Here is a video from the screening session, unfortunately since I could not bring in my camera on the day of showing, we had to record it with Sam's iPhone and the quality is not particularly good, especially the sound, which is why I summarised people's comments in headings in the video. Nevertheless, the feedback which we were given for our film was very informative and helpful in identifying some of the things which could have been improved.
Some additional feedback which was given and not shown in the video included acting which the audience seemed to enjoy, particularly Elliot's performance as Sean. They also touched upon the POV shot towards the end of the film which one person really liked.
We also had two teachers viewing the film and they both really liked it, in particular commenting on the use of the sound score which they felt contributed extremely well to the action, and they thought that the audience were genuinely engrossed in the action.
One criticism they had was the use of the location in the school, but I argued that we wanted to create a real environment for the characters, who are teenagers so it isn't that surprising that we used a school. Also we made sure that we weren't filming there for a particularly long duration, with the main focus being on the garage scene.
The second part of our Audience feedback included a post-production questionnaire which we designed. Unfortunately we were unable to get as many entries as with the pre-production survey but regardless, the comments were still very helpful.
Even though we didn't get as many entries this time around, I believe similar results would appear had there had been 50 entries. It was clear that sound was a part which was very well utilised in our film and this backs up the views that were made in the audience screening. The results are quite ironic in that they differ vastly from the pre-production survey. Camerawork and sound were the two elements which people thought were least important when watching a thriller, yet they felt we carried it out the best.
These results were very pleasing and I was happy that we received mostly 4s out 5 in all the cinematic elements, with the exception of the storyline which was perhaps the one result that didn't come as much surprise as I'll mention in the feedback section. The other results were not too surprising and this was a helpful bit of feedback.
Again these results instilled me with confidence about our film in that most people felt that it could go on to become a full length movie and that most people were engaged in the opening.
Here is some of the specific feedback we received in a probing question. Some of the ideas are very interesting and certainly could be used as potential storylines.
Overall, the feedback we received was very insightful and it was interesting to gage what a real audience thinks about your work because you can often make the mistake of thinking what you have done is good and in your head it makes sense but when you actually show it to an audience, they aren't on the same wavelength as you. This was evident with the storyline which perhaps in our heads was clear, but it wasn't explained as well as it could have been. Rather than use dialogue, we wanted our story to be told through social media devices because that is the most prominent theme in our film and the mistake we made was not making the screenshots or the text message stay on the screen for a long enough time.
That said, it didn't seem to put off our viewers that much and it didn't detract from the overall feeling of tension that we were trying to give off and also since it is the opening to a thriller, there is certainly room for more development and understanding. The initial ambiguity is not atypical of a thriller, so this wasn't the worst mistake we could have made; nobody seemed to pick up on any particular technical issues which was good.
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