In our first pitch we had to explain to the class what our short film was about. Throughout the task we did end up changing the storyline because our actors we’re unreliable and we could therefore not plan filming days. However, in our first pitch we asked the class for reasons why Nathan (originally) would kill himself. We gave options for this would happen and they were:
• Anxiety
• Guilt
• Alcohol abuse
• Drug abuse
• Eating disorder
From this we found out that it would work well if we did guilt and anxiety. This was done by a vote of hands from our class and they were people that were around the age of our target audience so this was a big help for us.
In this pitch we also discussed who our audience would be, we chose to have and audience from the age of 18 – 23 years old. We thought this we would aim our film at this age group because they are young. At this age people are likely to be experimenting because they are at the age where they are free to try new things without having to get permission off parents. I think that having an audience at this age will relate to our film, not because people have killed their younger siblings but to warn them about the dangers of drug use. Another thing that was discussed with our pitch group is about the ethical issues. Because this is such a big topic and it could involve a death we want to show people that this is a sensitive and serious situation.
Besides the feedback we got from the pitch group about the reason why our character would want to attempt suicide we did find other feedback useful. A person from the pitch group asked how we would show the audience that it is a flashback and we decided we would do this through the use of point of view shots. Although this is something we discussed, involved in our storyboard and filmed but when editing it was something we did not put this in because we didn’t think it went well in that scene. Other people from the pitch group gave ideas for situations that incorporated both anxiety and guilt. One of these ideas was involving the death of another person and speaking about hiding their feelings on this matter. Another idea was not being able to help someone, possibly defending them.
This feedback from the pitch group was helpful because my group and I was able to go back and make a storyline that involved most of their ideas provided.
Unfortunately, we had difficulty finding people to act in our film because they were unreliable and couldn’t make it to the days we was filming. This was a constant thing that occurred and we was running out of time to film so we had to change our storyline. We had to adapt the storyline to a scenario that had fewer characters in the film. Still considering the ideas the pitch group gave us we came up with a storyline that involved Nathan still wanting to commit suicide due to guilt, involving the death of another person and covering up feelings, not wanting to talk about it. From this we were able to complete our film and screen it to the same pitch group for the first time. We got a lot of positive feedback, this was helpful to my group and me because we had rushed our short film, including editing we wasn’t completely happy with the work we produced.
Some of the constructive feedback we got from the pitch group was only small things such as cutting on some of the shots. They also thought that we should use fades for a transition rather than just going to the next scene. The audience thought it would be a good idea to swap one of the shots, which was of Nathan’s mum, Ava, because she was out of focus. The main thing we did hear quite often was to change the effect on the flashbacks to sepia from black and white because the audience were unable to see what was actually going on in them shots.
This was great feedback from the audience because these were the final touches we need to finish our film. They were only minor things so these made us feel good about our work. We cut the shot that needed to be cut and added fades for smoother transitions. As a group we agreed that we didn’t want to change the effect from black and white to sepia so we just lightened the shots while keeping them black and white. We did have difficultly trying to change the shot that was out of focus because we didn’t have enough footage so we had to leave it.
The third pitch we did was for our print products. We presented this to the class as an Emaze presentation. When doing this presentation we did explain to the audience that we would involve orange in our colour scheme. This is something we did not follow because as we gave it more thought, we decided it would be better to use a dark red because it has connotations of love and danger. One person from the pitch group explained which one of our mock ups she preferred and why but when taking this into consideration we found it difficult to product a double page spread so eventually we changed it to just a single page. One thing we did take from the pitch group was the idea of having a location shot for our film poster. Another thing we took from the audience was having only Nathan in the actual shot, there was a lot of other options and many of them did come from my group but in the end we took the pitch groups advice and just kept Nathan in the shot.
Even though we did ask for feedback and we did get a fair amount, for me, I didn’t find it very helpful because when we did think about it in depth there was a lot of other things we could have done better and I believe this task worked better when playing about with different layouts and being able to move elements on the page about.
I think the majority of feedback I got from my focus groups helpful especially because they were the age of the target audience. I believe all the feedback I got made all three media elements better than if it was just down to mine and my group opinions.
Billie Casimir
Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout this whole media task we pitched to our class 3 times, by doing this we was able to take in a lot of constructive criticism that improved our work and helped us to achieve the best of our ability.
