Saving Grace Final Film

A2 Media Studies Final Short Film 

Saving Grace Official Film Poster.

Saving Grace

April 2017

Saving Grace Radio Trailer

Evaluation Question 1

Question One.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2 from Jade Fogg

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3 from Jade Fogg

Evaluation Question 4

Question Four.

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

First Brief 

As a group we were set the task of creating our own narrative idea for our short film. We all needed to aim for at least one film idea which we would then discuss with the rest of our group. In total we created 5 individual ideas. 

My first short film idea was about a man who purchased the same lottery ticket, with the same numbers for multiple years however nobody knew why he chose the numbers until the day he wins. The winning of the lottery ticket made him the new suspect in a murder case for his beloved wife. Each of the numbers had a link with the murder and police are seen working very hard to link the clues with the known and the unknown. 

Screenshot from a part of my short film script idea.

My second short film idea was a film named ‘Karma’ about a couple who decide to get revenge on people, but in the most disturbing ways. They tattoo every bad word on the culprits which have hurt them throughout their life. This was an idea i thought of as i believed that it was a good concept to show to demographics that they need to be weary of the words they say to people and to imagine if every bad word they said appeared on their bodies. 

Screenshot from a part of my short film idea.

My third and final film idea was discussed between me and Elliott until we perfected it to how we liked it. We thought that the name ‘Polaroid’ was perfect as it had a high significance throughout the film. This film is about a man suffering with a mental illness after loosing his daughter Lily. He lost all the photos of his daughter too therefore his hobby is taking photos of other children with them not knowing and offering them to their parents for a keep sake. Obviously, most people would refer to him as a pedophile due to what he is doing and one character takes action. There is also a hidden twist that the polaroid camera is haunted and when children are pictured they go missing. Could this be what Chris has invented in his mind after loosing his child as a coping method or could the polaroid camera have a hidden secret? 

A screenshot from my short film idea.

Because my film ideas were very complicated to film we decided to discuss the positives and negatives of each film idea and finally came to the conclusion to use the film idea ‘Saving Grace’ by Jade. This film’s narrative follows two young girls going out on a night out with unexpected events taking place. We felt as a group this would be perfect to film as it was relatable to our age group. Because of this we felt that we were able to portray to our demographic the dangers of drinking and what can occur if you are not careful or are careless with it.

Our Film and Audience

Within our film the narrative follows two best friends going out for their first night out together. They are very excited and are careless about their own safety. Within the film, the lead protagonist Grace gets separated from her best friend Becky after having her drink spiked. The film then progresses into unfortunate events where Grace is taken and abducted by a stranger. She is then seen waking up in the strangers bed with the impression that she has been raped. Our soul intention with our film was to warn our target audience about the dangers of drinking and that they should be extremely cautious when doing so because in reality, anything could happen when under the influence of alcohol. Because under age drinking is a growing problem in Great Britain we decided to have a target audience of 12A, this allowed us to spread our film to a wider demographic and in some ways, prepare the younger viewers to be safe when they are the legal age to drink. Because we decided on our target audience before writing our film, this made it a lot more easy to think of a storyline that would appeal to the target audience of 12A and therefore allowed us to use our time a lot more efficiently. 

Audience Research

Individually we all researched into target audiences by using the BBFC website mainly and Google as from this we were able to gain all the information needed for our chosen film certificate of a 12A.  From looking into the BBFC we found that 12A was the appropriate certificate as alcohol consumption was going to be shown within our film and this would not be suitable for any younger. Despite debating on our film to be a 15, we came to the conclusion that if our film was a 12A it would allow us to have a larger demographic, meaning we could forward our message of safe drinking to a larger amount of people. Our audience is not gender specific and does not change due to the occupation however we believe due to our storyline our film will apply to students due to the protagonists and also the nature of the film linking with the ‘ Intellectual Puzzle’ as referred to by Rick Altman. 

Understanding the storyline

In order to see if our film was understood fully and made sense to audiences, we created a questionnaire including a brief description of our film along with questions following. We filmed each of their responses and uploaded it onto youtube for evidence. The questionnaire included a mixture of personal questions, allowing us to connect to our audience and also questions that linked with our film such as “ What genre do you think this film is?” and “What do you think happens next?” From doing this questionnaire we learned what we needed to change within our short film and what we needed to keep, this task was very valuable for us as we were able to connect to our audience and understand what they would like to see in our film.

Rough Cut

During the production of our film we decided to do a rough copy of the club scene we would include in our film. We then created a short rough cut and uploaded it to Youtube. Following on from this we created a questionnaire to understand which parts we should consider for our short film and which parts we should remove. 

1. Within the club scene what did you particularly like?
2. What do you think we should change?
3. Do you think the club scene should be edited to the music used?
4. Should we add music effects in the editing process? 
5. Do you like the fast paced editing used?
6. What was your favourite part of the clip? 
7. Why was this your favourite?
8. What length do you think that the nightclub scenes should be? 
9. Are you male of female? 
10. What is your age? 

Analysis of results

Because we received multiple responses from our demographic we took these into consideration when finalising what we would use in our final film. 63% of people said that they preferred the style of editing used within our short film therefore keeping this in mind we decided to edit the final club scene in a similar way. 0% of people said that they liked the music, therefore when finalising our film we conducted further research into types of music to find the perfect one to incorporate into our film.  

Many people liked the lighting used within our film and we were fortunate to have been able to have professional use of strobe lights and moving heads from Devils Event Lighting. They kindly allowed us to use a Martin Atomic 3000, Showtec Indigo 4500s and Acme Butterfly Spiders. This made our club scene look very professional as we had high-tech lighting that added to the mise en scene and atmosphere. From this we ensured we included various shots of the lights as we felt it enhanced our film. 

Final cut questionnaire

When our final film was completed we then decided to create a final questionnaire in order to receive feedback from our demographic. This was in order for us to understand what the audience liked and disliked about our film again and to see if they could understand and grasp the ending of our film. 

The first thing that we asked in our questionnaire was the age of our respondents. 79% of these people were age 16-24. This was our aim as we felt that the film would be interesting for people within the same age range as us. This was a positive as we had got our film to the target audience we were aiming for in order to pass on our message of safe drinking.  

The second question which we asked our audience was “What is your gender?” We decided to include this as we wanted to know which gender would prefer films within the same genre as which we used. As a group however, we felt that this would happen as our lead protagonists that have the most prevalence within the film are females.  

We then asked if the audience enjoyed our film overall. Although this question is not specific in what our audience liked and disliked, it was still beneficial for us as we were able to know if our target audience liked the film as a ‘whole’. When looking at the results we discovered that 80% of the demographic liked our film, 5% didn't like our short film and 15% was unsure. When looking into why they did not like or film or were unsure results stated that they “did not understand the ending”. We knew that this would be a problem with the final cut of our film as we wanted to leave it open ended for our viewers. 

With our final film we asked our audience what they think was the best in our final film between the editing, lighting and the music. From this we got a mixture of results however every one of them  were positive and we learned they complimented our film extremely well. 

We then asked what genre our audience thought that our film was. Our film was advertised as a thriller drama as it has aspects from each genre in. When asking out audience what they thought our film was, the response was positive and allowed us to understand that we incorporated the correct aspects needed to create a thriller drama short film.  

We then asked them what they would give our film out of five. This was to gain a greater understanding on if we succeeded within the creation of our short film. Thankfully, most of the respondents gave our film a 5 out of 5 and this made us feel very confident that we used the correct codes and conventions. 

Wanting to know if there was any improvements that our audience thought we should make, we decided to ask this within our survey. While three quarter of the respondents said that they felt nothing could be changed within our film, some did. They said that rather than leaving the film open ended, they would have rather found out the truth about what happened to Grace. Unfortunately, we could not do anything about this as we wanted our demographic to try and piece together our film themselves and therefore we left the film open ended.  

Evaluation Question 4

http://prezi.com/sbzlkqkzqsh2/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Evaluation Question 1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7V9hSwkgxvDMDhFTVpPQklpSmM/view?usp=sharing

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation question 3 from hannahpellegrin07

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation question 4 from hannahpellegrin07

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2 new from Jade Fogg

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation question 3 from Jade Fogg

Evaluation Question 4

Audience Feedback from Final Cut

Audience Feedback 

Throughout the process of production, we have asked our audience and target audience what they thought, recording their feedback and analysing it. We asked them a questionnaire pre production after being read the synopsis, we asked them a questionnaire after showing them a rough cut of the film, and this post is an analysis of the feedback from the audience after watching our finished short film, Saving Grace. 

We asked the audience questions not only about the film that they watched, however we asked them questions about themselves, this is in order for us to distinguish what an audience of different Ages, Genders and Occupations think about our film and their honest opinion of it as a whole. This would also tell us if our expected target audience had positive reactions to our film rather than the survey being completely anonymous. The survey was created on SurveyMonkey and shared on different types of social media as well as word of mouth, ensuring that the audience wasn't biased in any way in order for our results to be completely valid in terms of participants. The questions that were asked are as followed: 

This questionnaire was shown to people via social media and the audience, without being spoken to by one of the members of our group, filled in the questionnaire after watching the whole short film. The questionnaire includes questions with multi choice for quantitative information and comment boxes for qualitative information, this allows us to gain more information from the audience and allows us to analyse further what they believe about the film. We included simplistic questions such as "What rating would you give our film?" and also included more intricate questions such as "What was your favourite part of the film?" which requires the audience to think about the short film and what happened, which raises more awareness of the topic issue of dangerous drinking. 

Over the hours that we gave the audience to complete the questionnaire, we collected 32 samples of survey answers, with an audience of different ages, genders and occupations, this gave us a variety of different results. Due to the questionnaire being anonymous and the survey being posted on social media, we understood that not all answers are guaranteed to true or accurately present how they felt about the film, we recognised this within the results. The results were as followed. 

 The first question that we included in the questionnaire was "What is your age?". Our questionnaire is anonymous however we thought in order to gain an idea of our audience and what specific people thought we should ask the audience key factors such as age. Our film has a certificate of 12A, meaning nobody under the age of 12 should be viewing the film unless accompanied by an adult. Our film also had a target audience of people aged 15-25, as we assumed a younger audience would enjoy the film more, which was proven as the majority of the audience were aged 18-24, however we also had a varied audience of different ages.

 We also asked the audience about their gender, which wouldn't reveal too much about the audience however tells us wether our audience was predominantly male or female, when planning the audience research we said our film wouldn't be favourable over genders and didn't predict a larger audience of either gender, however it is evidenced that there is a much larger audience of the female gender, and a smaller audience of other genders. 

The final question which was personal to the audience asked them about their occupation, this could potentially tell us how much free time that person has, and could tell us wether they watch films often and if their opinions are from an experienced film watcher. We predicted that the majority of the audience would be students as our target audience was of ages 15-25 and a large amount of people this age are students. The questionnaire revealed to us that the majority of our audience and participants are in fact students, as we predicted.

After we had gathered general information about the audience, we decided to ask a simple question first of all to the audience and ask them if overall they understood the film. We decided to ask the audience this as our film isn't of linear structure, therefore some of our audience may be confused about what is happening in the film. The results displayed that the majority of the audience understood the film which is very positive feedback and tells us that our film was edited well and made easy to understand, for the majority of our audience. 

 In pre production of the film, we conducted research into genre and while writing the synopsis of the film we decided that our film was of the Thriller genre, and realised that it had aspects of a Drama. From the audience's feedback we found that the majority of the audience believed that the film was a Drama, and around 2/5 of the audience believed that the film was a Thriller, this told us that the codes and conventions that we included in our film were more suited to a Drama genre than a Thriller, for example setting and mood of the overall film.

We asked the audience if they overall enjoyed our short film, the majority of the audience said that they enjoyed it, however we had some of the audience saying they were unsure. We also had an audience member which said they didn't enjoy our film. Within the questionnaire we had inappropriate comments, which we understood might happen due to the questionnaire being posted for anonymous comments on social media, however we also took into consideration that there might be a reason for an audience member to genuinely dislike our short film.

We also asked the audience what they would rate our film out of five, similar to a star rating. A very large amount of the audience gave the film 5/5, and the majority of the audience gave a positive feedback number which we were pleased with, however there was an extraneous result of 1/5 which we questioned if this was a real result. However we looked further into the questionnaire to look for negative as well as positive feedback as we understood that the concept might not attract every single person in the audience.

After gaining some potential negative feedback we analysed a question which allowed the audience to give criticisms to us, the majority of our audience told us that there was nothing specific within the film they would change. However minor comments told us that we should've been more accurate within filming which was useful criticisms. We also gained feedback which told us the audience member didn't quite understand what was happening in the film as we didn't make it obvious, this criticism helped us thoroughly. 

Gaining negative feedback helped us understand why our audience might not have liked our short film, however asking the audience gave us a chance to understand what the positive comments were from the audience. The majority of the audience claimed that their favourite parts were "The nightclub scene"'s, and "The ending", which is where most of our editing and techniques were, which told us that our film displayed shots and different types of editing well, especially towards the end where the scenes begin getting increasingly intense and high energy.

The final question again asked the audience wether they understood the film, but also asked them if they understood the message of the film, this is in reference to our group wanting to raise awareness of safe drinking and the risks of drugs. The feedback told us that the majority of the audience understood what the film was about and the message that the film had with it. However it also told us that some of our audience didn't understand or so much, which made us understand that in order to get a message across to an audience we must be more straight forward with our storyline rather than being non linear.

After analysing the questionnaire results from the 32 audience members, we gathered that the majority of the audience enjoyed our film, understood it and had overall general positive feedback for our group. We gained feedback that told us that the way our short film was shot and edited was very good overall, also from the feedback we can assume that our film made an impact on the majority of the viewers and hopefully we raised awareness of the topic involved. 

Online Rough Cut Questionnaire.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/F3V79TX

Online Survey. 

This is an online questionnaire created in order for us to know what our demographic like/ dislike about our club scene example. This will enable us to make necessary adjustments to make our short film more appealing. 

Online Rough Cut Questionnaire analysis.

As a group we had hoped to get more responses with our online questionnaire, however we believed that after analysing the results we did not need to accumulate any more as we had a substantial amount of information about what individuals liked and disliked about our club scene example.

Firstly we asked our demographic "Within the club scene what did you particularly like?" From the results we received we found that 63% (7 people) liked the editing the most. Because of this, within the final editing of our final film we will use the same methods we used within the editing process for this extract. Along with this, 27% (3 people) said that they liked the lighting, luckily for us we already had a generous amount of shots of the lighting. This was helpful to us as we did not need to do any re-shoots. Sadly, 0% of people we asked liked the music used within the club scene example, from this we decided to change the music used in order to fit to the demographics preferences. Finally, one person said that they liked the shots, although this is only one persons personal opinion we understand that people who are not familiar with the subject do not know the correct terms for the shots used, due to this we eliminated this question and focused more upon the other responses.

After this we asked our demographic what they think we could change. These results enabled us to understand that in order to please our audience we need to focus on changing the music used, this is shown in the results as 5 people said they thought we should change the music. Aside from this, 3 people thought that we should change the lighting within our club scene, this result we discussed wether or not we should change the lighting however thought that it portrayed nightlife well and decided to keep it in our scenes. Finally due to the low number of people wishing we could change the editing and the shots, we decided that within the editing process we should only make subtle changes.

Because nightclubs tend to have upbeat music on, we felt it was necessary to include music within this aspect of the film. The only question was, should the shots be edited to the music. From our results we found that 10 people believed it should be, and we agree. Editing the scenes to the music will make the club scene more realistic. 

After this we asked the demographic "Should we add more music effects in the editing process?" From this survey 8 people said no. We believe this is because doing this will mean that too much is occurring at once within the scene, keeping it to a minimum will allow our audience to focus more on the drama occurring on screen. 

From the question below we understood that everyone whom watched the club scene extract liked the fast paced editing. Due to this we are going to keep it within the scenes occurring within the club.

Here below are our responses for the questions "What was your favourite part of the clip?" and "Why was this your favourite scene?" These responses allowed us to know what different individuals liked within our scenes and also what we should consider adding into the final editing process.

Finally we asked our demographic how long THEY thought we should have the scenes in the nightclub for. By asking this, we knew that 1 minute - 1 minute 30 seconds was the most popular. This could possibly be because the audience was getting bored after a long time or they were too anticipated to know what happens next.

As in all questionnaires, we asked if the respondents were male or female and which age group they sit in. This is done to see who our film will interest most.