h

2. During the pre production stage of my film, I used target
audience feedback to get an overall opinion on the drama genre,
as I knew I wanted to focus on character development, which
requires an emotional connection with the audience. For this I
used the Google forms software that allows people to complete
a questionnaire via email. The software allows for a feedback
form, that plots the quantitative data on a graph/chart, to allow
me to quickly see the general opinion of the audience. I learned
that 83% of the audience I asked liked the Drama genre, So I
knew I could continue to pursue this style. To add to this, I asked
questions about how my target audience consumes films, and
the top three were Netflix, Amazon prime and Youtube, so I
planned to use Youtube due to its accessibility to distribute my
short film. As I hadn’t started writing the script, I also asked
qualitative questions about my general narrative concepts. The
majority felt positive towards the concept of having a homeless
man living a fantasy as I had responses such as “something
unique and very appealing.”

3. Even though it was good, 25% of the responses said they didn’t
like the narrative, meaning I could alter the story to approach a
wider audience, so I kept this in mind when filming, however I
should have listened to some of the responses sooner, as the
second audience response still questioned the structure of the
ending. I used this opportunity to ask the audience what they
felt about the music, as it was quite a niche style that I saw
used in the TV series Mr Robot. The music had an
overwhelmingly positive response which was encouraging, as
they agreed that the theme of daydreams in the songs has a
nice link to the reality vs fantasy reference in my film. On top of
this I received informal audience responses when writing my
own music for the film, as I created various samples for last last
quarter of the film, one of which had the majority of praise when
comparing the mood in the scene where Oscar has the
epiphany of getting a job.

4. After the first draft of my film was done, I hosted a screening
with a selection of people from my target audience, by playing
it on the big screen and recording their response. I learnt from
this screening that the age group I was focusing on were less
keen on the slower narrative than I was, teaching me that I
need to address the audience pleasures before myself. In
order to address this, I decided to increase the rhythm of the
cuts and remove some unnecessary shots to speed up the
narrative, whilst a sample from the audience stated I should
make it “more climactic.” This caused me to to re-film the
ending of my film in order to completely change the direction
and mood for a more thriller orientated style. As my target
audience was teenagers, I still had to act impressionistically
when displaying the murder, in order to keep the ending
ambiguous.
This shot was used to represent Ryan’s death, along
with a blood soaked letter, as the pea coat represents
the rich upper class that have looked down on Oscar,
and by swinging it over his shoulder, the underdog has
triumphed over the antagonist.

5. As well as this, there were some technical errors that removed the audience from the film: one being
audio transitions, and the other dialogue levels. The audio transitions were an easy fix as I had already
been aware of this problem, so I had decided to use some ambient noise from each scene, or some found
online, to mask the cuts between audio tracks. More importantly though, the target audience said they
couldn't really understand the dialogue as the result of some loud background noise that could not be
removed. Due to the complexity of the scene and the time I had, I couldn't refilm this, so I opted for a more
stylistic narration performed by myself to go over the top of the original audio, quoting the dialogue whilst
doing so. This allowed me to explain the narrative more effectively, and lower the sound of the loud
background noise, proving a successful redraft to my target audience.

6. My poster underwent many mock versions before my target
audience classed it as effective. The original version featured a
photoshop effect and a studio shot photograph of my protagonist,
however it was quickly pointed out that the effect was too
artificial. To fix this, I used the same background and text, whilst
changing the main image to a simple side shot of the character.
This was an improvement as the drama genre features the
characters, but the studio photo shoot had limited what I could
present in the background. After consulting with my target
audience and actor, we agreed to re shoot the images for the
poster on location, so I planned for a sunset photo shoot that
would provide me with pleasing lighting that I had seen on the
tangerine film poster. This was positively revived after the edit
due to it’s stripped back style and composition. The audience
response was important as I had been too ducked on the editing
stage to notice I was forgetting about the genre I was producing
for, which allowed me to start over with more effective results.

7. Audience wise, my film review was rather
successful on the first draft. They liked the
stereotypical text that explores themes in the
film, without ruining the ending, as it persuades
the reader to want to go and see the film.
Moreover, the structure was praised for looking
professional, however It was pointed out to me
I was lacking some of the conventions from the
magazine I had taken inspiration from: Empire.
This meant I had to go back and look at the
finer details of the magazine page, which
allowed me to add page numbers and website
links in the footer of the page, whilst ensuring I
maintained a 3 columned text structure.
I also added a border and shadow to this image,
to give a more ordered appearance, after a
comment was made that the images didn’t fit
together.