Emily learned that audience feedback is invaluable for creating a production that audiences can enjoy. She found smaller screenings with peers provided useful feedback on continuity issues and clarity. This helped Emily plan more thoroughly. Audience members praised the film's use of sound and music, saying it fit the characters and mood well. Post-filming interviews with the target audience helped develop the narrative and follow audience interests. Constructive criticism noted the need to further develop the main character's illness progression. Quantitative research through questionnaires allowed issues like certain acting performances to be identified and improved. Overall the feedback was positive and showed the film succeeded in its goals of appealing to its target demographic.

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. 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
Post 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.

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.