The audience feedback i got of the questionnaire was really useful. We found out that the setting was was the audience seen as 'typical' for a romantic comedy. The school setting with Gracie walking down the corridor and walking into the classroom is something the audience can relate to.
Other things that were found out from audience feedback was how we engaged the audience which the majority said was holding back the identity of our main character at the beginning as we just decided to show her feet getting out of bed and the back of her until she got to college. A lot of the audience said it was really easy to relate to the character, expecially when they heard the voice over, this could be because the teenage voice and thoughts were similar to their own.
The voice over was really effective and was mentioned a lot in our evaluation questionnaire, some reasons included : introduced characters, give voice over of stroyline and background, used in many romantic comedies and creates familiarity, felt like a friend and get close to the character before you see the film and it also follwed the character exactly.
It was hard for us to decide what institution our film should distributed by, 2 main companies we found distributed romantic comedies is disney and working titles, i think it will dpeend on whether we are going for a british romantic comedy or american to which institution we approach, we wanted our opening to be british so we decided working title will be the best for us.
The majorit of people thought that the date? definately conformed to the codes and conventions of a romantic comedy by the use of soundtrack, voice over, plot, the characters introduced within a stereotypical boy, costume, setting and general mise en scene, which we also agreed with because from allt he other romantic comedies we analysed we also found this. The audience also believed that the camera shots created different moods, for example they believed the long shot connoted that the main character was isolated and different which was our aimed effect. They also liked not seeing the female protagonists face at the beginning, giving the feeling of a mystery and that they wanted to see more.
As well as positives there were also negatives and the majority of the audience think that things in our opening should be changed to fit the typical codes and conventions of a romantic comedy maybe from other films they have seen. Most people thought that the male protagonist should be shown more especially showing that he is totally the opposite of her and connoting to the audience her love for him more. From the feedback they also believe that other characters shoiukd of also been introduced some people also thought that the geek could have looked more stereotypical and there should of been more close ups of her character for the audience to get a connection with her and it also would of fitted in with the voice over. There was a suggestion the music could of been more upbeat leading to a peaceful mood when the male protagonist appears as well as the voice over being louder.
Everyone thought that our opening was amimed at 15-18 year olds which is successful because that is exactly who we were aiming it at. The audience believed this because of the age range and the setting of our rom com. This is because it made the age group easier to relate to the character and the location.
Half the audience feedback suggested that the soundtrack fitted the age group . However the other half thought that it could have been more upbeat and modern, however this would of been hard for us as the music that we could use had to be form an unsigned band and the audience wouldn't of heard it before anyway so it has to be really suitable for the genre for them to like it. Some people believe that the music could of been more romantic when they first see joe.
Everyone said that they liked the editing and gave it great continuity with the audience able to understand what has happened. From this we believe that we have learnt how to use fade in, fade out, and dissolve effectively. Through this however we have also realised that things can effect continuity such as same things in the background cars being in one scene and not the other and by noticing this caused it to flow better.
We noticed things that could of been changed such as the credits at the end needed slowing down to give the audience a chance to read who was actually in The Date. It might of been more effective if we named the actors one at a time along the bottom of the screen instead of all at once. Also an improvement could of been made to te corridor scene were there is a zoom in used, this should of been used slower to give audience time to engage.
From the task as a whole we realised the importance of planning and using the correct shot for the ideal effect., using the right shot gave the audience a connection with the characters at the appropraitre times. It was also hard to keep to the codes and conventions of a romantic comedy and at a number of times had to shoot scenes again , however at ehe end our opening fitted everything and was really successful.
