We asked 9 people from our target audience to watch our opening sequence and answer 10 questions on it. Many of them were ‘Yes or No’ questions, but they still gave as a good idea of how our opening sequence. We also asked 2 questions that allowed the audience to respond with in depth comments on the opening sequence.
1. Did you understand the narrative?
This question is a little bit misleading, as sometimes you cannot simply understand a movie if you have just seen the first 2 minutes of it. This is why the majority of the audience voted ‘A little’. It was however a good response in that nobody said ‘No’. So our narrative must have some clarity at least.2. Overall, how much did you enjoy the thriller opening sequence? (1= Not at all, 5= A lot)
Again, not a bad response. Nobody really liked it, but nobody hated it. Most of our target audience thought it was satisfactory which is okay. It just shows us there is some room for improvement in our production.3. Would you watch the full film? 
A good response to this question, nobody said ‘No’ which meant that we successfully engaged the audience. Much of the audience voted ‘Maybe’, Obviously 2 minutes of a film is not enough to base a judgement whether to watch a movie or not. Usually an audience would want to watch it due to the advertising around the movie. We did create a trailer, but the audience did not get a chance to watch this before the movie was screened, it may have prompted a few more people to say ‘Yes’.
4. What did you think of the effects?
'The effects were relatively good'
'Lovely'
'I think they set for something good to happen'
'Good'
'They're good'
'Very effective at the beginning'
These were all good responses to the question, some vague. But nonetheless they all say the special effects were good. So there is no need for mass improvement in that area.
5. Did you know that it begins with a dream?
This is a definite area for improvement. As our group understood the narrative it appeared clear to us that it was a dream. She opens her eyes and is in bed so we expected the audience to piece two and two together. If we were to go back and improve on this we would definitely start with making it clear that it was a dream.
6. Was the soundtrack effective?
Our group spent a long time looking for music that reflected the mood of the characters and the environment they were in perfectly. We struggled for a while to find the right combination of music that was not only subtle, but pleasant to listen too. It seems that our efforts paid off with all but one person saying the soundtrack was effective.7. Did it build suspense?
We picked the music so it would heighten the suspense, we attempted this though several other elements to. But we didn’t want to build the suspense up so much that it would be unbearable in the first 2 minutes. So again this is a good response, we only wanted to build up a little bit of suspense so that the audience would be curious as to what will happen next.
I wasn’t too surprised at this reaction from the audience. Admittedly if you do not watch the movie carefully and closely confusion can arise as there are very small and subtle hints in the movie that if you miss may throw you off. It is also not uncommon for there to be slight confusion at the start of the movie as usually it is cleared up as the narrative progresses. Obviously we did not have enough time to clear up the confusion, but if we had had longer we definitely would have cleared up some of the confusion.
9. Does the title grab your attention?
This was quite a good response from the audience. I would not say that the title was our strongest suit. It is a very interesting title that would grab your attention but what I think the viewers were responding to was the placement of the title. I’ll admit it could do with some work as we were unsure where to place it so it got a bit neglected and was the last thing we did before finishing. But overall, a good response.10. What could be improved?
'Clearer narrative'
'The narrative'
'Narrative clearer'
'The talking interacting scene between characters a little confusing'
'Make narrative clearer'
'The shot of the two people talking talk louder'
‘I really liked the beginning, especially how the music builds up to the main character. The dialogues weren’t really clear though, but like how you made the opening sequence continuous at the end. Well done!’
So there are two main things the audience would like us to improve. The first being the narrative. I personally think the narrative works well, and if we had had more time (for the production) we would have cleared a few things up, but as it was such a short space of time it was difficult to get everything we wanted in there. I guess if we were to re-do it we could make it less busy and maybe have less scenes. The other thing was the conversation between the characters. Some people found it confusing whereas others just couldn’t hear it properly. If we were to sort out that scene we would definitely make it louder and try to add some clarity to the conversation if we could. But this conversation would have become clearer the more the story progressed.
But, overall I think we did well to please the majority of our target audience. Our film seems to be aimed at a more niche audience as certain people in the people we surveyed liked it and others didn't. This is generally what happens with films that a released in the cinema as one film cannot possibly appeal to every niche group out there. If we were to mkae the rest of the film we would take into consideration what the target audience have said, sort out those things and make sure that the rest of the film would appeal to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment