P4 and M3: Audience Feedback and Evaluation

 After completing our Newspaper Short Film, Ellie created a Google Forms for our group to collect feedback about the short film from our media group. We included questions based around the editing, Mise-en-scène, storyline, audio, shots, angles and movements. I will be evaluating the feedback we recieved and how we would improve our short film based on this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 First I am going to address the positives. Based on our feedback, everyone thinks the Newspaper short film has been edited well. I did lots of editing to make sure the coloured video was black and white (this is Mise-en-scène, placing in the scene that we learnt about in unit 1). I also had to add audio, dubbing, sound effects, graphics and the credit roll. As proven, my editing is successful which is what we wanted to achieve. Furthermore, our audience enjoyed the audio tracks we used and they clearly understood the storyline of our short film. This is important as Todorov's theory of equilibrium states that narratives should have a clear beginning, middle and end. However, to follow short film conventions we ended Newspaper on a cliffhanger. We had some positive comments complimenting the editing, audio and the storyline above which shows that we did a good job. 62.5% of the target audience thought the target audience was clear throughout, 75% thought they knew who the protagonists and antagonists were. We had a brilliant response to do with our cinematography and camera choices: 87.5% of the audience believed there was a variety of camera shots, angles and movements (also Mise-en-scène). I have picked this up specifically because this shows how our short film keeps the audience interested. Again,  Mise-en-scène was a huge part of our short film. We had to style our Mise-en-scène after older film noir detective dramas which was a bit if a challenge. However, we managed to achieve this through our props, lighting, codes and conventions; 87.5% thought we did a good job with this. One of our comments loved the lighting, pace and camera shots.

On the flip side, we have lots of things to improve on. 35% of the audience didn't think we reflected on the target audience throughout. 25% of our audience didn't know who the protagonists and antagonists were, but this is exactly what we wanted since this is the twist to our short film. 12.5% of people didn't think there was a variety of shots and movements and didn't think we did well with Mise-en-scène. We had a lot of comments based around audio improvements. They say that the audio could be clearer, some ambient sound could be used and some parts of the audio were loud or quiet compared to others. We had a few comments that say the editing cuts are a bit harsh at times and we could have tied the newspaper in more since this is a key part in the storyline. In response to the sotryline, one audience member is confused how our suspects became suspects and another member believes the twist was too obvious.

Because this is a college project, we had a deadline and no budget for our short film. If we had more time we could have added in or fixed some of these issues beforehand. To improve, there are a lot of talking scenes we could redo since "there were stutters and incorrect comments". I completely agree with this comment; if we had a chance to redo or make improvements on this project we would reshoot these scenes and make sure the dialogue is crisp and consise. To show how our suspects became suspects, we could add backstories or flashbacks to show them talking to the suspect or stumbling onto the crime scene. This would clear the confusion the audience member was having and also show motives/thickens the plot of the Newspaper short film storyline. If we could refilm it, we would add some drone shots for example and different camera shots, angles and movements to make the short film even more interesting. Furthermore, in editing we could add a newspaper transparent overlay transition over scenes where the scenes change to tie the newspaper in more. In addition, some comments suggest that we could use a phone sound effect when The Detective talks to The Chief of Police over the phone. I think we could include a little voice effect that changes the voice to what we hear over the phone for that part. To fix the audio, we would re-record some of it to make sure it isn't muffled, change the sound volumes, get rid of the static background noise in Adobe Audition and we would also add a little bit of ambient noise to fill the world of the short film and to make it more realistic. We learnt about different regulatory bodies in unit 1 and 2. I believe our short film didn't reach a 15+ BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) rating since there wasn't too much violence and swearing so this might have made it harder for our viewers to understand who this short film is targeted towards. To achieve this, we would add more swearing and violence in our short film.

 

 

 

 We created a presentation and presented our Newspaper noir short film to Keyhole Creative, a video editing company. We recived feedback from Ewan and Billy. They said that they could tell we took inspiration from other siwever we didn't milar films since we used conventions from the genre (monologue, mise en scène, music, lighting....). They said that the mise en scène was brilliant and the music matched the old detective drama theme perfectly. The lighting worked well with the genre too. They said they could tell that we took a lot of time on the storyline and it has a nice twist at the end. The dialogue was amazing and they enjoyed it. We have used mise en scène, placing in the scene, which is something we learnt in unit 1. We also learnt about the narrative theory of equilibrium by Tzvetan Todorov however to meet short film conventions, we left the story on a cliffhanger which is disequilibrium and causes an imbalance to the story.

I agree with all of the positive things they said. The lighting, mise en scène and dialogue make the short film for me. The film noir has so much life because of these aspects; the characters are developed and we can see their reactions throughout the short film. The twist at the end is a fun little cliffhanger; the audience is left shocked and they wonder if The Detective is going to get away with it.

One thing they said we could improve on is the length of some of the scenes since we can easily switch off from them if they are too long. I believe they were refering to the interrogation scenes. I completely agree with this; the scenes did feel like they dragged on a bit. This is something I would change if we could redo this unit; I would make sure the acting is more snappy, precise and the scene doesn't drag on too long. We could also edit the script to make sure we don't have too much dialogue for the scene. On the other hand, a member of our audience from our group survey wrote "How did Jay become involved in the plot and Henry? How did they become suspects?". To act on this feedback from the survey we could add in flashbacks of what each of the suspects were doing that night and also previous times they have met Nancy Carmine to show the relationship between those two characters. We could then link in motives this way. This could replace parts of the interrogation scenes.

I think I have a lot of strengths: I am great at editing and I am good at filming with a camera. However, to personally improve, I could learn more editing techniques and camera techniques to ensure that our short film has more varied camera shots. I would love to improve on the audio so I can learn how to add effects to the audio and how to record in different environments for high quality sound. I would also love to learn how to make my camera shots steady and not shaky.