Evaluation - Question 3

Question 3

My audience feedback has aided me a great deal in improving my film and turning it into what the audience would like to see. As a media student I know that my main aim when making a film is to please the audience because without them, I will have no one to view my film. Taking this into consideration I knew that the feedback I would receive would be very important. After creating a pitch for my film we presented it to class members who fed back to us that they saw similarities between our film and ‘Son of Rambo’ and ‘The Goonies’. This encouraged us not only to watch these films to get an insight into how these films portray their characters but also take pieces from the film, develop it and make it our own. We then included more clumsy behaviour from Rodney and an ‘I can take on anything’ attitude. This is similar to the main character from ‘Son of Rambo’. We also gained from feedback that our original ending was a bit of an anticlimax and a let down; therefore we changed it to something more interesting to children. We changed Mr Vamping having a Halloween themed lesson to actually revealing himself as a vampire. This was much more interesting and gained more positive feedback. From the feedback on the pitch, I learnt that in order to make a good film, the ending must fulfil desires of audience and if they are not happy with something it is essential to change it until gaining positive feedback. I also learnt that observing other films which relate to my film help a lot in developing my own characters and adding different characteristics in order to make them my own. We also received feedback from our script. In the first draft of our script we used blackouts while Rodney runs to the class room late, yet after feedback from fellow class members who were not too fond of these blackouts we felt we needed to change them. Feedback showed that blackouts did not fit in with the fast paced, hyperactive, comical mood we were trying to portray therefore we thought it would be much more effective and pleasurable to the audience to replace the blackouts with quick cut shots teamed with typical ‘late’ music. We wanted to create humour at every opportunity possible. This was well received from class members. Through this I learned that despite being adamant that you have a great idea, it is your audience and your audience only that can decide this. We have to take into consideration that it is them that will be watching your film therefore it is them that should decide what looks best. We then moved onto making a collage on ‘The world of my film’. We included lots of words from magazines we felt related to our film for example ‘dark secret’, ‘fantasy’, ‘gullible’ and ‘bullies’. We also included images of vampires and schools. This was not understood by classmates when we presented our collage to them as they felt confused at what our story was actually about. They also said it gave the impression of being too serious which was not what we aimed to show. After receiving this feedback we did I second and final draft of the collage bearing in mind we were trying to portray the fun, Halloween side of our film. We added lot’s of oranges, blacks, yellows and purples in order to show the Mock Horror side of Halloween getting the message across to the audience that our film is not serious, it is simply a children’s Halloween film. We also added images of cartoon pumpkins, comical cartoon vampires, a little boy in boxing gloves with a comical expression and other various cartoon images. We felt this gave the message of a light-hearted, fun film for kids. From the feedback on the collage I learnt that it is easy to go off into different genres when trying to portray something in my film, therefore I must be aware that in order to portray my genre only I must include a lot of obvious things which relate to Mock horror for example music, cartoons and colours. After the collage we made posters promoting our film. The first poster we made had a purple mist surrounding the edge of our poster to create a mysterious illusion and reflecting the genre of Halloween. This however, was not received well by fellow classmates and they fed back to us that we should remove it as the poster looked too busy and cluttered. After removing this we changed the idea of the poster completely and put 4 different images in the 4 corners of the poster. We felt this represented the childishness of our film and was favoured by classmates. From this I learnt that posters with a minimalist style can be the most effective.