Gaining audience feedback has been integral to the outcomes of my coursework as a lot of the edits or adjustments I have made have been a direct result of the comments people have given me. Here is how audience feedback has helped with each final piece.
Film
Throughout the process of creating my coursework I have constantly been thinking about what my target audience wants. As a teen girl myself I am effectively a member of my target audience so I initially created my film the way I wanted it knowing I would watch it. However, it became clear as I progressed that I was becoming too familiar with the film to make accurate judgements about things like, was the writing in the second conversation scene understandable or was it just that I knew what they were saying? It was in these situations that I found audience feedback the most useful.
After completing the first draft of my film I asked my target audience 6 questions that would help me ascertain what was confusing or needed improving.
These were:
What are your overall impressions?
Pretty cool
I liked the flash back in the park scene
In scene 1 who do you look at?
The bullies and then Kyra
Is text scene 1 too long?
No but you don’t know who is talking.
How could I make it more obvious that Kyra is speaking first?
Put the names on or move the text for Kyra next to her
Could you understand what was going on in conversation scene?
Yes, and I liked the effect
Do you like the music I have chosen at the moment?
Yes
Their answers helped me because it meant I could adapt my film to the wants of my target audience and get a fuller insight into whether the effects I had been using were working in the way I wanted them to.
The second time I asked members of my audience to watch my film I chose not to ask them specific questions. Instead I asked them for any comments at the end of the showing. This meant I didn't get as direct answers for improvements but it helped me in other ways as they pointed out things I hadn't realised were happening. For example, when someone told me that they liked the way the focus shifted to Emily when she was tying to say sorry.
Poster
I found that one of the areas of the process I relied most heavily on audience feedback was with the creation of my two subsidiary tasks. Most of my feedback came from asking people in person what they thought but there were some occasions where this wasn't possible. It was then that I took advantage of social media and asked people over Facebook for their opinions.
After creating several drafts of my poster I did just this and sent an image of my poster to three friends. I chose again to opt for specific questions as I felt this was the best way to get feedback on changes that could be made. Here are the answers I got:
Do you think this poster advertises my short film well?
1. Yes
2. Yes, I love it. I like the faded green colour
3. Yeah, definitely
What could I do to improve it?
1. The title needs to be more noticable - perhaps change the colour, typeface or make it bigger Make the small middle image less noticable as it distracts from the other things on the poster Make the small bottom image clearer
2. I don't think there is anything really
3. No I don't think so
Again, the feedback I received was useful as I had become to familiar with the poster and overlooked simple things like the fact that the title was too small. After this I continued to ask for feedback from my peers, teachers and family as, with formatting, I found that people not from my target audience were just as eligible to help me decide on colours and positioning.
Magazine Review Page
You will notice the amount of drafts I made for this piece are fewer than for my poster. This worried me so I kept asking my teachers and family for feedback as I thought there was something really obvious I was missing. They assured me that it didn't matter I had so few drafts as sometimes the layout works first time however, they did give me some useful pointers regarding fonts etc. I believe the reason I created so few drafts is because I have had experience at AS creating a magazine double page spread and so knew the basic conventions already.
To conclude, I have found all the audience feedback I received extremely useful as I had often become to familiar with the pieces and begun overlooking simple things that needed adjusting. Had I not used audience feedback this would have hindered the outcomes as they wouldn't have been completed to the best standard possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment