EVALUATION 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Here we have shown a screen grab of a comment we recieved during our editing process, after we had produced our first draft. This was recieved from a peer in our class and we found it very helpful. We have also included a screen grab of a comment we recieved from our teacher after our first draft. If you click on the image it will enlarge, you will see the annotation which describes how we have acted on their feedback.

In addition to the feedback we recieved about our actors, we also decided to change our location. This was for many reasons, firstly, being in the centre of Leicester it occassionally made it difficult to commute. Another downside to it being in the city centre was that we could not predict how busy it would be at one given time, and we also did not want to impact on the public access, in such a busy area too much. Finally, even though the graffti and industrial backdrop were very effective mise en scene, it had a sense of cleanliness to it with it being so modern in some areas.

For our new location we had to consider many options, firstly easy access incase of any 'hiccups' it would be readily available for refilming and tweaks. Also a realistic location as essential, as we had to try and reflect a suburban area and urban area to represent the contrasts between the two men. The final location we chose and used for our short film encompassed both these traits. The alleyway was very effective due to the strong mise en scene, with all the different shapes and angles, we felt this was very interesting. The use of the business man home, allowed our audience to feel he has a background and this also reflected the cultural code as you saw his middle class home/ wealthy car. Finally, another location we felt was strong within our film is the use of the public telephone box, firstly this reflects the vagrants lack of wealth and secondly, his contrasting state of living - with little technology that 'we' take for granted.

Here we have shown how our audience feedback has helped us with regards to choosing realistic actors and costume.

On the left hand side of the image is Jack Sutherland, our first choice of actor to play the business man, after our audience feedback we realised that he does not look like a realistic business man, he is only 18, and this shows in his young looking face and appearance. His clothing is also unrealistic, with his skinny fit jeans, he was also not wearing a tie or a blazer, which is typical business man attire. We chose Anthony Riley to play our business man after recieving our audience feedback, he is a real business man, so it could not be said that he does not look realistic, we were also careful to ensure that he wore a suit and tie this time, so that he looked accurate, unlike our first actor. Also because of his age, he fits well into the criteria we were looking for.

We always planned to use Theo Miller as our vagrant character, however when we first filmed we had not planned enough and therefore he was not wearing realistic clothing, and did not have realistic props. As you can see from the left hand image, he is wearing jeans, which would not be something a vagrant would wear, he is also wearing green trainers that are clean. He does not have any possessions with him, and is covering himself with a coat, which is also unrealistic as a homeless man would be better prepared for the conditions such as cold weather. In the second image, Theo is wearing and old coat and tracksuit bottoms over jeans to make him look more bulky, and therefore older. He also carries a sleeping bag, cardboard and guitar with him, which is a lot more realistic as he would need to take these things everywhere he went, as he has no home. For several days before filming we made sure that our vagrant did not wash his hair or cut his fingernails, and we feel that this made him look homeless as well as his clothing, these were both things we didnt think about when filming the first time.

Our audience feedback showed that Theo is now a believable homeless character, we have heard this from our peers, fellow media students, teachers, and parents.

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Here we have included screen grabs of comments we recieved on our youtube video, as well as the facebook group that we made in order to recieve audience feedback. Click images to enlarge.