Plan for the Screening of Our

Short Film‘Lost in the Eve’ – HELK Productions

Now that we have finished the final adjustments to our film and are happy with our final product, it’s time to see what other people think before we finalise the film and distribute it. This is mainly so that we can take any feedback we receive on board and make the adjustments recommended, if we feel they are appropriate to make our film as successful as possible before its release date. This is common practice in filmmaking and most directors will organise a private film screening to gain feedback before finalising their film. But not only will this screening allow us to get some feedback, it will also help us to establish an audience and potentially gain some recommendations.

Why are we screening our short film?

We have decided to screen our film on Wednesday 27th April in school, at 3:30pm, half an hour after the school day has finished. This is because we are inviting friends and family who fit our target audience (mixed gender 19-25 year olds) to see what they think of our short film, and we don’t want them to have to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the school ‘traffic’ or to have to drop their responsibilities in the middle of the day. We decided to do the screening within school because of the facilities we have access to for free, which important considering our very small budget. We have sought permission from our Media Studies teacher, Mr Simon Aske, to use his classroom and Smart Board between 3:30 and 4:30pm for the purpose of our screening. The Smart Board is a screen large enough for our intended audience of around forty people to see clearly, and the room also has surround sound which will help us to present our film in its best light.As we have access to the room for a full hour, and also any time we need to set up beforehand and clear up afterwards, we can prepare the film before our audience arrives so that it is ready to run as soon as everyone has arrived. It also means that we don’t have to rush our audience out after the screening so that we can tidy up. The short film itself is only around 13 minutes long, leaving plenty of time for our audience to arrive and get settled, and for us to do a short introduction, questionnaire, question and answer, and short thank you speech at the end.

Choosing the date, time and location

As I have already mentioned, we have invited friends and family that fit into our intended audience to come to the film screening to see if our film appeals to our target audience. However, we have also put up posters advertising the screening around school and posts on social media inviting others that fit into this demographic to come along too, so that our feedback is unbiased. I already have followers and friends on social media of a variety of ages, so I was confident that the posts would reach our target audience. This is a free and easy way of promoting our short film which even professional directors often use because of its success.

Inviting People

We have decided to put a poster up around school and the local area to invite 19-25 year olds (our target audience) to the film screening. This is what it looks like:

The Poster

We have decided that the most effective way to receive feedback on our short film is to provide our audience with a questionnaire to complete after they have finished watching the film because this allows the feedback to be anonymous, meaning that it is more likely to be honest. It will also allow us to analyse the feedback in more detail before making any changes to our short film because we can refer back to it. However, during the screening we will also be keeping an eye on our audience’s facial expressions to see how they react to our film, whether they are enjoying it, confused, absorbed, or something else as this can indicate that we have done something well, or potentially that we have done something badly.

The Questionnaire

This is the questionnaire we have come up with to give to our audience after the screening:

We have been editing our short film on Edius Pro 7, on a computer dedicated to this purpose. This meant that for us to screen the film on the Smart Board in the media studies classroom, we had to finalise a version of the short film, but keep a version saved as an Edius file so that we could come back and make any changes that we needed to. We then burned the finalised version onto a DVD which could just be played on the computer connected to the Smart Board in the classroom. This process will take about 20 minutes so we will need to do it in advance.

Transferring the File

To abide by public health and safety laws and school regulations, we have to ask all of our guests to sign our sign-in sheet when they arrive so that the school is aware of who was in the building, in case of a fire and also regarding the safety of pupils. They will also need to sign out when they leave. Furthermore, we will need to make our guests aware of fire exits so that everyone can escape safely if there were to be a fire. This will be something we mention in our welcome speech at the beginning of the event.This is the sign in that we have made and will be using on the night:

Safety

Printed name Time in Time out SignatureDate: 28/04/16

For the comfort of our guests, we will be providing some drinks and snacks at our film screening for them to eat and drink at their leisure. This is to help our audience to feel at home and comfortable giving us honest feedback in the questionnaires that we will hand out at the end of the screening. The refreshments will include tea, coffee, water, fizzy pop, crisps, fruit, biscuits, popcorn and cake.

Refreshments

We have decided to prepare a short welcome speech for the film screening:Katie: Hello and welcome to the first official film screening of ‘Lost in the Eve’, a short film by HELK Productions. Thank you for taking the time to come to our film screening. We hope that you enjoy our production.Lucy: The film is around 13 minutes long and will be followed by a short questionnaire that we would like you all to answer. Please remember to give honest feedback as it will go towards making our final product more successful. The questionnaire is anonymous so that you can be completely honest.Hamza: We have provided drinks and snacks for you to have at your leisure. Feel free to tuck in at any time during the screening – it’s all at the back of the room.Eman – As boring as it is, for safety reasons, you need to know where the nearest fire exits are. They are just out of the door to my right, on the left of the coridoor. If the fire alarm does sound, it is not a drill. You will need to make your way to the fire exits I just described.Katie: Also, please remember to sign out when you leave. Without further ado, here is ‘Lost in the Eve’.

Welcome Speech