A2 PRODUCTION

Thursday 3 March 2011

Questions Three

Audience feedback enables me to correct, perfect and improve my film. This is because, as we are all a team, it will be impossible for us to make accurate and unbiased predictions about our product, therefore, by having some feedback from the audience it helps us to make very useful and productive changes.

Our first idea was “Locked in My Mind”, which was taken from inspiration from “411”. Our narrative was very interesting and exciting as it was about a girl setting a curse on her boyfriend, and then during the film we would explore the miseries of the curse she set on him. However we received feedback from our teachers that this film idea will be too complicated to achieve as we wanted to do it in school – it would be hard to get classrooms that were free, and then timing, location, school kids it was just too much. Therefore, by presenting our first film idea to my teacher really helped us, as it provided us with relevant feedback and enabled us to construct another idea. We then developed another film idea which was called “Adventures of Babashola” , this was completely different from the first film idea we had, it was no longer horror, we had moved into a more adventure approach – this was based on a Nigerian boy looking for treasure in a forest and the film will just follow his treasure hunt. However, I teachers did support this narrative but I asked my friends and my team asked their friends and they all found the narrative boring and it just did not appeal to anyone, therefore we had to change it, this is because if it could not appeal to our age category then there was just no pointy producing a film that your fellow age-mates would not enjoy. We then finally came up with “Fix-Up, Look Hard”. As we were left without any movie ideas at all, we were thinking of what we could do, the first idea we had was just too complex and drastic and impossible to make on our budget and location, our second idea was possible and easy to shoot, but the risk of it looking mature was our main problem, and the fact that none of our groups liked it either – so we thought to combine both ideas together and come up with one idea – so we put in elements of !Locked In My Mind” and “Adventures of Babashola” and created “FIX UP, LOOK HARD” which became our final product. Audience feedback is very important when it comes to narrative – this is because it allows you to the see the flaws in your work and allows you to improve them or just to move on to something else. In regards to my narrative, I would definitely say that audience feedback enabled myself and my group to come up with a even better and stronger narrative that enabled us to form “FIX UP, LOOK HARD”.

Secondly, I received feedback on my pitch. I learnt that my pitch was very informing and it provided the audience with very relevant information about my film and the conventions of a comedy film. However, what my pitch lacked was that it was not creative enough. I showed my pitch to my class and they all agreed that it was not creative, we wasn’t really selling the film we were just explaining the film to the audience. Therefore, the second time we presented it, I added more picture to the slides, added colour to all my slides and even inserted a clip of Home Alone so my audience could enjoy it. The clip of Home Alone was about the setting up and the outcome of the pranks so it was very interesting for the audience to watch as it was funny seeing grown “idiots” getting played by a 10 year old boy – this is the same in my film, a bully is getting bullied by a victim, so we showed this clip of the film not only to make it interesting but to show the idea and theme we were going for within our film. The audience enjoyed our new pitch and found it very informing as well as exciting. Therefore the audience feedback, was very useful as it helped us to understand where we needed to improve, although our pitch was very informing it was not entirely interesting, so from my feedback I learnt that when presenting and selling your film its best to do it in a way that would capture your target audience.

Moving on, during post production I showed my film to a variety of people. I showed it to a Year 9 girl that said “The actor was not enthusiastic enough for the film – he was the main let down.
Was a bit too quick could have been a bit longer, would have more of an effect. Camera shots were not the best sometimes”. Her positive comments were “It was extremely funny, I jus couldn’t stop laughing. Although the actor was a bit bad – the narrative kind of suited him and made it sort of alright. The whole storyline was precise and accurate – I understood the film completely. The sound had a lovely great effect too at some occasions”

I then asked a boy in Year 11 and his comments were “The actor was a disgrace; he was completely just boring, made the film quit boring, looked like he was being force. The shots and camera movement was bit too slowly at times – like I yawned a few times just staring at it. Sound was alright – but inappropriate at times (natural sound could have been included make it seem more real and less like a film)”. However, his positives were, “Funniest film I have watched created by unproffessionals. The pranks was not all that funny, it was simply the reaction OF the pranks that made me personally laugh. The whole school theme was just a great idea – made me relate to it much more. It’s a bit of a fantasy – a geek becoming a bully – could never happen in reality but the idea of it, is what makes it even funnier.
I then wanted to get a few views from the younger audience, so I asked a little boy from Year 6 and his said “It was bit too dull – no bright colours. It was too exciting for me. There wasn’t enough fast pace movement.” Then his positives were that “It was really, really funny. I liked and enjoyed watching it. The characters are so stupid which made it even much funnier. I could actually relate to it, as I have seen people get bullied in school, but never seen a victim try to get back at the bully, that was just wonderful.”

I then finally asked a Year 13 student, which said “It was really, really funny. I liked and enjoyed watching it. The characters are so stupid which made it even much funnier. I could actually relate to it, as I have seen people get bullied in school, but never seen a victim try to get back at the bully, that was just wonderful.” But, on the flip side “The funniest thing I ever watched. Made complete sense. The fact that you completely switched roles with character by turning the bully into a whip and the whim into a bully was just genius – I would have never expected that. I would love to watch it at a real cinema; it would just give me pure jokes”.

From the feedback I received in regards to my post-production I understood that the acting in my film was very poor. I wasn’t able to choose the actors for my film therefore; I had to accept people from the next class. However, as my film is a silent film – his acting skills did not really matter, but the lack of acting skills was still very much existent through out the entire film. This was the even more reason why my sound had to be perfect, as the acting skills were not so good, i decided to make sure that the soundtracks we used were very entertaining and capturing that could almost divert the audience’s attention, which was what we recieved in our feedback, that the sound was very good and funny at the same time.

Finally, from my audience feedback i have learnt a lot more things about my film, some positives and some negatives. Feedback enables myself and my group to change things that we personally my not see. For example continuinity, i remeber in one shot there was a washing up liquid bottle, but then in the next shot the bottle had dissapeared – it was a person that was watching our film during post-production that realised that, therefore we re-shooted and it looked normal. In addition, not only does feedback help develop new ideas and praise the positives of a film, but it also helps to improve the film by giving relavant suggestions as to how to do things. My audience feedback, personally has taught me how to accept comments and use them constructively within my work, it has also allowed me to view my own product from a different position and angle – more optimistic, and it has taught me how to produce a better film, as peoples comments make a very big difference in a film, therefore by listening to the audience it helps improve the film – as you are giving them what they want.

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