Thriller Rough Cut - Miss Georgiou

Audience feedback is important because it allows a group to consider the strengths and weaknesses of their production so they can focus on their weaknesses and improve them. My group received feedback from our target audience in several different ways. First we developed questionnaires based on the thriller genre. This allowed us to see what thriller films were popular and what conventions our audience found successful or unsuccessful in a thriller. We presented members of our target audience with this questionnaire and recorded their answers to help us see what aspects are successful and effective in a thriller film as well as different elements and ideas we would have to consider when creating our own media product.                                                                                                                A screening of our production also gave us some useful feedback. When we had completed the rough cut of our opening sequence it was presented to the media class whereby they shared verbal opinions of our production, telling us what they thought worked well and what we could improve. This helped us understand what we would have to change and improve about our rough cut to create the final draft of our thriller production. The media class consists of young adults ages 16 and above, this was useful as this is our target audience and our sequence has an age rating of 15 and above. The feedback we received from the class was very positive and allowed us to see what went well in our production.

The rough cut was then uploaded to YouTube and made public so any one could watch it including those from our target audience. The viewers of our video could like, dislike or comment on the video to let us know what they thought of it. This gave us constructive feedback which will help us to improve our final sequence. This feedback will benefit my production because my group now understands what aspects of our sequence works well and what we will keep and what aspects are unsuccessful and should be changed or deleted. Other opinions are successful in providing feedback because it allows us to see what others, who have not created and already watched our production, think of it because to my group everything could appear similar as we have already watched it several times.
This benefits the film industry because it means we are producing the best possible version of our product. Using several different methods of feedback means  we are able to adjust and correct our production several times and consider as many aspects that need improving as possible. This makes the final product as effective as possible for the film industry to promote and sell. Positive feedback my group received including that the lighting we used worked well. We filmed in the late afternoon and used dark filters to create the effect of low-key lighting in our sequence. When applying filters we also adjusted the opacity of the shots and made sure that they were all even so the production was consistent.  The low-key lighting is conventional to a thriller genre because it creates deep dark shadows, showing the vulnerability of the victim and connoting enigma. The darkness also represents the hidden identity of the antagonist and this creates suspense. The change of lighting from the house to the forest highlights the change of mood and increase in intensity as it becomes more dark, highlighting that the victim is becoming more scared.
Our feedback also told us that we had an interesting narrative.It was complex enough to create enigma and make the audience want to keep watching yet clear and simple enough for them to follow and understand. The audience also stated that the ending was successful as it was left open with questions to be answered, they do not know what happened next and therefore want to keep watching to find out. Because of this I think our narrative is successful because we planned to create enigma and suspense and that is what our target audience believed we created. We wanted our narrative to be more creative and have a complex story line so we filmed in several different locations and thought about costumes and iconography and how we could use them to suggest ideas about the story to the audience.
Another common piece of positive feedback we received was that our transitions between shots worked well. We placed effects in-between the shots to link them to each other.This made sure that the shots did not just jump from one to the other and that it flowed smoothly making the narrative easier to follow. The positive comments we received suggested the transitions we used help the audience follow the story line and kept them engaged.
The target audience also provided us with constructive feedback in order to help us understand what we need to improve. One common constructive comment we received stated that the ending of our sequence was unclear. Although the audience stated that the ending was effective in terms of building suspense and enigma, they also believed that it was confusing because the effects we used lead them to believe the sequence had ended before it did.
Based on the feedback we received for our rough cut we will make some changes to our final thriller sequence. We will make the font of the credits smaller so it does not cover too much of the footage. This will focus the audiences attention solely on the narrative. We will also re-film the ending of our sequence  so it is recorded on a camera rather than a camera phone so the last few shots are widescreen and therefore fit in better with the rest of the sequences of the shot. Another thing we will change when re-filming the ending is to make sure the antagonists head is not showing if the are not wearing a mask.

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