Audience Feedback

1) why is audience feedback essential to carry out?

Audience feedback is essential as it allows to get both positive and constructive feedback from other people who are not involved with the making of the film and from people who will give their honest opinion and not someone who will just say what we want to hear. Another reason would be that it allows us to see how an audience would perceive our film without having any previous knowledge about it. As they do not know, we can see if they understood the concept of our narrative so that we could then improve upon their comments.

2) where did you screen your production

We screened our production in our media classroom and asked a variety of people to come and view it, some who had taken media as a subject as they would know what specific features that our thriller should include and some people who have not. This allowed us to get different views and opinions. We asked people from our school from the ages of 15-18 as this was part of our target audience that were readily available to us at our school. But to get feedback from an audience above the age of 18 we emailed a variety of people between the ages of 18-35 the link to our thriller on youtube. 

3) how did youtube help

Youtube helped our group as we could use it as a platform to publish our thriller and have people give us feedback on it, plus as our target audience are the main users of youtube, this means that the feedback would be even better as we could see how our target audience feel about it and if the clip fits in with their age bracket. Another advantage is that youtube means that we could watch or show the film anywhere as all you would need is the link to the video.

 A further reason was that Youtube allowed us to gain un-biased advice as the people who watched and commented on our thriller on youtube did not know who we were therefore did not feel inclined to give specific positive feedback.

4) what feedback did you receive

Constructive: 

• "some scenes are too dark" - Samantha
• "too many enigma's can be confusing because you don't see it all unfold" - Louise
• "i loved all of it apart from the scenes showing the girls dying in the board game to them dying in real-life. I feel there could be other scenes or something to help make it seem more connected" - Amy

Good:

• "is realistic of teenagers- made it more realistic" - David
• "included sense of fantasy and danger were it is an ordinary thing but would never happen the whole film creates that feel" - Jack
• "the movement from present day to flashback was clear and obvious" - Sophie

5) reflection

The comments that we got were what we as a group had expected to get, due to our discussion on some issues when we were in the editing procedure. I'm glad with the good comments we got as we had focused on those areas as we felt they were important. I agree with the constructive comments and agree with some of them and if I ever got the chance to do this whole project again, I would definitely make sure that all the areas that were mentioned in the negative comments section were sorted out so that everyone who watched the film would enjoy and understand it, so that the thriller would be more improved but I believe that me and my group made a successful thriller opening sequence and I am proud of my work.

Group Meetings

1. What is the purpose of carrying out your meetings?

The purpose of the meetings was to make sure that everyone in the group had the same view and idea for what we wanted for the thriller film.             

2. Do you think your group worked well together?
I believed that me and Rhiann worked very well together as we both had the same aim, which was to create the best possible film that we could and we were able to take the good points that we both thought of individually and connect them together.

Here are some images of the meetings document that we as a group created:

 

Final 2 Minute Opening Sequence

This is our final version of our 2 minute thriller clip.

Rough Cut

This is a rough cut of all of raw material that we used in our thriller film.

The footage before the flashback were our first option, but for the final one we decided to film it again and we used a different actress.

Practice Shot

This is one of our practice shots from our filming. This is from the beginning of the flashback where one of the characters walks up the hallway.

Planning the sound

Sound is a important part in a thriller clip because it adds suspense, can help to confuse and deceive the audience & keep their attention. If the sound editing is poor in a clip, then it can divert the audience's attention away from the film.

As a group, we have looked at many different sounds that we were thinking of including in our thriller clip. 
The first one that I decided to look at was a cello sound. It had a cello playing in it but it was done in a bumpy way, where it would miss one beat between each part. It sounds like a sinister heart beat and I felt this would be a good sound as the sinister, eerie part would make it more conventional for our thriller & the cello sound is a deep one that would fit into the flashback death scenes in our thriller.
The second sound that I looked at, was a piano one.
The last one I looked at was a sound clip of a man running and breathing heavily. This made me think about making our own sounds that we could add into our thriller once we are editing.

Opening Scene Narration

For our opening scene, we had to plan what the actors would say in it. This was because it would help us to plan our itinerary and make our filming for time efficient. 

The first scene where there is narration is in the flashback, where Charlotte is walking in and showing her friends, the board game. 
They say the following:
                                                                                                                                                                       
Olympia                                 - Charlotte, what's that you've got in your hands?

Jackie (younger Charlotte) - It's a game I just found.
                                                - I found it in my mum's cupboard

Olympia                                 - We should play

Natasha                                 - Why's it so important?

Jackie (younger Charlotte) - Because it's fun!
                                                                                                                                                                         
The next scene which has narration in it is when the girls are going to open the board game. The following is said:
                                                                                                                                                                    
Natasha                                - I've got no idea how to play this but I'm going to beat you guys.

All                                           - Oh, wow!
                                                                                                                                                                      
Once they have opened the box, all the girls are intrigued and interested by what's inside, which is why they all just make excited noises like the previous above.
The actors speak in the next couple of scenes, where 3 of the girls die on the board game. However, me and Rhiann did not plan what we wanted the actors to say in these scenes as we wanted them to be as realistic as possible and felt that they would be more natural if they said what they would normally say.