Rough Cut Feedback and Evaluation

After finishing our rough cut we have now got feedback from peers. This will help us develop our film so we know what improvements to make, or other suggestions that will help us improve our film before the final cut.

Questionnaire
We gave a questionnaire to people who are in our target audience for them to fill out after watching our rough cut.

We asked the following questions:

• Are you aged between 15-24?
• What are your first initial reactions to the film? Liked it? Didn't? Why?
• Did you understand the plot line?
• What do you think about the style of the film at the beginning? Any improvements?
• Are there any moments you did not like?
• Any improvements we can make that you think would be useful for us to know?

We realise that the footage with Hermit in the reveal scene needs to be re-shot. Due to him being closer to the camera in the second shot it doesn't have the effect we hoped for, so we are going to re-film and mark where he stands so we can be sure that it will look effective. We are also going to make improvements to our overall sound.

We are going to make improvements to the sounds and adjust the volumes of the narrative and soundtrack and foleys so it flows really well.

                                               

If we do not re-shoot the scene at the end, on Final Cut Pro X we are going to attempt to edit the brightness so it is much less brighter.

Again, we are going to re-shoot the scene when Hermit is facing himself as we realise this is a big problem in our film.

Survey Monkey

We created a survey monkey with the same questions as the questionnaire but asked a difference audience to answer our questions, this time anonymously so they can give any feedback they would like without us knowing who wrote what, which may lead to having more honest answers.

Q1.

Q2.

Q3.

Q4.

The only negative comment/improvement we had is that the voice over was quiet in parts. The sound is something we are going to make improvements on. 

Q5.

Q6.

The improvements included making Hermits speech louder in the cinema scene. We are aware that some of the narrative volume needs altering, and the sound is something we really need to work on. The brightness at the end is also mentioned in this feedback, and if we are not re-shooting we are going to try and work on the brightness settings in Final Cut Pro X for this. We also got the feedback about the Hermits being different sizes, we are re-shooting this scene so hopefully we will solve this problem.

So overall from the survey monkey survey we got some good feedback! Everyone really liked our film and all gave positive comments. Some didn't have any improvements for our film, but some believed that we should improve sound, or brightness and someone said we should "Explain whats going on more". This feedback will help us know our improvements for when we come to re-shoot/edit or final cut.

Class Feedback

Our classmates and teacher watched our short and gave us feedback on ways we can improve, or if they see anything wrong, or anything that will look better with our film. This is extremely helpful because feedback from peers who are making their own film, and also study media who have experience they will have a better idea on how to improve our film both creatively and with the editing to make it better quality.

"I liked it when hen he is doing the narrative at the end and it is setting the scene."

"The bedroom is pink, the walls are pink etc, and its more of a representation of a girls bedroom than boys." 

• The bedroom is actually red, but we want to subvert the stereotype that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Our characters emotions are both male and female showing how some emotions are seen as more feminine that others, and some more masculine, so by this we are subverting the stereotype that all males don't have "girly" emotions, or females don't have "manly" emotions. Hermit having a pink room is showing that he doesn't conform to the masculine stereotype and is not your stereotypical teenage boy.

"When they are doing spin the bottle and the camera is going round are we suppose to see Dave's (Hermit) fingers going round and round quickly, because you can see its sped up. A bit jolt at times?"

• We had a problem overall with that shot, we had to speed it up because it was too slow and time consuming, but we wanted it to hold on Hermit, but because we didn't have any footage of where it is held on him completely still we had to try and slow the clip down at the end. This caused some problem as Hermit's fingers were moving, so we added the clip over the top but didn't speed it up, but this shows a clear divide from the sped up clip to the slowed down. But we are now aware that we will be able to slow the clip down at the end instead of adding a clip and will be doing that.

"I really like the sound track, how it starts and gradually changes trough each scene, but there is a bit of a gap in the music at one point."

"I think you need a more natural yawn at the start because it sounds a bit false."

• We are either going to record the actor yawning, and over dub it with that. Or we may be taking out all the digetic sound out as suggested later on in this video. We are going to experiment and then see what we prefer in the final cut editing process.

"When he is getting pushed up the lockers he is smiling a bit, obviously he would be scared and not smiling."

• We are aware of this problem and we tried many attempts but the actor smiled in a variety of shots.

 "When you see him standing there the first time there is a cleaners box, and when you see him the second time there isn't. So bit of a continuity error."

"The credits at the end maybe you should put the masks emotions and not just mask 1, 2, 3 etc."

• We were originally going to do this, but we didn't have time to list the masks but in our final cut editing process we are going to be changing this.

"Whats that random noise in the soundtrack?"

• The sound is from the soundtrack, we tried to fade it out but you can still clearly hear this noise, so we are going to either shorten the music or try to fix it some other way but shortening other clips.

"You know the clicking when they're eating the popcorn, is that the popcorn?"

• The noise you hear is from the cinema projector soundtrack because we didn't want the sound of the mask putting their hands in the popcorn. We will use a different part of the cinema projector soundtrack for this in order to change it.

"When the actor is there and not there, the actor holds it really well"

"Does the actor in the red change? Like is that different person because the hair length changes."

• Yes the red masks hair changes because it is not suppose to be a person, but an emotion. The mask is a different persons emotions from Hermits. We are working on ways we can make this more clear for the audience. 

"The crane shot at the end is really good, but it would be better if it finished when Dave is still in shot, or if he full leaves the shot."

• We are thinking about re-filming this scene, but there may be some issues and we feel if we can't re film we will edit it the screen goes blank when Dave is completely out of shot.

"The volumes on some of the sounds need some changing,"

• We are aware of the volume changes, either in the music or the narrative and will work on this during the final cut editing process.

We had both positive and negative feedback form our peers. The feedback and improvements are extremely helpful and have given us ideas on how to improve our film, so  we will take on board all our feedback and help us develop our film.

Interview

We got a few people who are in our target audience and we asked them questions for our feedback and recorded it. The questions we asked:

• What were your first impressions of the film?
• What was your favourite moment?
• What was your opinion on the soundtrack?
• What was your least favourite part of the film?
• What elements of the film would you improve?

We got good feedback from these students and we also got feedback from Dave Twohey who was the actor for Hermit in our film. Mainly the improvements we had are ones we are already aware of, like the sound and the Hermits reveal scene. The improvements are too drastic and are achievable in the time we have.

So our feedback over all is really important to us as a production company. Having an audience of both media students and non-media students is effective because it will helps us know if our film has an impact, if it makes sense and the good and bad about it. The feedback we got mostly said we need to make improvements on the sound, we didn't work on the sound until late in our editing process so we knew that there were improvements on that, but this feedback helped us locate specifically where the other improvements need to be made, and improved. A major problem is the reveal scene where Hermit looks at himself, we have already decided we were going to re-film this but this time mark where Hermit stands so we know he will be directly in front of himself. We feel this is a very important scene and has the biggest effect on the audience as it is the plot twist, so perfecting this will make a huge difference. Also we had different ideas of different effects we could use to improve the creativeness of the film, we will come together as a production group and discuss the ideas and decide what we will be re-shooting or what else we will be adding or changing to our film.

Now we have the feedback we will start to make improvements on our feedback. We have created a improvement schedule so we make sure we get all elements of our problems and  we know the main areas and when and what we need to change and improve.

Improvment Final Cut