This is one of the evaluations for my AS Media coursework analysing the work that I did to get audiences interested in my short opening title sequence 'Vindicate'
2. The first thing we did to reach out to our audience was to post the first draft of our opening title
sequence onto Facebook and how people reacted to it. The initial reaction was positive with many
people saying that they enjoyed the first draft and that they would want to see more if it was made
into a real film. We also sent the film to people over Facebook Messenger to try and encourage people
to give us their feedback and that gave us positive results again. However we did receive some
suggestions to how we could improve for example “there was too much back ground noise”
Because the background noise was so load it made it hard to hear the characters
short section of dialogue at the beginning. So we decided to mute the noise from
the filming and
create our own Foley in order to make the film higher quality and easier for the
audience to watch
.As we agreed that this was the biggest flaw in our OTS we recorded the foley in
the music studio and had to either create or download sound effects.
3. Further feedback from Facebook was that one of our scenes was too long, the scene where the officer
is searching through a draw had to much emphasis on it due to its increased time on screen meaning
that audiences might think that this action is the most significant at this point in the film.
This point was risen again by BAFTA nominated film editor Mike Harrows who gave us feed back on our
sequence via a Skype call. At the time we talked to him Mike was in the process of editing a thriller for
the BBC and so his feed back was extremely useful.
The length of this scene means that the rhythm of our piece was disrupted and the pace slowed down
causing the audience to lose interest. Because of this we decided to shorten the length of this scene in
the final version of our OTS.
4. After we had added the changes that where suggested to us we showed our work to another group
of people. We showed our work to people that where both media and non media students in order
to get a more varied response. The students that saw our work where included in our target
audience (16+)
When asked the students where able to identify that our work was an opening title sequence when
asked. They said that the reason for this was because of the credits the length of the film and that it
didn't give to much of the film away by ending on a cliff hanger.
The media students responded much more critically than others because of their experience of
analysing media texts. They suggested that we add a few transitions then it would successfully
break up our sequences especially when there was a jump cut and it would make the film more
visually stimulating to watch rather than just having straight cuts.
5. As a result we added a cross dissolve into our work when the action jumps from after the detectives
search the house to when they are looking for evidence. This slows down the pace at this point
indicating that some time has past between the two scenes and is therefore a visual shortcut.
This transition also allowed
me to remove some of the
footage from the scene
where the detective is
searching
through the draw.
We also filmed a Q&A session when we asked people questions about our opening title sequence. We
asked questions like ‘what genre do you think this film would be?’ and ‘would you go and see this film if it
came out in a cinema?’ and other questions relevant to our project. In response to our questions they
agreed that our work was a thriller genre and they said that they would go to see the film in the cinema
especially due to the fact that our OTS ended on a cliff hanger leaving a huge enigma and making them
want to watch on a see what happened.
Over all asking for our audiences feedback has helped us address any flaws that our work had and
listening to them has guided us to making a stronger OTS than would have without.