What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Besides the feedback we were getting throughout the production from our two tutors, we based how we thought our audience would react to our film on our early audience research and our own predictions. It wasn't until our rough cut was viewed by our media class that we got any substantial audience feedback. One of the things that was highlighted by one of our teachers was that the opening to the film where John is sitting at his desk was slightly too long, and lost the audience's attention. Jack and I took this constructive criticism on board and went back to the cut where we agreed that that the shots were slightly too long, and needed to be shorter to keep the opening intriguing.


Other criticisms we received in the showing were mainly around the picture quality. As I said in one of my previous evaluation questions, the files when exported from the SD card were incompatible with the editing software Jack wanted to edit with. This resulted in Jack converting the files from MTS format to MOV which in turn disrupted the HD image. In hindsight we should have checked the output file before filming. Maybe we could have altered the file the HD video was exported in, or possibly found a way to convert the file whilst still retaining HD quality footage. If I had the chance to do the project again, I would explore both these possibilities. 


The feedback we received was mostly positive with comments like "really like the story. Didn't expect the twist at the end!" and "Good performance from all actors". I was pleased to see most of all that people fully understood the story and the hints we were throwing in. The story doesn't reveal a lot until the very end and I could understand why some people might get slightly confused, but no one highlighted this problem in the audience feedback. 

One person in our class did say that the audio was a inconsistent, which we were already aware of, but a valid point nonetheless. We had tried to alter the audio levels between shots to keep a more consistent volume level and tone, but this was not always possible in clips that sounded completely different. If I were undergo this task again, I would try and attach a better quality micro to the camera to pick up the sound better during the filming process. 


Overall we had more positive feedback than negative, which is encouraging because it means we made a lot of the right decisions. The feedback we received had a big impact on the decisions we made for our final cut, and decisions I would make when directing/filming/editing in the future.