Audience Feedback

What went well:

• One of the things that went well in our audience feedback is that most people really liked the blood in our clips. They thought that it was really realistic and looked really effective.
• People also liked our use of sound manipulation
• They also liked that you could still hear the sound of the music playing through the headphones really quietly, when the phone was dropped onto the floor. 

Improvements:

• Make the title screen longer 
• Another improvement that our group needs to make based on our feedback is that we need to cut out some of the waterfalls at the beginning of our opening scene as they are not needed. However, we are going to keep the ones that build up tension before the victim is stabbed.
• Some of the feedback that we were given is that our professional production company logo, Blumhouse, is used more for psychological horrors rather than slasher horror films. 
• People also said that the Professional production company logo was the out of date version, therefore our group decided that we would change it to Lionsgate's horror version of their professional production company logo.
• Another thing that our group needs to improve is the brightness. In the feedback that we got they think our film opening will look more effective if it was darker and it will also make it creepier.
• Some of the blood colouring in some of our shots is quite bright red therefore we are going to adjust the lighting and saturation to try and make it look more realistic. 
• As the killer walks up the steps following the victim, he scrapes a knife against a chai link fence. In the feedback that we got the audience think that it would sound more effective if we added a scarping sound of a knife to the clip.
• There was also some background noise of wind in our clip, which we need to cut out.

We divided up these improvements within our group so that we all could improve our film opening. I changed the production company logo to the Lionsgate horror professional company logo. I also deleted the wind background sound in one of our shots of the victim in the alley. Below our screenshots of me completing these improvements. 

Storyboard - Audience Feedback

On Tuesday 29th November, we presented our first draft of our storyboard to our audience and explained our plot, props, actors etc. to them, so they could give us positives of our piece as well as some constructive criticism.

Positives

Our shots are good and creative and our blog posts explain well how we will edit the shots, for example the sound manipulation when the victim is listening to music in her earphones and the use of the 'in headphone' sound effect, in which the music is playing diegetically but sounds as if it is being heard through the headphones.

The audience also told us that they liked our shots and angles, which are creative and effective. This is important and useful feedback as the shots are what make the difference between strong and weak coursework.

The final positive bit of feedback from the audience was that we had a strong title option; 'Silent Killer'. We were told that this was the best one because it conforms to common slasher film titles yet doesn't give too much away, and that it was a lot stronger than our other title options, in particular 'Eye-Spy' as they thought that this didn't fully relate to our story line.

Constructive Criticism

The audience didn't think that we should include the 'muddy, bloody footprints' idea/shot in our final shots. This was because the concept seemed unrealistic and didn't fully follow our story line. Our group later decided stillt to make the boots muddy to make the killer appear to live in a dirty and isolated area, but not have a shot of the footprints.

The audience loved the idea of some of our other shots, such as the 'bloody water' shot and the 'stab' shot, however they did recommend that we practise these and experiment with different ways to create these shots before filming. This was so that they look as realistic as possible and so that we knew exactly how to create them on the day of filming which would save us time and allow us to be as productive as possible in a short amount of time. Following this feedback, some members in our group have created a blog to experiment with each of these shots.

After our presentation we were asked a question regarding the music that the victim would be listening to. A member our group did a blog post finding good in-copyrighted music and another deciding which one of these songs we should choose for our final piece. We were told that we needed to choose a song quickly so we could experiment and practice manipulating the song. As a result The song was decided on and there was also a blog post made on ideas on how to manipulate the song. I also did one on actually manipulating the sound, and deciding the most effective way it could be manipulated.

First Storyboard Draft- Audience Feedback

When we presented our first draft to our audience and explained our story-line, props, actors etc. they gave us constructive criticism and good points about our final piece.

Even Better If

Overall, the audience told us that we should not include the 'muddy, bloody footprints' in our final shots due to the concept appearing unrealistic and not following our story-line. As a group, we decided to just make the boots muddy to make the killer appear to live in a dirty and isolated area.

When we told them some of our other shots, such as the 'bloody water' shot and the 'stab' shot, they recommended to us that we practise those and experiment with different methods of creating those shots before filming, so that they look realistic and so they we know exactly how to create them on the day of filming so that it saves time. As a result of this feedback, we have created a blog for each of the experiments.

One of the questions asked to our group after our presentation was regarding the music that the victim will be listening to. Here is a link to my blog explaining the song that we have chosen: Song for Our Opening Scene Blog. The audience told us that we needed to decide on a song quickly because we needed to experiment with manipulating this. As a result we decided on the song and I also did a separate blog on manipulating the sound: Sound Manipulation Blog.

What Went Well

Although the audience gave us some constructive criticism and some points to think about, they also gave us some positive feedback. One of these were that we have good creative shots in our blog, such as the sound manipulation and the use of the 'in headphone' sound effect (where the music is playing diegetically but sounds as if it is being heard through someone else's headphones).

The audience also liked our creative and effective angles and shots. The shots will make the difference between a strong and a weak piece of coursework.

A final positive point that the audience fed-back to us was that they liked one of our title options of 'Silent Killer'. The said that this was the best one and conforms to common slasher film titles, however, they did not like the other titles, especially 'Eye-Spy' as they believe that this was going 'off-topic' in regards to our story-line.

Audience feedback from Storyboard

Positive feedback:

The audience that our group showed our story board to thought that all of our shots are going to be really beautiful, which conforms to common conventions of a slasher film, as they really liked our location. Our location is in Loose Valley and we choose this because we wanted beautiful shots and a naturalistic setting to our film opening.

Another positive comment that they made is that they also really like the idea of sound manipulation. We are going to use this in the ringtone of the broken phone to distort it and make it sound broken, and the sound of the music coming from the victims headphones after the phone has been dropped. This is also a common convention of slasher films but will hopefully sound really effective.

Improvements:

The audience didn't think we should use bloody footprints coming from the killer as there would be no reason for him to have blood on his boots before he has killed the victim.

Another comment is that we should test the lighting to see what time of day we would need to film.  We also need to test the blood pack again cushion being stabbed and blood/ food colouring down the stream. We need to test these to see if it will have the right effect, which one to use, and that we want and that it will actually work.

The audience also think that we should use the title 'Silent Killer' as it fits more with our theme and conforms to common titles of slasher films as it is short and says it how it is.