Importance of audience feedback

Here is a link to my production blog where I decided to do some audience research: Click Here

Quote from production blog:

"So what did my research tell me?

I found that people where interested in the genre of film that I want to make, although a complex storyline some people didn't like. So for my film I have to make sure it doesn't get too confusing. Also a lot of people didn't know what Post Modernism is, but that is okay because those people liked films like Inception.

People also seem to not mind about having religion de-credited in a film, and they also believe that the general media supports there religion. This is a very good thing, because my film wants to go against the grand narratives of the media, so making a film against something that they support, also these ideas wont be abolished by the general public."

The research told me a lot of things that changed the way I made and scripted my film, so for example I found that people like a complex storyline to a certain degree. From this I changed the first half of my films script which was also emphasised by a another film maker, this change made the story less complex and easier to follow.

Another point which I payed close attention to is the controversy behind my religion representation in the film, so when I asked the public about whether they would be outraged by it by my surprise they were not too bothered as long as I didn't go over the top. So I re worked a bit of the script so that the majority would not be offended by the film.

Forms and Conventions

Whilst making my film, I shot it in the intention of it being a postmodern film, and one aspect that postmodern films have is to go against the Grand Narratives of conventional films. So straight away from the start my film was designed to go against the forms and conventions in several ways. One way it had done this was the plot behind the film 'slated' religion in a bad way which isn't the first time this has been done in the media, but it still went against normal conventions of god being the 'good' guy and religion being the 'absolute truth'. In the film the character 'governor' represents God & the Devil but ends up saying they where made up to control.

Another way that my film goes against conventions it the ending of the film which can be regarded as the climax in most ways because its a fight seen. But how does this go against conventions? Well the action scene at the end plays with time and space, another feature of postmodernism, because in this scene everything is played backwards and in slow-motion which of course is rarely seen in todays films.

My film goes against conventions, but my 2 ancillary tasks do not on the other hand; my Poster and Magazine Review. For both of these tasks I researched a lot into the conventions of how a standard magazine or poster is designed and made. So for my poster I looked at films like the Matrix, mainly because it also is a postmodern film but has a standard design to it. I also looked at the Casino Royale poster which is a action/thriller film so its the same genre, but also has a standard regular design.

As for my magazine review, I looked at lots of different 'Empire' magazines for inspiration and then based a lot of my design work around that, I also then looked at how to write a magazine review through research. So for both my poster and Magazine review I followed conventions, as for my Film I went against film conventions.

Feedback from a Film Professional

A day was aranged by our teachers for professionals to come into the school and give us feedback about our products. So for film we had 'Oscar Stringer' come in who is a local film maker, we also had two guys come in from UWE ( University of West England) to judge andgive feedback about our print work. So for me I had my 5:50 minute film looked at by 'Oscar Stringer' and my two ancillary tasks; A Poster & Magazine Review, looked at by 'Steve Priddell' & 'Rowland Cowley', from UWE.

Film feedback:

The first and most big criticism that I received was that there was a scene shot outside and when a key speech came along you couldn't hear it very well due to the cameras microphone picking up a gust of wind. So from this I decided to change the scene to an indoor location and this then lead me to changing the script so that the story would then make sense. So I re-worked the storyboard and script to come to what it is now, this then leads onto another improvement that I made after feedback.

I worked long and hard on the script but that was a downside because what happened is the story was too complex and hard to keep up with in such a small time period, so I chopped a side story out of the film and replaced them with shorter lined shots and location shots.

Magazine Feedback:

The two guys that came from UWE liked my magazine review a lot and said that the layout itself was good, so it had nothing to improve upon for that. Although it lacked on colour co-ordination so I changed the colour scheme around until it fitted together nicely.

Poster Feedback:

There was only one major change that I had to make in my poster and that was adding stars in the background so that it looked as if the character was actually in space. This effect was eventually done using Photoshop.

Shooting the film

The first and original shoot took a 2 day span where I managed to get about 15 mins of un-edited footage, mainly due to the acting cast and trying to get the exact shot that I wanted to have. Once I edited this footage I had half of the film shot which came to about 3 mins, although this footage was not in order what so ever, e.g. some of the film was from the start whilst some of the footage was from the end. This meant that I couldn't really get a feel for the film when watched through at this stage.

I ended up having around about a week in total of days where I filmed and edited the film to complete the final product that you see.

Whilst shooting the film, I used the schools equipment for the majority of the shoot, so I rented out 1 video camera along with a tripod to get the perfect shots that I wanted. Although the majority of the filming was done using a tripod, some of it was done handheld to help set the scene, so an example would be when the two characters walk up a bridal path, the camera is carried and on record whilst walking to represent one of the characters viewpoint. The camera switches between the two characters to show both viewpoints of the situation.

Handheld was necessary in some cases but not all, for example long shots where done using a camera and tripod because I wouldn't want the camera shaking around the place loosing focus of characters who are at a distance.

Representation

In my piece I want to link religion into the film as much as possible, this will also shed light on the different side of religion, possibly become controversial. The religion I want to represent in my film in a different way to which it is normally portrayed in the media, is going to be christianity, meaning everyone who believes in God & Jesus Christ will be in the social group that I want to show.
In terms of a age group or a social group, I wish for my character to be young so that youth can be represented in a good way, straying away from how the media will usually portray youth which is negatively.

Media can represent groups in many different ways; one of these is the media's audience that it directs its show/newspaper towards. For example papers at this current time only seem to focus on the bad aspects of the youth today, which is in the smallest minority and not taking this into account, instead what it will do is sum up the whole entire youth saying 'we' are out of control even though it was possibly on ;gang' fight against another. But this somehow applies to al of the youth; this comes across then to be very prejudice against youths showing us, in the media being represented as violent and troublesome. Although it is not as simple as that because although the general view in my opinion, of the media representation against youths is bad, there sometimes is youth being represented in a good, mature way. An example of this is a few months bak there was an award going out to the best sister, which went to a little girl who helped look after her disabled sister whenever she could. Unfortunately for the youth this girl was around the age of 10-12 years of age, so I believe that in the media children are shown respect but 'us' teenagers are shown in a bad light because of this small amount of population breaking laws. This is a very complex representation and the media seem to split the category from the innocent to the evil, the younger to the young.

The representation for religion in the media at first glance seems to support religion greatly with lots of shows backing religions ideology. Although recently this has become less of the case due to the publics interest in science, for example science shows, mainly space shows have become extremely popular with 'Wonders of the Solar System' and 'Stephen Hawkin's Universe'. These shows don't set out to deny religion but they do give evidence to suggest that religion doesn't make sense, and the public like the ideas that it suggest, like the Big Bang theory etc.

For my film I want it to look at first glance like a usual drama thriller film, but once looked at several times you will see what the actual preferred meaning is going to be completely different so ensuring this preferred meaning isn't going to be easy to control and in fact what I think is going to happen when people view my film is they will see several meaning that look like the preferred meaning which I think is good, this allows me to maintain a mysterious vibe about the film, this is similar to Ridely Scott's Blade Runner where you are unsure if Deker is a human being and the facts against this argument and for it is balanced allowing no preferred meaning to be found.

Audience

Whilst producing and making my film I had to look at the audience of which my film would be directed at, one way I done this was to look at other similar films of my to mine and also the genre so I can compare to see whether these audiences will fit the style of the film.

Research
"Something popular web publishers have latched onto – that differentiates from many (but not all) traditional reporters – is the power of understanding your audience.

I’m not talking a shallow understanding of the genres your audience is interested in. I’m talking about an innate understanding of the content archetypes readers react to, the motivations behind readers as individuals interacting with media, and the steps necessary to develop an interested, activated community.

No longer is this skill-set reserved for the editor. The writer must now have complete comprehension in the motivating factors an audience has. Content strategy can’t be reserved only for executives, if so, their publication will slowly lose out to competitors whose writer’s mindsets live at the intersection between strategist and creator.

You can be a great writer, yet if you don’t understand your audience you’ll never create content which sticks. Content no longer happens in a vacuum as part of a process for eventual consumption. The friction has all but been removed. There are many with talent for writing, but few with a talent for writing and the vision for creating strategic content that will resonate with targets and allow them to stand out in a world of infinite choice."

-Thefuturebuzz.com

One film that I decided to look deeply into was 'Inception', this is because it is a very similar film to mine because of the complexity and it is very post modern which is the direction I want my film to go. Inception in my opinion has a very broad audience for its main storyline and action but a very narrow audience for the film to actually be seen on a complex level. Allow me to explain, I mean the average person 20-30 years can view the film and enjoy it because of the romance and action involved in the film, but for it to be truly seen in the way it was meant to be, 'the preferred meaning', the audience is much more narrow and includes more intellectual people and keen movie buffs to spot its true identity. This is the direction I would like my film to be, so allowing most people to enjoy the film due to its drama and perhaps controversial ideas, but for only a certain amount of people to pickup on the intertextuality and homages I wish my film to pay.

Due to the possible casting I am going for a more Male audience due to the lack of females in the film.

Technology Developments

With technology constantly developing a few have caught my eye and interest to research and learn about the software. An example of this was Cinema 4d made by MAXON studios, which I took to and learnt the program to the best of my abilities but this isn't what I think is a technology that is going to take of because of the competition that surrounds it like Blender and 3DS MAX.
So a technology that is going to take of has to be a revolutionary, next generation piece of software. So I started to look at some software and an application on the web stood out, this is called PREZI.
Prezi lets you create zooming interactive presentation that is easily editable but provide a very professional look to it. Think of Microsoft PowerPoint which is a flat slide show presentation with little animations apart from transitions and intro/outro text.