Emily learned that audience feedback is valuable for creating an enjoyable production. She found smaller screenings for peers provided useful feedback on continuity and understandability. This helped plan more thoroughly to satisfy audiences. Feedback praised the film's sound, music, and opening sequence. Pre-filming interviews with the target audience helped develop the narrative and characters further. Constructive criticism noted the need to better develop the character of Ellie and progression of her illness. Quantitative research through questionnaires found the narrative was strong and not cliche. It effectively grasped the attention of the target 12-22 age group. Overall feedback was positive, though some noted scope for improved acting from one character in one scene. Feedback was useful for assessing

1. EVALUATION – What have you learnt
from your audience feedback?
Emily Capon

2. During the production of Promise I have learnt that audience feedback
is incredibly valuable in creating a production that can be enjoyed by
your target audience. We often found it was helpful to hold smaller
screenings for our peers as it allowed us to gain feedback on anything
that we have missed such as continuity or if they simply did not
understand what was going on throughout a particular scene. This
helped us plan more thoroughly and as producers we must make sure
our product has done what it intends to do to gratify audiences thus
supported by the Uses and Gratifications Model within audience
theory as the audience uses the text for their own pleasure. To make a
film flow seamlessly there isn't one component less important than the
other such as music, art style and editing, acting and filming as it all
adds to the cinematography effecting the audiences perspective on a
particular topic. We were praised for our use of sound and audio with
many saying it fits smoothly with the character and the mood of music
matched each scene very well, particularly within the opening
sequence which is rather emotional.

3. Qualitative research
Pre filming we held a small profile interview in which we filmed
members of our target audience on their views about the plot and
scripting. This allowed us to develop our narrative further and
follow the interests of our target audience as we want to
accommodate for the majority. The most appreciated information
that I gathered for Rukayyah and I was actually constructive
criticism, a few members stated that the characterisation of Ellie
should be developed more and the progression of her illness as it
was easy to forget about inferring the aggressiveness of cancer
and focus primarily on her relationship with Sam when actually
both factors are just as important due to the limited time we have
to create a new world within film. Therefore during the story
boarding stages it was key that I constructed different ideas and
certain angles to emphasis certain shots such as Ellie running up
the stairs or getting her injection where it was crucial to show her
pain. Furthermore we asked our audience to describe characters as
well as the plot that included Ellie being ‘independent’.

4. Quantitative research
We constructed a questionnaire for people to fill in after watching the
screening of our production. We received positive feedback overall, which
we were thrilled about after vast amounts of research following typical
conventions of short film and romance drama genre. The majority of
audience stated that they didn’t expect Ellie to have cancer within the
beginning after the shock of her mothers death, however very quickly the
audience picked up on the idea that she was ill from her discussion with
Sam as well as her sat in her bedroom on her laptop researching ‘How to
deal with cancer’. This showed us that our narrative was strong and not
cliché as usually within film the issues haven't occurred within the
beginning of the equilibrium however in short film and our limited amount
of time did have a huge impact on this. Our research into target audience
proved right as we grasped the attention of our aimed target audience
effectively, with them agreeing that it was a short film suited to their age
group of 12 – 22.

5. Acting
Quantitative research allowed us to assess our production by analysing data
within pie charts so we could quickly resolve certain issues that needed to be
solved such as acting within a certain scene. Overall feedback stated that the
quality of the acting was very high particularly from the roles of Ellie and
Dave however some constructive comments stated that the acting quality
from Sam could be improved predominantly within the scene where Sam
meets Ellie at her house. Within this scene we aimed Sam to be taken back
from the news that Ellie can’t promise she will still be here for prom, as this is
a sensitive topic Sam was supposed to show his appreciation by giving her
space. Which, if we were to film again this would be overcome, as each
actor became more comfortable in their role as the project progressed so for
us to re film these scenes would mean they would be more confident.
Aside from this overall all technical qualities were praised, with camera work
standing out the most. Good comments were made about camera angles
used to film the argument scene in the kitchen. So to conclude we had very
good feedback that me and Kayyah are both pleased with as it shows we
have been successful in our aims that we had from the very beginning of the
project.

6. Ancillary tasks – Film poster
The role I took on in the construction of our ancillary
tasks was the film poster. Before actually creating the
poster, I did research into different styles of layouts. I
after consulting with my peers I was keen to stick with the
layout that they were most appealed to, this was 10 out
of 12 people , therefore this taught me that audience
feedback within film helps you to accommodate to the
majority of your audiences likes and avoid their dislikes
so producers and the editing team are pleasing a wider
audience and therefore your product should be more
successful. This was an effective method of gathering
feedback as I used 2 forms of audience review including
the visual feedback where my audience simply ticked
which layout they preferred as well as interviewing 5
members of my audience in further detail.

7. Ancillary tasks – Film review
My filming partners role was to construct the film review,
during pre development Kayyah gathered insight into typical
conventions and then applied this further within the
audience feedback stages. After kayyah created her product
she then presented it to a number of students who were
available to give feedback. Ultimately, she found that
audiences engage with visual information rather than text
than can seem overpowering or cluttered upon the review.
Therefore Kayyah kept it equal between the picture to text
ratio. It is important to consolidate information from
audiences as it enables you to return to the information at a
later date particularly when you are finessing our altering
minor errors upon the product and over all having a stronger
and more successful piece of text.