1. Question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback is the most important thing when is comes to planning and
creating a film. By not listening to their feedback and creating what you
believe is right could result in your film being a complete disaster. As this was
my first time creating a short film it was essential to get as many opinions from
audiences as possible for this coursework project. It was important that I
understood that the feedback given was to help the film and not to dismiss it,
feedback also allowed me to ask any specific questions to the audience.
When presenting out first and second pitch the audience to the first few film
ideas that we as group came up with were stories about teen love, and from
the feedback session we learnt that ‘If your group want to follow the theme of
heartbreak you should stay away from typical cliché teen American love
stories’ Another piece of feedback that we obtained from the audience was
that ‘ the story seemed boring and that it need creativity’ This lead us to the
decision to change the story, still keeping with the theme heartbreak however
add the theme of blindness also. I learnt that having two themes and not just
one can help your film.
We changed the story idea completely which resulted in us creating two new
pitches. The feedback from the first pitch was ‘try to change the location of the
film keep it out of school’ and also ‘ you need to make so that the character is
going to overcome something’ . We made the changes to the pitch to make it
so the film was set in a house and not the school as I was pointed out that it
will be easier to film as there will be no students walking around when filming.
I learnt that it is important to think about filming location even at pitching
stages
After changing the story idea and we came up with a first draft of a treatment
which we presented to the audience, this gave the audience the whole layout
of what its going to be in the short film. Firstly the audience were pleased that
we had changed the story idea. However the a comment was made that the
film ‘lacked and needed spontaneity’ another comment was that ‘the film has
a good base of an idea however I think that it needs more work’. However we
did get positive feedback like ‘very good idea with a emotive storyline’. With
these examples and many others we knew that we had a lot of work to do if
we were going to prefect the story. Following the feedback, we then presented
an second draft of the treatment. We kept the base idea of a blind boy
however we scraped the idea of the boy going to school also the idea of the
girl in the story. We found that even though we had made the improvements
the new feedback suggested otherwise as we still had a lot of things to do in
order to tidy it up we were told that ‘the story is repetitive and that we
shouldn’t do things the same on each day.’ and ‘Steer clear of the
stereotypical bullying theme’ and ‘It seems rushed/jumped at some points’
and that we need to ‘make it more realistic’. Even though we felt that as a
group we spent a lot of time and effort on the treatment to make sure that the
film is successful the treatment needs to be faultless. There were very little

2. criticisms on our final draft of our treatment there were only small changes
need to the treatment one of them was to ‘include more dialogue for the main
character’ and ‘make sure you show him struggling.’ These were easy to
include and would be shown within the storyboard and the scripts.
When the treatment was completely finalised we created our scripts we had 3
drafts of the script. We did this by taking out the repetitive days that the boy
has, also we took out the bathroom scene and we included more dialogue into
the final script. We showed our original script in the feedback session and we
had a mix of feedback. The audience said that ‘the script needs more detail’.
We worked on the script making sure that we had included some shots and
the scene and if there was any dialogue. We then added more detail to the
script which included more stage directions and the whether the scene was
internal or external. After completing the scripts we moved onto the
storyboard it was extremely important as this is what we will be working from
when filming. The storyboard is what is going to be included in the film the
shots are important as the film needs to flow. The feedback from the audience
was useful as it help improved the continuation of the story. We got feedback
like ‘make sure you have a wide shot of the room of him alone’ I understand
why this was said as we need to have more shots of him on his own to show
that he is struggling and has no help and he is isolated. Other comments were
that ‘the there should be a 360 degree shot before and after of the boy’s
room’, ‘ you guys need to think visually’ , ‘ needs to be shots of friends
outside’ and ‘ flashbacks need to be added on the storyboard’ .We had 2
storyboards after hearing the feedback we cut up the first storyboard re-
arranged the shots and placed new shots over the top. We made sure that we
modified the storyboard to make the shots more creative and to allow it to
flow.
After all the filming as completed, and we had put the footage on the
computer and editing software and finally creating a finished project. In the
editing process we had plenty of feedback this is because it was one the most
important parts of creating a filming. After deciding what final shots that we
wanted to keep we got the comment that ‘you should shorten down some of
the shots as some shots are too long and become boring’. After this comment
we also agreed that some shots for example the shot of the boy walking into
the kitchen was too long, so we cut it down. We then showed the film to a
couple more people, the feedback that we got was to ‘take out the amount of
transitions’ and ‘to take out the number of shots as some was irrelevant’ we
then reduced the number of transitions as it made the film look unrealistic and
also we took out shots for example when the boy and girl are walking on the
street.
We had a screening where the audience produced us with their comments.
They were pleased that we had followed their advice previously and that the
film was successful. Nevertheless there was still had thing that needed to
change this made clear by the audiences feedback. These are some of the
comments ‘there could have been a bigger fuss when the girl is about to be
run over’, ‘ make the end titles much smaller’, the shot build up to when the
girl gets saved was excellent’ and the scene where the ‘mum talks to the son

3. is the best scene within the film’. We then went on to make the changes to the
film some, things could be modified for example the end title sizes, also we
had a comment about the sound so we also checked the sound levels
throughout the film. However the comment that the girl being saved should be
more , we could not change as this would be re-shooting and this would affect
continuity, I do understand that we could improved that scene. We did have
more shots storyboarded however due to the actor being 3 hours late, as we
was behind schedule and could not fit it in.
After fully completing the film I created two ancillary tasks this consisted of a
magazine review and 3 film posters. The feedback from my film review was
that ‘you need to research more in film magazines and to look at the layout’
another comment was that ‘ well done you tried to follow the codes and
conventions of a magazine review’ after listening to the comments I made the
changes accordingly which was to change the layout of the film review. I
created the first two film poster and I was told that I need to ‘look at film
posters and try to follow the layout’ and ‘use clearer images so that the
audience can see what it is.’ I then went and looked at more film posters and I
made sure that I used them as a guideline, I changed the quality of the image
that I had used in the first film posters .I then got more positive comments for
examples ‘The image used in this poster successfully represents the theme of
struggle and the monochrome colour theme makes everything seem quite dull
and gloomy’.
In conclusion I am glad that in all parts of this project we received feedback
this is as I now feel that are film products are much stronger than are original
idea and without feedback the final film may have not been successful. When
creating the treatment and the storyboard I felt that the feedback was very
constructive. I believe that that feedback that we got both positive and
negative aided us to produce a high quality film.