The biggest feedback I have had is when I showed my film to a class of 22 13-16 year olds. This was very helpful to me as before this I had only shown the video to my classmates and teachers, and so it was good to get a wider response.
To make sure that I collected all of their feedback I asked them to write down their thoughts on the film on a small piece if paper. I also asked them to write their gender and age on this paper so I could see which ages and gender it appealed to most. Sitting in the same room as them when I showed them the film allowed me to see their instant reactions. For example when the monster appears at the door almost the whole class jumped, which I was very happy with as this what I intended the audience to react like when creating it. I had noticed whilst editing the film that the monster didn't appear fast enough so I sped it up considerably, and I am pleased I did this because if I had left it as it was previously it definitely wouldn't of made all of them jump as much.
Out of the 22 pieces of feedback, 14 of them were purely positive, saying it was scary, entertaining, intense, clever twist, good music and looked professional. The other 8 were critical of the film in some way, which allowed me to see other peoples opinions on the problems of the film and how the film could be improved. There were a couple of really in-depth reviews of the film, with a whole range of errors in the film such as the camera being wobbly in certain places, music irritating in places, mask wasn't scary and the trip didn't look real. These were both from 15 year old females. There were more complaints like the film being boring and silly, not scary, confusing, 'why did he run to a forest if he was being chased?' and 'why didn't he turn on the lights in the house?'. Obviously some of this critical feedback is more helpful than the rest of it, for example saying that the film is silly and boring doesn't really give me enough detail to know what they disliked about the film. On the other hand, the two questions about the forest and the lights are more helpful to me as feedback as they are very valid questions.A few of them simply said that the film didn't appeal to them which is understandable as not everyone likes horror movies.
Throughout the process of filming and editing my film I showed bits of the film to my classmates. This meant I had feedback every step of the way whilst making my film, which really helped. This feedback was different to the feedback that I got from the class of 13-16 year olds as I used it to help improve my film along the way, whereas I received the feedback from the class after I had finished my film so it helped me to evaluate what was good and bad about the film however not actually change it like I could with the feedback from my class mates.
As well as helping me to make the film, audience feedback also helped me to make my two ancillary tasks. For my poster i initially used a very grainy picture that was just a still from the filming and my classmates saw it and said that would look better to take a proper picture of the mask. You can see the difference in the two images below.
I also used audience feedback to help decide on the name for my film. I came up with four different possible names and then posted a poll on my blog to find out which name the audience liked the best. They chose 'The Game' which I was happy with as it was my favorite name.
The final way that I learnt from my audience feedback was through Facebook. It was very useful as I could easily show the film to all of my friends, so that they could watch it and give their feedback.
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