Evaluation Question 3

How have you responded to consumer feedback in order to better your media product?

After going through our original individual treatments with our teacher, we used his feedback to significantly alter the path our product would take.


From 6.45 to 19.03 in the video, we receive a lot of feedback about our first pitched idea. We changed several things as result of this, chiefly:

• After the point about the film possibly being too lengthy, we significantly cut the treatment down, and altered plot points in order to simplify the story. This would allow our audience to understand the film still, but still keeping us within the limits of our time constraints.
• When asked how we would go about filming a sexual assault scene, we realised the difficulties that task would present. Due to the serious nature of such a scene, a muck-up on our part could have been highly offensive or even comical to viewers - obviously neither being the desired effect. Because of this, we decided that rather than trying to film the scene, we would instead simply imply that such an assault has/is about to occur, by the dialogue, and the post-assault character behaviour.
• Following the discussion about possible viewer confusion distinguishing between the dad and attacker (stepdad) characters we (at the time) had planned for the film, we chose to just make the attacker a random hood with little or no characterisation, whereas the Father would be open faced and speak softly. Also, there were significant physical differences between the two actors we used.

After 23.12, the second of our pitched ideas gets feedback:

•  The main change here was simply that we were going to combine the two treatments into one main one. In particular, we liked the blood dripping into the sink idea, and this can be seen in our films final product. Unfortunately, due to time constraints and the unavailability of many extras, we made an executive decision to cut the party scene.

SCRIPT

For feedback on our script, we spoke with an ex-student of the school, now studying Cinematography at University. Speaking with him was very enlightening, and we took on board some of his suggestions about trying to keep the script relatively simple, as in thriller films, what is happening on screen is often more important than the dialogue.

ANIMATIC

Following the presentation of our storyboard to our teacher, we were told that the production of an animatic would greatly aid us in getting the idea for our final product across to our target audience samples. We agreed and set about producing our animatic. It is on display in an earlier post, should you wish to review.


 TARGET AUDIENCE

We showed our animatic and pitched our film to a target audience representative; Shelly. Her description was mentioned in an earlier post, but here it is again as a reminder:

 A model member of our target audience is Shelly. Shelly is 21 years old, an adrenaline-junkie, and enjoys watching movies with her boyfriend. She recently began work as a banking and financing accountant at a HSBC branch, nearby her small rented apartment where she lives with her boyfriend, who also works standard hours. Having recently graduated from the University of Bristol, Shelly has quite a lot of student loans to pay, and can therefore not afford to regularly go to the cinema to see box office hits. Instead, she watches B movies and online Shorts, which she can either watch for little or no cost. She is a regular to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion, where she often comes across Short movies not unlike those by Gamble Studios (our group).

 Following the pitch to Shelly, she said that she felt we were aiming our film at the right kind of audience and that it would definitely be a film she would be interested in seeing. She did however recommend YouTube as the site for displaying our film, as she said it would be most easily accessed by our target audience there, and also our film itself would get more exposure.

ROUGH CUT INTO FINAL CUT

As you are no doubt aware, several problems were present in our rough cut. Of course though, that is what a rough cut is for - constructive criticism. Following comments about plot holes and the speed of edits, and also choice of sound effects, we went at our final product with a vengeance. Shooting new scenes, changing titles, getting new sound effects and signifcantly altering our pace of edits, slowing transitions when the scene was more sullen (such as in the church), and speeding it up when the scene required (such as the chase in the woods). At the last minute, we also decided to add a post-credits sequence, just to wrap up a few loose ends we had previously neglected.
For specific details of feedback and subsequent changes, I have embedded an audio file (of our rough cut feedback) below, along with some of the times at which key points are made, what those key points are, and then how we changed them for our final product.

• Ident sound effect (00:19)
• Blood drip sound (01:10)
• Heart beat sound (01:10)
• Remove diagetic sound from sink scene (02:00)
• Change titles to overlay the on screen action, rather than just against a black screen (04:12)
• Sound in the wooded scene
• Change brightness of wooded scene
• Add sound to make the wooded scene more dramatic
• Bottle smash shot
• Church to house transition 
• Clock sequence needs to be shorter or sped up 
• Add heart monitor sound
• Add heart monitor visual
• Penny's head is cut off in graveyard scene
• Finish hospital scene
• Add more roles to credits to emphasise the rolling credits
• Get the overall film time up to five minutes.

Embedded below is yet again the Final Cut from our movie, along with the times (for the video) where we have made changes as a result of feedback.

1. 0:00 - You see our company ident, complete with the new sound effect of a fruit machine.
2. 0:05 - Newly added sound effects for the "sink" scene. There is now the sound of dropping blood and and an unnerving pulse, like a heartbeat. The original diegetic sound has been removed. The scene has also been given a bit more brightness.
3. 0:24 - Film titles now overlay an on-screen scene (the scene itself is also new).
4. 0:47 - The film title now has the same font and colour scheme ('HELL' in red, representing aggression and hatred) as it does on our film poster. We felt this would help to keep consistency and increase product recognition.
5. 1:30 - Many changes have been made to the wooded path scene. First of all, there is a slight tapping beat, used to build tension and drama. Secondly, the scene has been given added brightness, as before doing so some of the on-screen action was hard to see. Thirdly, the hooded attacker has been given a voiceover, because his diegetic speech was almost impossible to hear.
6. 1:47 - Here we have a (newly added) slow motion shot of the bottle smashing on the floor.  We thought this would serve symbolically as the point in which things take a turn for the worst. Up till this point, the tension has been building higher and higher, but then the smashing of the bottle shatters the atmosphere and kick-starts the assault.
7. 1:58 - There is a loud 'boom' type sound as the man grabs hold of our female protagonist.  We did this deliberately as the combination of the dramatic sound with the on-screen action increases the drama.
8. 2:23 - As advised, we have a transition from the church scene to the house scene. As our own touch, we created a match-on-action effect by having our protagonist leave through the church door and then transition to her running outside her home. We felt this worked very well, and it is thanks to feedback that we decided to shoot it.
9. 2:39 - Rather than the ineffective beeping sound effect (to show the car stopping) that we used in the rough cut, we now have a much more realistic sound of the car's handbrake being applied.
10. 2:48 - Unlike the rough cut, our "hammer dropping" shot now is in slow motion. This was done primarily to give the audience more time to see it, but also because it makes the shot more dramatic. There is also the new sound effect of a blunt impact.
11. 3:04 - Here we have a new close up shot of Penny holding the crucifix. This is symbolic of her father's forgiveness (Christ forgave those who killed him on the cross), also reinforces the conventions of a religious thriller.
12. 3:10 - We have an establishing shot of a hospital in this final cut. This was to set the scene for the clock and heart monitor sequence, where the father loses the battle for his life.
13. 3:12 - The clock and heart monitor sequence has now been shortened. This was due to the feedback we received about it being too boring to watch for a lengthy period.
14. 3:15 - In this final cut, the heart monitor not only has an added beeping sound effect, but it is actually animated to look like a real monitor. Previously in the rough cut, we had just used a still image, but the new animation adds more believability and realism to the scene.
15. 3:32 - Flatline. Not present in the rough cut, this was added to show that the father had died, rather than us having to actually shoot his dying moments. It then transitions directly into our exterior church scene, to further enforce the idea of him dying.
16. 3:35 - We have now corrected our exterior church shots. Where in the rough cut our protagonists head was 'cut-off' the top of the frame, in this revised film her head remains in shot.
17. 3:51 - We have now added more credentials to our credits. This was done in order to show our use of 'rolling credits' more distinctively.
18. 4:09 - Our brand new post-credit scene. Before shooting this, we felt as though our story hadn't been fully told - that there were still many loose ends that the audience would want to see tied. Our solution was this scene. As you can see, our antagonist (the rapist) is walking down a quiet alley way. As he passes the mid point of the alley, we use match on action to show him from the rear, heading toward the alleys exit. But then the sudden input of a non-diegetic 'creepy' sound effect indicates his fate, as the sound coincides with the appearance of our protagonist holding the hammer. The shot is a close up of the protagonist from the waist down, a hammer hanging from her hand. As the music climaxes, the scene cuts to black and the film ends. The implication obviously being that the rapist is going to 'get his'. Penny had been at the church not only asking for forgiveness for killing her Dad, but also for what she was going to do - murder her attacker.