P4: Present the exported extract to an audience, obtaining feedback
Here is my final edit after post production processes:
Here is the feedback that I received from presenting my film to an audience:
M3: Evaluate feedback from the audience identifying strengths and weaknesses
There is a lot of feedback that I received here. Here is a breakdown of the feedback that I received and my thoughts on it:
This piece of feedback is good to hear as it means the warm and homely lighting that I used had the intended effect of creating a "homely" atmosphere that was made eerie and "Mysterious" by juxtaposing it with the context of the story.
I am glad that the scream had this effect, as I also thought that having the scream happen off screen would be "more effective" at creating a scare as the imagery is left to the users imagination. I am glad that this effect worked as intended.
This feedback said that the high saturation and unusual look that I went for was effective at creating an atmosphere of tension and unease. I'm glad that I was able to create this feeling within the audience as that is the feeling and atmosphere of tension that I wanted to achieve. The higher saturation look for these scenes was a choice that I made stylistically as I felt it conveyed and connoted that atmosphere, while also working well with the low quality of cameras that I ended up using for the filming. As the lighting was dark and the cameras weren't the best quality, presenting the film with a standard unchanged visual style would have been unpleasant and uninteresting to watch.
This feedback helps me to realise some of the positives of the set design and lighting that I hadn't considered before filming that I should consider in future as it added a lot of atmosphere for this audience member. The warm lighting was intentional and was one of the key reasons that I decided to film at my house at night, but I hadn't considered how the red carpet and walls work well with the lighting to create a "Scary" and "Hellish" atmosphere.
This feedback is good to hear as it shows that the "Camcorder" effect served it's purpose to distinguish the character's views, and was effective at this purpose. I asked if it looked tacky or cheap and the response I got was that it looked good and served it's purpose.
This piece of feedback was very valuable criticism of the way that the film was framed in terms of the perspectives that we see. As I said previously I showed the killer early on to create tension and make the viewers aware of his presence. However some audiences as is evident from this feedback suggested that this took away from the fear and tension as the audience could see the killer in detail and were not in a position to be scared like the character was. To improve on this I could test out reordering the sequence around to include less shots early on from the killers perspective, as well as removing shots that explicitly show the killer early on to retain that sense of fear and mystery.
- 0:10 - "I really liked the lighting situation you had; especially going up the stairs." "It's nice and homely." "When put in that context it's very mysterious" "It leads up to the climax well."
This piece of feedback is good to hear as it means the warm and homely lighting that I used had the intended effect of creating a "homely" atmosphere that was made eerie and "Mysterious" by juxtaposing it with the context of the story.
- 0:30 - "I also really liked the scream and the fact that you couldn't see Rebecca when she screamed." "I think that made it more effective."
I am glad that the scream had this effect, as I also thought that having the scream happen off screen would be "more effective" at creating a scare as the imagery is left to the users imagination. I am glad that this effect worked as intended.
- 1:35 - "You've gone for this really high saturation look." "It gives it a very unusual (look) that even when everything is going alright you have an impression that something is wrong here."
This feedback said that the high saturation and unusual look that I went for was effective at creating an atmosphere of tension and unease. I'm glad that I was able to create this feeling within the audience as that is the feeling and atmosphere of tension that I wanted to achieve. The higher saturation look for these scenes was a choice that I made stylistically as I felt it conveyed and connoted that atmosphere, while also working well with the low quality of cameras that I ended up using for the filming. As the lighting was dark and the cameras weren't the best quality, presenting the film with a standard unchanged visual style would have been unpleasant and uninteresting to watch.
- 1:50 - "The red carpet on the stairs (makes the) house look really red." "With the lighting it sort of looks like it's lit up by candlelight." "To me it looked like she was walking into hell or something; it was this really scary looking house."
This feedback helps me to realise some of the positives of the set design and lighting that I hadn't considered before filming that I should consider in future as it added a lot of atmosphere for this audience member. The warm lighting was intentional and was one of the key reasons that I decided to film at my house at night, but I hadn't considered how the red carpet and walls work well with the lighting to create a "Scary" and "Hellish" atmosphere.
- 2:25 - "I liked the touch when... You added the filter on where it looked like it was being recorded through a camera." "I feel that was very effective."
This feedback is good to hear as it shows that the "Camcorder" effect served it's purpose to distinguish the character's views, and was effective at this purpose. I asked if it looked tacky or cheap and the response I got was that it looked good and served it's purpose.
- 2:57 - "You combine the perspectives of the killer and Rebecca." "If it was just Rebecca's perspective and we heard all of the noises of the killer without seeing him it would create more tension."
This piece of feedback was very valuable criticism of the way that the film was framed in terms of the perspectives that we see. As I said previously I showed the killer early on to create tension and make the viewers aware of his presence. However some audiences as is evident from this feedback suggested that this took away from the fear and tension as the audience could see the killer in detail and were not in a position to be scared like the character was. To improve on this I could test out reordering the sequence around to include less shots early on from the killers perspective, as well as removing shots that explicitly show the killer early on to retain that sense of fear and mystery.