What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to gauge the reaction from actual audience members it was vital that we showed our final product to those who would be within our desired demographic. Stuart Hall's reception theory states that everybody has the ability to interpret a text differently and that without an audience a text doesn't have a meaning all together. Media does not exist without audience, and ultimately our piece was made to entertain an audience and gain gratification, thus making the more/most effective feedback, the better.
Working in classroom setting helped greatly in that we gained a lot of verbal responses from almost everyone in our group. Something most of them noted was the use of music, 'Baby Mine' at the beginning was particularly effective, as well as the creepy toy box music used later, which 'made the film's childish themes more creepy', as said by a particular class mate. There was the general response on the originality of it- 'how weird' being perhaps the most said phrase post watch of Baby Mine. One suggestion we got was to gradually speed up the graphic match that we had made in order to make the ultimate scare more impactful and generally raise the tension. The graphic match was perhaps the hardest part of our film in terms of editing and after applying the feedback we suddenly had a coherent and fluent film, so this response was very helpful. It was also mentioned that our film was full of subliminal messages that pointed towards the theme and the twist at the end, this was good to hear as it was something that we consciously thought of in the production process and was glad that it translated. Of course this kind of casual verbal feedback was mostly short and sweet and in order to gain some quantitative and critical reviews we felt it was necessary to interview some people.
We interviewed our teacher, Mr Swain, someone who would be our ideal watcher, in order to see how he would respond after watching our film. The response was mostly positive:
In this he mentions the meat symbolism, which plays upon the audiences assumptions, which reinforces the prior hope of our demographic translating this and appreciating it. It is important to us that this was clear to the audience and was ultimately seen as a red-herring in the end. He also notes the juxtaposition that is consistently used throughout the production- something we expected someone under our demographic would note. Again, considering Mr Swain is very much the ideal viewer he notes the music we used which played a large role in the film and adds to the tension. Camera work is also mentioned, with the pan at the beginning, something we already initially had an idea for, was said to be particularly notable. He also refers to Hitchcock of whom was a big influence to us when going into this film, with our shots and graphic matches- again telling us that he falls into our audience profile with his knowledge of film. Rule breaking is also brought up in our non-continuity; fast paced editing followed by short paced, in order to deliberately effect the audience. This was shown to Mr Swain as a finalised production that we were proud of and so we were expecting there to be little criticism or constructiveness; so his response offers didn't play into us changing anything from our production, but merely allowed us to know that this was a piece to be proud of as we had met the ideals of our preferred viewer, with him having a preferred reading, which is understandable with him being an ABC1 film and music lover.
Another teacher, Mrs Waller, was asked to look at our piece and comment on it. As a new mother who didn't precisely fit into our formulated demographic we thought her response would be interesting. This is what she had to say:
"The short film Baby Mine is a clear example of the power of sound – specifically diegetic sound. I love how the everyday sounds in this piece are malicious forms themselves - the sizzling of the meat, the boiling of the water; it creates a tension which is hard to bear. The 1930s’ music at the beginning is brilliantly sinister, portending to something terrible happening especially as it is set in a nursery and, as a new mum myself, it’s pretty hard to watch!
The only piece of dialogue uttered is ’Goodnight Mary’ – this is quite brilliant lending an ambiguity to the piece: is she speaking to the ghost? Did she know she was there all along? Is the mum complicit in all of this? What will Mary do to the baby? Is she a force for good or a malevolent one? To me, this is what a good horror movie does: it poses uncomfortable questions and makes you wonder long after the credits roll.
This film has no violence (it is only hinted at), the only actions are baby cuddles, there are no real jumps or starts but all of this simply makes this film even more horrific. The fear and the jumps are more subtle. The face in the mirror; the sense of Mary watching; the smile of the baby in response to Mary are all incredibly frightening.
All in all I think you have created just the sort of horror movie I love – subtle, ambiguous and psychologically unnerving."
The maternal influences were picked upon and said to be that much more effective from the perspective of a new mum, which is the best of what we could hope for. It is also good to see that a typical viewer notes upon the use of sound in our film as packing the biggest punch, alongside the understated normalcy that leaves a person cringing away. She also mentions the ambiguity of the piece, and asks the questions that we hoped would be in the minds of the typical viewer. Her opinion is the same as ours: this uncomfortable questioning is what really makes a horror film, again making this a preferred reading. As a new mother she falls under Katz and Bulmer's Uses and Gratification (1974) theory as she identifies with Carly The Mother, who plays the unaware new mother. When placed in that scenario I imagine a sense of horror and dread would be felt when watching the piece, as Mrs Waller proves through identifying with that character. The flow of emotion is viable through this response also through her constant questioning serving as the emotions that she felt herself. Again this serves as conglomerated praise for our film, which mostly just boosted our ego as opposed to providing any changing points. This just allowed us further reinforcement of our concept as being right and efficiently effective to all audiences of all opinions and preferences. With these being our teachers it is assumed that they would be the ones to provide the most criticism in order for us to provide the best product possible, and with the amount of praise I am hopeful that we sufficiently achieved that.
We then asked a peer, Harriet, to respond to our film. As a media student and friend its important to note that her response may be slightly different to the typical viewer with a slight bias, however we felt it important to use a response from someone our own age- this being a piece released on YouTube and those most likely to view it being within the young adult age range, despite our specific demographic.
Working in classroom setting helped greatly in that we gained a lot of verbal responses from almost everyone in our group. Something most of them noted was the use of music, 'Baby Mine' at the beginning was particularly effective, as well as the creepy toy box music used later, which 'made the film's childish themes more creepy', as said by a particular class mate. There was the general response on the originality of it- 'how weird' being perhaps the most said phrase post watch of Baby Mine. One suggestion we got was to gradually speed up the graphic match that we had made in order to make the ultimate scare more impactful and generally raise the tension. The graphic match was perhaps the hardest part of our film in terms of editing and after applying the feedback we suddenly had a coherent and fluent film, so this response was very helpful. It was also mentioned that our film was full of subliminal messages that pointed towards the theme and the twist at the end, this was good to hear as it was something that we consciously thought of in the production process and was glad that it translated. Of course this kind of casual verbal feedback was mostly short and sweet and in order to gain some quantitative and critical reviews we felt it was necessary to interview some people.
We interviewed our teacher, Mr Swain, someone who would be our ideal watcher, in order to see how he would respond after watching our film. The response was mostly positive:
Another teacher, Mrs Waller, was asked to look at our piece and comment on it. As a new mother who didn't precisely fit into our formulated demographic we thought her response would be interesting. This is what she had to say:
"The short film Baby Mine is a clear example of the power of sound – specifically diegetic sound. I love how the everyday sounds in this piece are malicious forms themselves - the sizzling of the meat, the boiling of the water; it creates a tension which is hard to bear. The 1930s’ music at the beginning is brilliantly sinister, portending to something terrible happening especially as it is set in a nursery and, as a new mum myself, it’s pretty hard to watch!
The only piece of dialogue uttered is ’Goodnight Mary’ – this is quite brilliant lending an ambiguity to the piece: is she speaking to the ghost? Did she know she was there all along? Is the mum complicit in all of this? What will Mary do to the baby? Is she a force for good or a malevolent one? To me, this is what a good horror movie does: it poses uncomfortable questions and makes you wonder long after the credits roll.
This film has no violence (it is only hinted at), the only actions are baby cuddles, there are no real jumps or starts but all of this simply makes this film even more horrific. The fear and the jumps are more subtle. The face in the mirror; the sense of Mary watching; the smile of the baby in response to Mary are all incredibly frightening.
All in all I think you have created just the sort of horror movie I love – subtle, ambiguous and psychologically unnerving."
The maternal influences were picked upon and said to be that much more effective from the perspective of a new mum, which is the best of what we could hope for. It is also good to see that a typical viewer notes upon the use of sound in our film as packing the biggest punch, alongside the understated normalcy that leaves a person cringing away. She also mentions the ambiguity of the piece, and asks the questions that we hoped would be in the minds of the typical viewer. Her opinion is the same as ours: this uncomfortable questioning is what really makes a horror film, again making this a preferred reading. As a new mother she falls under Katz and Bulmer's Uses and Gratification (1974) theory as she identifies with Carly The Mother, who plays the unaware new mother. When placed in that scenario I imagine a sense of horror and dread would be felt when watching the piece, as Mrs Waller proves through identifying with that character. The flow of emotion is viable through this response also through her constant questioning serving as the emotions that she felt herself. Again this serves as conglomerated praise for our film, which mostly just boosted our ego as opposed to providing any changing points. This just allowed us further reinforcement of our concept as being right and efficiently effective to all audiences of all opinions and preferences. With these being our teachers it is assumed that they would be the ones to provide the most criticism in order for us to provide the best product possible, and with the amount of praise I am hopeful that we sufficiently achieved that.
We then asked a peer, Harriet, to respond to our film. As a media student and friend its important to note that her response may be slightly different to the typical viewer with a slight bias, however we felt it important to use a response from someone our own age- this being a piece released on YouTube and those most likely to view it being within the young adult age range, despite our specific demographic.
She also brings up the symbolism within the film with the meat and the knives leading you to be believe something else and evil. Alongside this, with the child/innocence imagery with the props our baby toys and clothes, again making the assumed demise much more tragic and horrifying. This response allowed us to see that someone of the young adult range liked the film and found it genuinely scary, and as someone who is said to be a huge horror film fan this was great praise. Again- a lack of criticism. This was to be expected however due to the circumstances of the previously stated, but also allowed us to see that this was a film appealing to all age ranges, opinions and demographics despite what we initially thought.
When showing a couple of peers, Georgia and Sama, 'Baby Mine' we asked them to write down anything notable when watching the film.
These responses are very much from the perspective of a media student, which is as to be expected. Both of them pick out the varying camera shots in our film- they particularly liked the GoPro shot, something that I was initially very wary of as I felt that it changed the general mood of the piece, this allowed me to have reassurance that this was a good and dynamic decision. Music was also pointed out, especially the gradual build up of the tinkering toy song that went with our graphic match, that was mentioned during their watch. Both of them were expecting the last shot to be something akin to a cooked Edward and were surprised by the ending- and confused. One of them in particular asked for us to explain what happened, but after an explanation told us that they thought this was a good twist. This was the first time that somebody had had an oppositional reading to our film, which eventually transformed into a negotiated reading. This was particularly interesting,as well as something we thought was likely to happen. A dramatic twist such as ours is likely to raise questions as we hoped, but something we didn't want was for someone to say 'I don't get it.' Considering both of these people were young and not particular fans of horror this is of course likely to be their response and was something that we had to accept; we couldn't change our storyline, and explaining the plot sort of felt like director death, something no producer wants to do, as it takes away from the initial point and impact. This response reinforced the good qualities of our film and also reminded us that this is not a film for everyone.
Our editing, sound, music, mise en scene and camerawork were all greatly praised and not told to change, which is the best outcome we could have hoped for. Some people were unsure of the final twist, or merely didn't understand, however we knew this was a likability and expected, as with modern horror the plot is one seen a million times before and the jump scares come from the ghost or ghoul in the corner and not the toaster. Through some dialogue with our peers and teachers we changed the filter from normal lighting to blue lighting as well the occasional change throughout our lessons in production. These small notes helped us to gradually build the product that we are now very proud to have produced, as well as the responses we were given post-production allowing us to understand our piece further in terms of audience response.
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