Audience

Our short film targets our audience as, firstly, the topic of the whole film being about fatherhood which is a topic that every person may have an opinion or view on. It is also a relatable subject to an audience of any gender, age, ethnicity or class. We also tried to engage the audience through using younger actors and actresses as we know that the short film audience is a niche audience and younger people tend to discover and watch more short films through social networking sites and convergence, as this is the more technology literate generation.

Also through our editing pace we looked to engage our younger audience and keep them interested. For example when we edited our documentary style interviews we used the jump cut technique to get all the necessary information we wanted to include. This could have also made the audience concentrate on what was being said if they noticed the sudden jump. However this could have confused some viewers. For example, through our questionnaires one comment stated that this effect “worked well but seemed unprofessional.” Another stated that “it worked well but they initially thought something was wrong and that this style was not intended.”

I learnt a lot from the audience feedback that we as a group might not have noticed, being so involved in our piece. The audience all agreed that the scripting of our piece was realistic, relatable and believable, which is the effect we were aiming for. I also learnt that this audience did not see an issue with representation but rather, the majority thought it was well represented. Some comments we got to support this view were “It shows both sides”, “You have an interview with both a father and a mother to be” and “It is represented well”. On the other hand some people did believe we could have improved our representation. A comment we got to support his view would be “Dads often don’t get heard”.

Our use of facts and the definition of “father” were also appreciated as the audience feedback stated that it made the piece more understandable and clearly stated what the film was about. I believe that these facts also helped enlighten our audience on some facts or information they may have not known before which shows the success of our film as it is meant to be an entertaining and informative piece.

The music in our film worked well as it set the tone of the piece without influencing the audiences’ perception or emotions towards the piece. I believe that music helps engage any audience in any film and the fact that we composed the music for the beginning of the piece and the music at the end of the piece was composed by one of our class mates through our vision and input of what we wanted it to sound like, made the music unique and original whilst being different from any other film soundtrack.

Looking back at the audience feedback and all the comments and results we have gathered proves to me that our film is strong and we achieved our goal of exploring a relatable issue to everyone whilst conveying many varied views and opinions on the topic in order to engage an even larger audience. I am very pleased that the audience found our scripting understandable and relatable and the fact that the stylistic theme of documentary and drama was appreciated and not immediately dismissed by our younger audience.