Date post: | 06-Mar-2016 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | grant-russell |
View: | 215 times |
Download: | 0 times |
Impulse
Evaluation Part Three
What have you learned from
your audience feedback?
0
5
10
15
20
25
a b c d e
a
b
c
d
e
a
b
c
d
e
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0 2 4 6
a
b
c
d
e
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
a b c d e
Series1
Throughout the planning, construction and editing stages of
my short film, I relied heavily on the positive and negative
feedback from participants that anonymously completed
four individual audience research questionnaires.
During my AS level Media course, I conducted three hard
copy; paper based questionnaires and one post production
video to aid me with the construction and editing stages.
However, although I found this system useful, I felt that
some people were not being completely honest, as I
handed out the paper based questionnaires to family and
friends and the post production video consisted of sixth
form students, all of which were personally known to me.
This year for my A2 Media coursework, I wanted to take a
completely different approach, so that my participants
could anonymously be, as positive or as negative as they
liked, with their constructed criticism.
First Stage
As the internet has a wide usage, I decided to attract a
potential audience from ‘facebook’. In order for this to
happen, I created a public ‘Like’ page, and implemented it
with the title GR Media and I created a recognisable page
logo.
When the ‘Like’ page was launched it immediately received
several confirmed likes. This method of communication
allows people to subscribe to updates and contribute to
discussions and at this particular point; I believed it was
vital for any audience research. Subsequently friends of
friends would hopefully be attracted to the ‘Like’ page
through its inquisitive logo.
Second Stage
With enough responses from the above attraction, I used
Google Docs to create a web data collection form
(electronic questionnaire) and posted a link to this on the
GR Media ‘facebook’’page. I designed the questionnaire to
take into consideration a variety of options and my main
objective was to obtain a fair and honest outcome.
Although this was still very much in the experimental stage,
I hoped to attract several participants who had subscribed
to the GR Media Page.
As social networking sites are used leisurely, I decided to
keep the questionnaire simple and fairly short, otherwise
participants may have deferred from completing it. Its main
design plan was to establish my participant’s biological
information, tastes along with preferences, viewing habits
and their knowledge and understanding of the genre ‘Social
Realism’, that I had chosen to base my product on.
After a couple of days I had received
twenty one responses from over the
internet and in order to analysis
them, Google Docs automatically
generated the results for me, as a
mixture of detailed graphs and data
responses.
From the analysis of this
internet based questionnaire, it
was evident that the method of
internet based questionnaires
attracted a younger participant.
The mean age of twenty-one
people was 23.19
From their response, I was then
able to generate film ideas along
with different themes and issues,
but most importantly keeping it in
line with my participant’s majority.
At this stage, the theme
surrounding relationships was a
highlighted possibility and because
only seven out of twenty-one
participants had previously viewed
a short social realism film, I
decided to base my second
audience research questionnaire
on short films.
Third Stage
I designed my second questionnaire with simplicity in mind,
in order to attract volunteer participants and linked it to
two BBC Film videos.
After a period of seven days after launching this
questionnaire via the GR media social networking page, I
had received fourteen responses, and it was through these
particular responses that key concepts were conveyed.
About a Girl - Brian Percival The Most Beautiful Man in the World – Alicia Duffy
After analysing the responses that were automatically
generated for me, I found that this questionnaire helped
me to generate an initial idea, for a potential short film; in
particular I established that there was a positive gender
divide amongst my participants.
At this stage I knew my own product had to have a
mixture of both male and female characters to ensure it
not only captured the imagination, but also gave empathy
and gripping suspense that both genders would enjoy.
Fourth Stage
Taking into consideration, the analysed answers to both
audience research questionnaire one and two, I developed
questionnaire three, this questionnaire was designed to aid
me through the developing stages of my product.
Males were more inclined to enjoy a film that
contained a female protagonist.
Females were more inclined to prefer a film that
involved children and a main male character.
This was the most productive questionnaire, as it did
allow me to take all the positive correlations and construct
a series of synopsises. I believe if the questionnaires were
not anonymously completed, then I would have had very
little to go on.
How would you define the word ‘Disability’? Prior to constructing this questionnaire, I had an initial storyline in mind and again I wanted to know what my volunteer participants conceived the word ‘Disability’ to be. Again, the majority correlated to give a mental and physical outline, but one older male participant wrote:
“Ive lived with disability in my life more than most and i can see that it can be a problem to do certain tasks given the disability while at the same time many people with disabilities excel in other aspects of their lives more so than able bodied people” While one older female participant stated:
“something that has a somewhat negative impact on a persons life”
From my initial storyline idea, I had visualised my protagonist
to have a social disability connected to shyness and this
interesting statement cleverly summed up that as long as
something has a negative impact then that can be perceived
as a form of disability.
Fifth Stage
With my final synopsis complete, I approached several sixth
form Drama students and asked them if they would help
me with a brainstorming, open discussion about the
strengths and weaknesses of my synopsis.
The session lasted approximately one hour and the table
below illustrates the main result.
Strengths Weaknesses
Setting is described Michael is too stereotypical
Main character is well established
Conventions are not challenged enough
The ending creates a build-up of tension
Not enough suspense, mid-way through the synopsis.
The input and direction the Drama students gave me,
proved to be a valuable and a rewarding exercise and it
allowed me to focus more deeply on the weaknesses that
were described.
I then went on to create my scripts and each script
improved until I had eliminated the weaknesses that the
Drama students had highlighted.
Sixth Stage
When my final script had been developed, I arranged an
audition, as I had no idea what character would suite what
amateur actor.
This process enabled me to:
Audition
Listen to their suggestions, especially their own
dialogue with reference to the sexual taunting
that Jessica had to incur, as I had not previously
wrote this in detail, in the script.
I was able to generate a rehearsal time
table that suited the actors, around
their own heavy A level schedules.
Chop and change
characters.
Bounce ideas around.
Discuss costume design.
Positioning of the set
Establish how comfortable the
characters felt with one another. Answer any questions
the actors had.
Seventh Stage
After filming and editing a rough copy of the film, I
generated my fourth audience research questionnaire. I
posted this on the GR Media social networking page and
uploaded the rough edited copy of ‘Impulse’ to You Tube
for my participants to view.
After a period of four days, I had received twelve
responses. I would have liked to have left this post
production questionnaire live for at least a couple of weeks,
but because of tight deadlines, I was extremely pleased to
have received twelve replies in such a short time frame.
The majority of these participants responded in a very
positive way with reference to the questionnaire and there
was hardly any constructive criticism. I really needed some
direction especially in a media way, so that I could have
filmed any necessary pick up shot to improve my product.
Although this was a worthwhile exercise, I will in the future
endeavour to split any post production research to involve
both a target audience and media experts.
For full analysis details on all four questionnaires, please go
to: http://bit.ly/h93abk