One of the things that we learnt from our audience feedback is that the message that we tried to portray was well presented to the audience as the short film was “entertaining” and “engaging” but it wasn’t strong enough because of the nature of the narrative. As we decided to base our story line on the use of drugs we didn’t want it to be a dramatic storyline so we opted to use comedy. The feedback that we received suggests to us that the comedy aspect takes away the seriousness of the message because were trying to communicate that doing drugs is bad for you. Our aim was to include comedy so it would be entertaining and use characters that are subject to facing the pressure of their peers to do drugs to make it relatable. From this we learnt that we should have made the message more prominent to put across that we do not condone drugs but other than that it we were successful in making it a comedic film.
Another thing that we have learnt from our audience feedback is that camera shots are very important - helps maintain interest in the film. If we used shots that didn’t flow well together our audience would lose interest in the film/feel disorientated. Therefore, shots hold importance because it helps the audience to understand the film but it is mainly down to the way we edit them together. The selection process is key as we had to evaluate every shot individually and then again in relation to the shots that came before and after. Even once our film was complete we decided to swap some of the shots because we were not satisfied with the way that the film looked. We received feedback we from our technical teacher, who has had lots of experience making short films. He gave us some advice on how to make the rave scene look better because in its current state it was repetitive. We therefore swapped some of the shots for ones that displayed variation.
Our audience told us that the title of our film was really effective as it gave them enough insight into the movie to make them watch it. However, it is a really long title and the abbreviated version is not easy to say (TMATDB). If we were to title our film again we would put more thought into a shorter, punchier title so it would be easier for our audience to remember because we know some people had difficulty trying to say the title when giving us feedback.
We also had some suggestions to improve the quality of our voice over. We had difficulty filming outside because we didn’t have an external microphone to pick up the dialogue and block out the wind. Therefore we had to rerecord the voice overs with precision to ensure that it matched the original dialogue in the scene. If we were to do this project again we would mostly likely request an external microphone for use, film on a less windy day or shoot scenes indoors if possible.
