Evaluation Question 3 - What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

MY TARGET AUDIENCE

Audience Feedback During Pre-Production

During the initial ideas process of my film I received feedback from different people. One of them being my friend Lauren who studies television at university. She is part of my target audience because she is a media student and she also enjoys watching programmes of the drama genre. I asked her for feedback because as a student of television she has knowledge of what makes a media text conventional and what makes a good narrative. Also she is a fan of television shows which are in the drama genre meaning she had her own pre-existing knowledge and expectations of what a media text of this genre should be like and how it can be successful, meaning she had loads of ideas when it came to changing ways I could make the narrative shorter or more interesting. For example, she suggested I could infer parts of the narrative through certain camera shots instead of adding an extra scene which would drag out the story. 

LAUREN'S FEEDBACK

Even though she suggested this for my very first idea, it is still a piece of advice I used when it came to my final narrative idea. For the end scene of my film (scene 14) I was going to have a montage edit of the house with a voiceover of a doctor speaking to Gen over the phone about Henry's condition, however I decided to not do this as I realised that it would be unrealistic for a doctor to give out confidential information like that over the phone, even to a family member. Instead I used a low angle shot of Emily stood in the garden looking down at the floor after shouting "Grandad!" to infer that he had fallen in the garden and she was looking down at him, followed my statistics about the rate of dementia in the UK. 

SCENE 14

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What did I learn from this and how did this help me with the production of my film?

• The feedback helped me to simplify what was initially a very complex idea which would have been very difficult to achieve within the constraints of a short film which had no budget and only a limited amount of time to complete it in. 
• Another friend (also called Lauren) gave me feedback on how to adapt my idea from being a generic look at the symptoms of dementia to adding the unique perspective of what it is like for the family members who have to care for the person with dementia and watch their loved one fade away. She is part of my target audience because her Grandma has dementia and my film is aimed at people who have experience of caring for people with dementia (as well as those who don't). 
• The feedback from my teacher help me to structure my narrative in a way that would lead me to still include all of the conventional elements of short films and the drama genre. 

Audience Feedback During Post-Production

Audience Feedback of Final Products

This is the audience feedback that I collected for my short film, poster and double-page spread. I got feedback through a variety of different mediums, to ensure that I covered all of the sections within my target audience because my target audience (described in the image above) is quite large. For example, I screened my viewed with my Grandparents and got them to tell me their feedback face-to-face because they don't use social media, whereas the younger end of my target audience do use social media so I got their feedback via Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

I asked a psychology teacher at my college to watch my film and provide me with some feedback as she will have a unique viewpoint because one of the topics which she teaches is dementia, meaning that she will know a lot about it and therefore be able to give a good judgement as to whether she thinks my film has accurately portrayed dementia, particularly the signs and symptoms of it. 

I also contacted Dementia UK and The Alzheimer's Society for feedback in regards to how well my narrative portrayed the symptoms and effects of dementia, however they did not reply. 

Overall from my audience feedback I have learnt:

• Conforming to codes and conventions of genre and form helps to make a media product successful
• People like short films to be about subjects that they can relate to in their own lives, such as dementia
• Not everyone in your target audience is going to like the work you make
• The audience had a strong emotional response to my film and thought I got straight to the point in raising awareness of dementia
• There was synergy across all three of my products
• The double-page spread and poster helped to promote my short film successfully