Impulse

Evaluation Part Three

What have you learned from

your audience feedback?

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Series1

Throughout the planning, construction and editing stages of

my short film, I relied heavily on the positive and negative

feedback from participants that anonymously completed

four individual audience research questionnaires.

During my AS level Media course, I conducted three hard

copy; paper based questionnaires and one post production

video to aid me with the construction and editing stages.

However, although I found this system useful, I felt that

some people were not being completely honest, as I

handed out the paper based questionnaires to family and

friends and the post production video consisted of sixth

form students, all of which were personally known to me.

This year for my A2 Media coursework, I wanted to take a

completely different approach, so that my participants

could anonymously be, as positive or as negative as they

liked, with their constructed criticism.

First Stage

As the internet has a wide usage, I decided to attract a

potential audience from ‘facebook’. In order for this to

happen, I created a public ‘Like’ page, and implemented it

with the title GR Media and I created a recognisable page

logo.

When the ‘Like’ page was launched it immediately received

several confirmed likes. This method of communication

allows people to subscribe to updates and contribute to

discussions and at this particular point; I believed it was

vital for any audience research. Subsequently friends of

friends would hopefully be attracted to the ‘Like’ page

through its inquisitive logo.

Second Stage

With enough responses from the above attraction, I used

Google Docs to create a web data collection form

(electronic questionnaire) and posted a link to this on the

GR Media ‘facebook’’page. I designed the questionnaire to

take into consideration a variety of options and my main

objective was to obtain a fair and honest outcome.

Although this was still very much in the experimental stage,

I hoped to attract several participants who had subscribed

to the GR Media Page.

As social networking sites are used leisurely, I decided to

keep the questionnaire simple and fairly short, otherwise

participants may have deferred from completing it. Its main

design plan was to establish my participant’s biological

information, tastes along with preferences, viewing habits

and their knowledge and understanding of the genre ‘Social

Realism’, that I had chosen to base my product on.

After a couple of days I had received

twenty one responses from over the

internet and in order to analysis

them, Google Docs automatically

generated the results for me, as a

mixture of detailed graphs and data

responses.

From the analysis of this

internet based questionnaire, it

was evident that the method of

internet based questionnaires

attracted a younger participant.

The mean age of twenty-one

people was 23.19

From their response, I was then

able to generate film ideas along

with different themes and issues,

but most importantly keeping it in

line with my participant’s majority.

At this stage, the theme

surrounding relationships was a

highlighted possibility and because

only seven out of twenty-one

participants had previously viewed

a short social realism film, I

decided to base my second

audience research questionnaire

on short films.

Third Stage

I designed my second questionnaire with simplicity in mind,

in order to attract volunteer participants and linked it to

two BBC Film videos.

After a period of seven days after launching this

questionnaire via the GR media social networking page, I

had received fourteen responses, and it was through these

particular responses that key concepts were conveyed.

About a Girl - Brian Percival The Most Beautiful Man in the World – Alicia Duffy

After analysing the responses that were automatically

generated for me, I found that this questionnaire helped

me to generate an initial idea, for a potential short film; in

particular I established that there was a positive gender

divide amongst my participants.

At this stage I knew my own product had to have a

mixture of both male and female characters to ensure it

not only captured the imagination, but also gave empathy

and gripping suspense that both genders would enjoy.

Fourth Stage

Taking into consideration, the analysed answers to both

audience research questionnaire one and two, I developed

questionnaire three, this questionnaire was designed to aid

me through the developing stages of my product.

Males were more inclined to enjoy a film that

contained a female protagonist.

Females were more inclined to prefer a film that

involved children and a main male character.

This was the most productive questionnaire, as it did

allow me to take all the positive correlations and construct

a series of synopsises. I believe if the questionnaires were

not anonymously completed, then I would have had very

little to go on.

How would you define the word ‘Disability’? Prior to constructing this questionnaire, I had an initial storyline in mind and again I wanted to know what my volunteer participants conceived the word ‘Disability’ to be. Again, the majority correlated to give a mental and physical outline, but one older male participant wrote:

“Ive lived with disability in my life more than most and i can see that it can be a problem to do certain tasks given the disability while at the same time many people with disabilities excel in other aspects of their lives more so than able bodied people” While one older female participant stated:

“something that has a somewhat negative impact on a persons life”

From my initial storyline idea, I had visualised my protagonist

to have a social disability connected to shyness and this

interesting statement cleverly summed up that as long as

something has a negative impact then that can be perceived

as a form of disability.

Fifth Stage

With my final synopsis complete, I approached several sixth

form Drama students and asked them if they would help

me with a brainstorming, open discussion about the

strengths and weaknesses of my synopsis.

The session lasted approximately one hour and the table

below illustrates the main result.

Strengths Weaknesses

Setting is described Michael is too stereotypical

Main character is well established

Conventions are not challenged enough

The ending creates a build-up of tension

Not enough suspense, mid-way through the synopsis.

The input and direction the Drama students gave me,

proved to be a valuable and a rewarding exercise and it

allowed me to focus more deeply on the weaknesses that

were described.

I then went on to create my scripts and each script

improved until I had eliminated the weaknesses that the

Drama students had highlighted.

Sixth Stage

When my final script had been developed, I arranged an

audition, as I had no idea what character would suite what

amateur actor.

This process enabled me to:

Audition

Listen to their suggestions, especially their own

dialogue with reference to the sexual taunting

that Jessica had to incur, as I had not previously

wrote this in detail, in the script.

I was able to generate a rehearsal time

table that suited the actors, around

their own heavy A level schedules.

Chop and change

characters.

Bounce ideas around.

Discuss costume design.

Positioning of the set

Establish how comfortable the

characters felt with one another. Answer any questions

the actors had.

Seventh Stage

After filming and editing a rough copy of the film, I

generated my fourth audience research questionnaire. I

posted this on the GR Media social networking page and

uploaded the rough edited copy of ‘Impulse’ to You Tube

for my participants to view.

After a period of four days, I had received twelve

responses. I would have liked to have left this post

production questionnaire live for at least a couple of weeks,

but because of tight deadlines, I was extremely pleased to

have received twelve replies in such a short time frame.

The majority of these participants responded in a very

positive way with reference to the questionnaire and there

was hardly any constructive criticism. I really needed some

direction especially in a media way, so that I could have

filmed any necessary pick up shot to improve my product.

Although this was a worthwhile exercise, I will in the future

endeavour to split any post production research to involve

both a target audience and media experts.

For full analysis details on all four questionnaires, please go

to: http://bit.ly/h93abk