What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We asked several people in our media class to watch our rough cut, with mixed opinions:

Pros:

• Visually well done, good camera techniques used.
• Good choice of setting, captured the social realist feel.
• Costume design stuck to convention, fitting props used.

However, there were also some cons:

• Story was somewhat confusing.
• At times, certain editing techniques (like quick cuts and fades to black) felt out of place or had the audience confused at was going on.
• The audio was off, meaning that at times it was too loud or too quiet. Or that the captured sound (like wind) created a static like noise.

From this, we realised that if we didn't make these changed in time for the final cut, the film would be confusing and overall poor quality. First, we tackled the problem of the story being too confusing, as we believed that without a coherent story, the film couldn't succeed. However, we wanted to find the right balance between just handing the plot to the audience and making them think about it and each member getting something personal from the film. So we decided that adding a first person narrative from the character would help the audience understand his motives.

Next, we decided to combat the confusing editing techniques that were holding the film back. We removed all colour correction and visual effects so that we could start completely from scratch. We played back the film and noted down what people thought was confusing. The quick cuts made the pacing off, so some scenes were too quick. So we attempted to make longer cuts on shots, like in the drug deal scene, we extended some clips as much as we could.

We played back the film and individually adjusted the audio levels of each clips. We then attempted to remove the wind feedback, but it was too difficult to do on a short time scale, so the best thing we could do was try and adjust the volume of the clip so the sound of the wind wasn't too overwhelming. We couldn't replace the audio of the clip entirely as it contained bits where the actors were speaking, so we had to compromise on what we could do. Also at times, we used sound effects to override the raw diegetic sound from the clip. For instance, at one point we had to use an outdoors environment sound effect to cover up certain things, like the audio cutting too early in a clip.

After letting the audience watch our second rough cut, the only problems that remained was that the music we used was too clichéd. Finally, people kept commenting on the story still being slightly confusing, although the voice overs did help. So we decided to remove the music entirely, as it only detracted from the film. Next, we developed on the idea of adding more voice overs to add to the narration, trying to make the story as black and white as we could whilst still retaining several shades of grey.