ESting evaluation.

STEP 1:
Create your own user feedback survey


STEP 2: 

For my animation project I want to review it by making a written report. Reasons for this are as follows: Firstly I do not like oral presentations, I'm not a confident speaker and I do not like standing in front of large crowds and speaking aloud. Secondly audio commentary is not a great way of conveying a review of something, so I would not do something like that.

After I had created my ESting my teacher had uploaded it to YouTube. At the moment this is the only place my animation has been shown/exhibited. There are only a select few who have been sent the video as they needed to complete my survey. If I have wanted to show it to a wider range of people I would have posted the video to Facebook and other social media websites. If my ESting gets entered into the competition and somehow gets put on TV, that will be a great way to show off my project.

For my feedback I created a survey, below you will see all of the questions I asked in my survey, and all of the responses that I have received. The criteria for my survey is the following: Genre & audience, content & narrative, style, characters, techniques, aesthetic qualities, and creative abilities. The overall reaction of my ESting and judging by my survey results, most people liked it and posted good feedback, at the same time there were a few people who did leave some constructive criticism.

Questions Used:

1) Age, Gender and Profession - I had a large range of different ages and professions. None of the people who watched the ESting were within my age group for what I planned my ESting. The age group I wanted was ages 10 to 12.

2) Rate ESting out of 10 - Everyone who responded to the survey had to give a rating out of ten. Out of 15 results, the average rating for my ESting came to 7.5.

3) Genre of ESting - In my survey, I asked people what genre my ESting was. I gave them many options to choose from. The genre for my video is action and comedy.

4) Is the narrative clear and understandable? - The majority of people who answered my survey thought that the narrative was clear and understandable. I believe 2 people who took the survey did not think that the narrative was clear and understandable.

5) Style of animation - Everyone selected the stop-motion animation. The whole class had to do this style of animation because that is what was stated in the brief. It was obvious that the video was stop-motion animation but as part of the brief we had to ask this question.

6) Age group - My age group for my ESting is ages 10-12. I had a variety of different answers for this question. The majority of people who took my survey said that my age group was 10-12, closely followed by people saying that the age group was 13-15 year olds.

7) Do you like the characters used? I only used 2 characters throughout my ESting, I used myself as the main character, and a LEGO monster that I filmed in front of a green screen and made him large. People who answered the survey said they like the character that were used however there was 2 people who said they would rather see new or different characters.

8) Did the animation run smoothly? I personally believe that my animation ran smoothly, most of the respondents agree that the animation was smooth but there was 1 person who did not think this.

9) What was aesthetically pleasing to you? I had a whole bunch of different answers to this question. My ESting did not have many colours but did have a lot of special effects and editing involved. Such as making the LEGO monster huge and making him look scary. I also added in a large explosion when I punched the LEGO monster.

10) Was the ESting creative and unique? I think that green screening a LEGO monster into my video was a creative idea. I do agree with some of the respondents as they said that it was both creative and unique. However a few people have said that the idea was probably not unique and to a certain extent, I do agree with what they are saying because there are things that are similar to this in other existing movies and videos.

STEP 3: 

In creating my ESting, I did come across one constraint/problem. This was when I was editing the explosion effect and transition and when I added it into the editing system, the explosion had a black background behind it and it very difficult to remove it. To resolve this problem, I submitted my current work unfinished, then the whole class watched it and gave me feedback on what went well and what I needed to improve. The majority of the class said there needed to be more effects within the video. So afterwards we had a week to go back to make any changes we needed to make. During that time, I added an explosion to the part in which I punched the LEGO man. We had to use a soundtrack that was already provided for us, if we used any other soundtrack we would have broken the rules of the competition and our video would get a copyright strike and then the video would not be allowed into the competition.

In terms of filming I managed my time very well and I managed to film everything and still had enough time to film. But when it came to editing my animation, I did not manage to complete it all within the initial time limit because of the explosion effect problem.

The ESting I made has met the requirements of the brief. During pre production and also during filming I made sure that the animation was going to be 10 seconds long, and is stop-motion animation.

I gained feedback by creating and sending out a survey to my friends and family. The answers and responses to my survey were all serious and there were no jokes being made. All of the feedback I take into consideration so that if we ever do this again I know what I can improve. I like getting feedback because then I have the knowledge to make changes.

I feel that I have learned A lot about the different types of animations and also a lot on how to make stop-motion animation. I however did not like working to a brief because this restricted my ideas and creativity, and so this meant I could not create what ever I wanted but had to follow strict guidelines and rules.

Knowing that working to a brief is commonplace in the media industry I don't think I would like it too much, but I do enjoy expanding on ideas that are already given to me so it would not be a problem therefore I think I could potentially be a suitable candidate.

For me I did like the animation topic, but I do not think it will be right for me as filming things like stop-motion animation is tedious in my opinion and it could potentially get boring very quickly.