What have you learned

from your audience

feedback?

When creating the introduction section of the documentary- the

concert montage clips – I was wary of how long this section was

and between presenting my rough cut and final cut, I shortened it

down from a minute and a half to a minute long. However, when

gathering audience feedback, I found that only 2/15 thought that the

introduction was too long at the start. On reviewing the other

answers, I realised that the people who answered Yes to the

introduction being too long were actually both teenagers,

suggesting that the minute-long introduction may have made them

get easily distracted and bored. However, as my target audience

are adults and parents, of those that are adults that took part in the

survey, all agreed that the introduction wasn’t too long. Therefore

meaning that the “Yes” replies that I received can be disregarded

due to both not being the intended target audience.

A large part of my time editing was making sure that the audio clips

were properly synced with the video clips. Because of this, I wanted

to get the opinions of others as it is likely that, by the end of making

the documentary, I would have stopped noticing so easily when

something is out of sync. From my audience feedback, there was

only one person who thought the audio was out of sync and that

was during the concert footage at the end. As it wasn’t any of the

interview sections, I felt that it could be disregarded more easily –

especially considering that it was extremely difficult to get the music

in sync with the concert footage (as the band play faster onstage

anyway) meaning I had to mess around with the speed of the

concert footage.

For this question, I wanted to know whether having three people’s points of view answering questions (such as how did your family react….) was more effective than having one point of view. Additionally, I wanted to see whether it was more effective jumping from one to another instead of having block interview sections with each person. Overall, the only criticism on this that I got was that the section filmed with Billie’s younger sister, Kelsey could have been longer and some interview sections were overall short and also could have been longer – although, due to time constraints, it was difficult in getting all family member’s interviews to fit in with the 5 minutes and some had to be shortened. I found that most of the positive feedback had similar findings of it giving more than one perspective and making it seem less boring and occasionally adding humour –which was the intended purpose of having more than one perspective.

When editing the footage, I became so familiar with it that even

without watching it I could recall what was said and where it was

said. Because of this, it was difficult understanding whether or

not the background music that played throughout was too

distracting or not- so I felt that it was important to see whether

other people found it distracting. Overall, everyone who took part

in the survey found the same findings as me, and the

background music wasn’t distracting enough to take away from

the actual content.

Following the convention of using multiple camera shots found in

the Green Day: Cuatro documentary, I used two cameras to film

the interview sections – one filming in back and white and being

a close up shot of the person being interviewed. I asked the

audience whether they felt that doing so was effective and the

overall result was positive. Many people felt that doing so made it

seem more professional. Additionally, having one single camera

shot throughout would easily become boring and tedious, so

having a variety kept the audience interested, also adding

originality and realism to my documentary. This feedback shows,

that even with my target audience of adults, the black and white

shots were seen to keep the documentary interesting and less

tedious and didn’t become too repetitive and predictable.

This question was about the photographs at the end – accompanied

with the concert footage – and whether or not it was true to form as

showing a fan meeting her favourite band with the narrative being clear

enough. I got varying levels of advice and criticism for this section – the

most common being that at the start the images were unclear as to

show the narrative but it soon became clear, additionally, they felt that

the narrative didn’t show enough excitement. At the band signing event,

no videos were allowed to be taken, and therefore security were very

cautious about the use of cameras, meaning I had a limited amount of

time to get photographs of the event. This meant that, through the

images, I had to show the narrative of Billie and her friends going to

meet their favourite band. Although, many picked up on the fact that this

narrative section linked in with the interview section prior – when

analysing the results, it seemed that the adults that took part in this

section were the ones who noticed this more, meaning that the section

is appropriate for adults who are likely to take more notice at the minor

details.

For this question, many answered in a similar way. They felt that

having a different fan of a different genre would be good to

compare the lives and lifestyles which was useful to me.

Additionally, many – including the adults – agreed that ending

with the concert footage and photographs was a book-end to the

section on introducing the emo fan in preparation to be

introduced to a different fan after the break.

Out of everyone who answered this question, they all agreed that

the information in the article about the documentary was clear

enough to tell the readers what the film is about without giving

away everything that happens in the film. This question was

important, as without an article that has clear and easily

understandable information about the documentary, there is no

point having an article.

For this question, I wanted to find out if the format that I had

advertised the documentary was appropriate for what the

documentary about. In reply, everyone answered that the

information was clear enough and the layout was appropriate.

Everyone one agreed that the advert was straight to the point

and the background did not distract from the text.

For this question, I got 9 response that they wouldn’t change

anything and four giving suggestions on what could be changed.

For the suggestions, almost everyone agreed that the

advertisement’s colour scheme wasn’t as strong as it could have

been and therefore it became disjointed and unrecognizable

when linked with the documentary. Because of this, I altered the

colour scheme slightly to fit better with the emo fan in the

documentary.

Overall, out of all the questions asked, most of the replies were

positive and praising my documentary and ancillary tasks. I found that

most of the criticism was from the younger audiences whereas the

adult audiences appeared to give positive feedback all around –

allowing me to understand that the way in which I have presented

information appeals to them, whereas the teenagers who answered

were more “picky” towards the content. This is an example of Stuart

Hall’s encoding and decoding theory. The information that I am

wanting to portray (music fans in a good light) in the documentary is

the encoding of information. How the audience portray this is the

decoding, in which there are three types : Dominant/hegemonic

position – the audience accept all of the information (similar to the

Hypodermic Syringe Model), negotiated position – the audience

accept and reject the information- and oppositional position – the

audience reject the information. From my audience feedback, I feel

that my intended audience will be in a negotiated position, as they are

likely to have been aware of the negative stereotypes of emo fans

which will stop them from accepting all of the information.