop each clip to remove the windowsill so it no longer looked like a POV shot. When I played this back there was still an issue that the shot was shaky as it was a handheld shot so it wasn't static. I used the stabilisation option to steady the shot instead.

Due to having to change these shots, I realised that I had removed the window from the females narrative which as a group we specifically wanted to keep. This is because it symbolises the barriers between her and the outside world and highlights how isolated and trapped she is. To keep this I added a short clip of the handheld shot that showed the garden after she had looked out of the window so it appeared as an eye line match.

After this I realised that the sound in the second half didn't sound right when it faded out as it meant the sound rose and fell too many times before the final climax. Therefore, I extended the sound file and faded it into the layering that I had done previously. this meant there was no silence in the second half of the sequence so it was more of a juxtaposition to the first half.

Editing Session Nine

In this session we decided to go through the sequence as a group and identify any aspects of it that we weren't happy with or that we thought needed changing. This was just to make sure there were no continuity issues or anything we hadn't spotted before.

The first thing we noticed was that the 'Wellington Productions' at the very beginning of the sequence was not on the screen for long enough. This just meant we had to extend the black clip and extend how long the titles were on for.

Then we realised that the sound effects over the females sections were too loud in comparison to the lack of ambient sound in the males section. this meant we either had to add more sound over this section or turn the volume down on her section. First we tried to find a radio broadcast with Marilyn Monroe speaking to add over the top of the first half of the sequence until the song comes on. We thought this would make it seem that the radio had been on the whole time and when the song comes on its because he switched the radio to the CD. We found a interview with Marilyn speaking about happiness which we thought was relevant to our sequence. However when we listened to it we realised that we preferred what the silence in the first section represented as it was more unnerving to watch. Therefore, we turned down every clip that was over the top of her clips to make them more subtle.

Next we realised that the credit that said 'Liv Mclean' was also too short on the screen. Therefore, we kept the credit as it was and extended the clip featuring the computer.This made the credit appear on screen longer so it was easier to read.

We also noticed that in some of the shots of the female sat on the bed, there was someones bag and coat in the background. We had no other footage of this shot so we used the Ken Burns tool to edit out the items but still keep the footage.

Editing Session Eight

In this editing session me and Liv decided to focus on the credits. We began by looking through the sequence and finding clips within it where we could place them. We had to look for clips where objects moved horizontally across the screen so we could make the credits seem like they were appearing behind them as the object moved across the screen as I had practised previously. We also considered the fact that as we were using white font, we couldn't use a clip where the lighting was too high key as the credits wouldn't be visible. We also referred to my research about order of credits, names and titles that should be included.

After we had decided where we were going to place our credits, we decided to start by doing the last one as it was the easiest. We chose a clip where the villain walked from right to left across the screen from the kitchen to sit down and ate his toast. Originally we tried to place the text on the fireplace. However, when we had done this and watched it back we realised that because the camera didn't pan in parallel to the top of the fireplace, the font seemed to be moving up the wall. Also, because we had to blade the credit tab frame by frame, it meant the lettering was positioned differently in relation to the fireplace in every frame as when we positioned them they weren’t exactly consistent with the previous frame. Therefore, when we played it back, because the credits moved slightly in every frame it appeared to wobble and shake on the screen. We tried to find a way of tagging the text to a specific point on the frame however we didn't manage to find a way.

Instead, to fix this, we came up with the idea of moving the credits position on the screen as we realised if we didn't put it in relation to anything, it wouldn't appear to shake. We chose to place the credits in the right hand bottom corner of the screen so they could still appear to be revealed as the villain walked across the shot. This worked much better as the credits were stationary in the shot but still swiped as he moved across them. We achieved this by blading the credit tab frame by frame and adding a letter of the credit title as if it was being revealed behind him.

In the next session we will have to focus on adding the rest of the credits in before the music is switched on. We would prefer them to be revealed before the radio is switched on as it is the beginning of the climax so it would be more effective if nothing distracted from the action within the shot after this point.

Editing Session Seven

When I looked back at the sound we had edited in the previous session I decided to start thinking about the very end of the sequence. At the time the sequence was in an order so that the male walked through the door, the female turned around, the male stood still and the female spoke. This then cut to a black screen for two seconds before showing the title. The sound was currently overlapping the dialogue and it all finished in sync with then end of that clip. when I watched it back i realised that you could barely hear the dialogue over the sound effects. I tried turning the volume down on all the clips however then the desired effect of increasing volume as a way of increasing tension wasn't effective so I decided to cut the volume of the sound effects before the dialogue.

However, when I looked at where the sound could finish before the dialogue, there was no appropriate place to stop it so I tried changing the order of the clips. I changed the clips so that the female turned around, the male walked through the door, the female spoke and the male stood still. This made more sense as it means the last thing the audience see is a long shot of the male looking directly at the camera. We also slowed this clip down to extend how long the audience had to look at him to make them feel uncomfortable. This seemed more sensible as we could build the sound effects up and cut  them off at the end of the ale walking through the door using the females dialogue as the climax.

After changing the order of the clips it meant there was a silence over the clip of the male stood still staring at the camera. This is because we had cut the sound effects before we had previously planned so there was now nothing to replace it. Therefore, i searched for a 'rise' sound effect to add on the top of that as a secondary climax which finished before the title. Instead of having silence over the title i also decided to add a faint heartbeat over the top and fade it out to create a sound bridge.