Last Thursday Ian my project supervisor and video lecturer organised a group screening for all the 4th years doing film and animation final year projects. We were recommended to prepare some sort of questionnaire to give our peers for feedback after watching the films. It was very nerve racking showing everything you have worked on for months. I know we’ve showed examples and parts of our work at presentations but because the final deadline is ever approaching it makes the whole thing even more scarier.

What I really wanted to take from this user screening was whether the structure and pacing of my project is making sense. I’ve been feeling very doubtful about different sections of it and how to introduce the musicians in the opening parts. I was also curious to find whether people thought the live music performance were to long or to short, as this is something I’ve been having an issue with in the edit too.

Here’s the list of questions I prepared.

The main things I took from everyones feedback including some great insights from some of the lecturers too include:

• increasing the length of music performances etc – gives better context for who the musicians are/ what their about,
• pacing is good but needs to be tightened up,
• the black middle title screens don’t seem to be working – text on footage works better + less titles,
• some people were confused during the intro, didn’t know where it was going. (this part definitely needs refining)
• dublin cutaways need to be shortened, more musicians doing stuff.

I’m going to look at all these things and try and implement these suggestions.

An example of some of the feedback>

{THANKS TO EVERYONES DEADLY ADVICE}

Question 1. 

“Yes, though perhaps to many titles? flow could be enhanced – tightened?”

“Breaking the parts up with titles is vital to gaining an understanding of whats going on (esp. for those who are not so familiar with songwriting”

“Good but could be tightened up”

“Not 100% sure about the start, I would consider using concert performance earlier”

“Very quickly paced, maybe to quick. I’d recommend less black screens. Text over footage works better”

Question 2.

“Conor but that’s probably because of his background”

“The girl Sive, her instrument was real interesting”

“Peter Doran, honesty was nice”

Question 3.

“Touch at where you work part”

“Some of what Sive talked about was repetitive to what others said”

“Some of cutaways need refinement”

Question 4.

“Nice amount for me, could maybe come and go a bit more”

“I’d like to see a little more music performances”

“To short, would of loved to see more”

“More live music instead of cut scenes!”

Question 5.

“Some of the cutaways”

“Beginning, took a minute to understand what films about”

“I was lost at the beginning”

“Some of the cut scenes of Dublin going on a bit to much”

Question 6.

“Filler shots, people on streets adds to their entertainment”

“The sub-conscious part was my favourite”

“Girls music, and villagers live music”

“Live performance”

Question 7.

“Maybe more cutaways of musicians doing stuff.”

“Live music”

“The musicians playing more definitely”

Question 8

“That you don’t know where the good stuff comes from, maybe shouldn’t ask to much either”

“Yeah definitely, I’d recommend it to everyone”

“The space writing takes part in”