Evaluation Question Three - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order to gather feedback on my short film and my other text projects I opted to upload my work onto the internet on various sites like slideshare.com and onto video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Alongside the random feedback I would receive from strangers, I wanted some more feedback from people I know as I felt that this would give me an indication as to how my target audience feel about my work as well as how the people around me feel about it. In order to receive this feedback I used a website called Survey Monkey to construct a survey that I then posted onto my social media accounts, alongside my video in order to receive viable feedback that could possibly help me with refining my video.  This feedback was both helpful and unhelpful simultaneously. This is because some of the users gave good strong and constructive feedback whereas others missed out questions or gave needlessly slanderous feedback. Feedback is normally always helpful when making a product that will be shared with other people as it gives you an idea of what they want from you and how they want it. My first draft of my short film received mostly good feedback from the survey and YouTube. Obviously it was subject to a few internet trolls as one would expect from the modern age where everyone is safe behind their computer and can truly speak their mind. Having this freedom to speak your mind unhindered is good for those wanting feedback but it can also be hurtful when someone tells you that the project you have been working on for ages is worthless, terrible, and so on.

            I always try to build on my projects to the best of my ability but sometimes I fail to take feedback into the correct account. This mindset can cause trouble when working on a project such as this one as it means I don't take in the feedback as well as I should. Nevertheless, I did take some of the feedback into consideration. I used the feedback referring to the soundtrack to find several new contenders for a possible soundtrack that would be beneficial. I am very happy with the new soundtrack whereas it felt like I had just settled for the previous soundtrack. Thanks to my feedback I have been able to understand that certain aspects needed to be improved, for example the length of clips in multiple places. One respondent to the questionnaire suggested that I shorten the length of the clips in order to shorten the video as it feels like it drags on too much. Since I have received the aforementioned feedback I have shortened the video to the point where the entire video is 3 minutes long. Despite seeming like this detracts from the value of the video it doesn't, I think the change of pace was helpful as it gave me the chance to focus on other aspects of the video, such as the soundtrack. I used questions that featured tick boxes as it was a good way to get qualitative data as it gives me a clear indication of the aspects that I am doing well with whilst simultaneously giving me the opportunity to build on the aspects that remained unpicked as those were the ones people did not like or enjoy.

            On my survey the first question asked the audience what their age was. This is important in terms of feedback as you need to be able to gauge what sort of people are giving you your feedback. The next question asked the participants to rate each aspect of my video on how proficient it was on a scale of one to five. The aspects I asked them to rate were Camera, Mise-En-Scene, Acting, Editing, Lighting, Props and Visual Effects. The scores for this question were generally mixed with editing being the only aspect that received the highest average score of 4. This is helpful as it allows me to gauge which aspects people liked the most and then in turn it allows me to refine the aspects people didn't like. I then asked for the audience to let me know what I should do about the elements that they rated as poor or mediocre. This allowed me to understand what I did not do correctly the first time round and what I could correct this time round. Some participants went into detail but others remained vague meaning their feedback was not as helpful as it could be. I then asked my audience about the soundtrack used in the film and inquired whether it added or detracted from the atmosphere of the film. This question ultimately lead me to change the soundtrack for the next rendition of the film. The next question let the audience rate each of the aforementioned aspects of my video in order of their favourites. I let them select more than one answer for this question just in case viewers had more than one favourite aspect. Props was clearly the most favourite aspect as it got 50% of all of the votes. I then asked for an explanation as to why they chose what they did in the previous section as this helped me get an idea of what areas of my video people actually liked. The final question was a general question that inquired whether my audience had any specific ideas of what needed to be improved in my short film. This allowed me to really get the opinions straight from them and this is where I drew the most helpful feedback from. Most of the feedback received was non-formal feedback as I feel this is the kind of feedback that benefits me most. I found that audiences were much more honest when giving informal feedback as they appeared more relaxed and natural.

            In conclusion, The feedback received was beneficial as it gave me a chance to see where I went wrong, what people liked and what people didn't like. It helped me to make alterations to my video and my other tasks and I think that having these things done and dusted, then improved with feedback has really helped me.