Animation Evaluation

This is mine and my partners finished animation piece named 'Magic!': 

EXHIBITION
In order to find out what the audience thought of the ESting, we exhibited this work and distributed it across the internet. I made a questionnaire on surveymonkey.com, and then used websites such as Facebook and Tumblr and college emails to help receive an evaluation and some feedback. Sending out the survey via college emails means that I have recieved feedback both from media students and other general students, which means I have been able to get feedback from different perspectives and views of media. I have also shown the final piece to family members and friends, which means I have gotten feedback from a wide range of ages with different pshycographics. In order to exhibit my work to a wider audience public screenings (such as near the Forum in Norwich) are possible. 

RESULTS
I have overall decided to review my results by doing a written report on this blog post below. This is because I can add screenshots and charts easily and I personally prefer evaluating by writing/blog post because it's a method I have used the most. 

Looking at the results I received, I have overall gotten 9 results from surveymonkey, 4 being female and 5 being male mainly being 17-24 years old. They were all from around the local area (Suffolk, Norfolk) and were all middle class. This means that the main psychographical information from my audience is that they would generally watch TV and channels such as E4, as this is the age range that E4 aim to. Looking at the psychograhics from E4, the audience generally would watch comedy channels/movies and their interests would most likely also be surfing the web too. I think, because we made our ESting entertaining, the ESting is targeted to the correct audience. The primary audience being teenagers while the secondary audience would be slightly older, as comedy is a wide enjoyable genre. 

Firstly, I asked questions about the genre and audience of the ESting. The majority of the audience thought that the genre was comedy/entertainment. I believe this is a successful response. The audience mainly thought that the target audience for this ESting was young adults. 

I also asked some questions about the content and narrative of the ESting, by asking the audience what they thought was happening in the ESting and if they thought it was clear, overall answering 'yes' and that they knew that this was advertising a TV channel while also being about a magic E4 man. I overall feel that we could have improved on the 'magic' or the theme of the ESting, as the overall 'magic' part wasn't as well presented as I had hoped. Therefore we could have been more creative with our content. 

Next, to find out whether the audience liked the claymation model and also to find out how to improve, I asked the question "what is your opinion of the claymation model?" as an open question. I also asked the audience if they liked how the claymation and live-action have been used together, as I personally thought this was unique and different from other EStings made. The audience overall said 'yes' and they felt that this was very effective.

Do you like how both live-action animation and claymodels have been used together?

Do you think the movement of the characters could be improved? (frame rate, fluidity etc.)

We received good critical feedback and the main response we got from this question was mainly about the movement of the model, meaning that the overall fluidity could have been improved and made much smoother. To make the overall ESting 10 seconds, in editing, we actually did remove some of the frames so it was shorter. I believe this overall made the movement more jerky, and therefore I think we could have improved the quality of the editing.
The next question I asked was "do you like the background, and the overall setting of the ESting?", with the majority of responses being yes. This was also the same response from the question "Did you overall enjoy this ESting? Did you think it was imaginative?". 

CONSTRAINTS
We had many problems when filming however we were able to resolve them and successfully finish filming in the end. One of the first problems we accounted was the location for our filming. We were unsure of what background to have and even though we decided to use just a plain background, this ended up not going as well as planned, as our mise-en-scene was very poor. We then shot decided to re-shoot and use a black wall as a background with some lighting set up. This change of location overall wet successfully although at some points we had to work around other groups and people.
Another problem we had was with the actual lighting. We first had problems of what kind of set up would be best and we felt that we couldn't get a professional looking set up to begin with. The second time we tried setting up the lights, it turned out that they were broken, and therefore we were made behind schedule because we had to wait for the lights to be fixed. However, we were able to sort this problem out with the teachers, and we were able to finish filming within the deadline. 
We didn't have much of a budget for our production. All we used was clay for our model, and a small location. The equipment such as the lighting and the cameras were provided by the college. 
E4 provided us with the music, therefore we didn't need to worry about any regulatory or legal issues. 

Even though there weren't may issues linking to our filming, since our ESting would have the possibility of being broadcast on the channel E4 we would have to make sure that it follows Ofcom's and Channel 4's guidelines too. 
Ofcom is a regulatory body which regulates TV, Radio and Advertisements in the UK. They make sure, which is quoted from their website: "that people who watch television and listen to the radio are protected from harmful or offensive material". Therefore this means that when we were creating our ESting, we had to make sure that it wasn't harmful or offensive to the E4 audience. This means that we had to be careful with what are content was and we had to negotiate what was the best idea. Ofcom is also mentioned on the Channel 4 website as it mentions "...to receive creative and bold material within the parameters of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code and the law." (source) This means that we had to make sure that we followed Ofcoms guidelines about making our ESting appropriate and this meant that we also followed Channel 4's guidelines too. 

TIME
We had a slight problem with time and deadlines as we had to re-film because we felt that our first attempt could be improved. We also missed a few days because of college closures, however, I was able to talk with my partner and sort out how to meet deadlines by, for example, using break and lunchtimes to shoot and edit. Even though editing the pictures together didn't take long, we had to fix the lighting by adjusting the contrast and brightness, and this overall took up a lot of our time. 

REQUIREMENTS
Clicking on this link here will take you to the official rules!

Comparing my ESting to the rules and regulations, I feel that we followed the rules very well. This is because our ESting is exactly 10 seconds and we used the music provided by them. We also had an E4 logo clearly placed in our ESting and in my opinion it isn't offensive or harmful to anybody at all who is viewing. Therefore, this ESting would be able to be entered if we wanted it to be.

FEEDBACK
I mainly obtained feedback from my classmates and friends within college, therefore the audience from my results aren't as wide as I had hoped, however I did manage to get one piece of feedback from an older family member too on the questionnaire. On our first attempt we also got feedback from a tutor, which overall convinced us to re-shoot and be more imaginative. 

I overall feel that I have learnt a lot during the project, mainly about the process of animation and the difficulties that come with creating it. For example, there are mainly issues with time and issues with filming across a long time period (lighting changes, continuity etc.) 

I felt that working to a brief meant that we were slightly less creative. This is because, for example, we had a time limit, we had to include certain factors (such as the E4 logo) and we weren't allowed to create our own music/soundtrack. Because of these points, working to a brief it overall quite difficult, however I found it enjoyable because I like the process of animation and find it very interesting in itself. 

I think that I would be a suitable candidate for working within the media industry because I felt that I worked well with my partner during the filming and editing and we were able to resolve any issues rather quickly. This means that both me and my partner are organised and we were able to take on situations and resolve them without panicking. For example, when we fell behind schedule, we were able to resolve this by communicating and finding out our free time to try and catch up with time. 

I overall love animation as a media and think that it's very unique and different and can be more imaginative and creative in some respects. I mainly like the editing and also the creation of characters, setting and the stories. My favourite type of animation is actually stop motion, especially in older children's TV shows and films such as Coraline, Mary & Max and Fantastic Mr Fox. This is because the movement (of the characters) and the amount of time and effort, in my opinion, is a lot greater and creative than using CG. CG wasn't as detailed back in the 90s, but the quality and amount of stop motion was really quite high- which is one sole reason why I find it much more fascinating. 
I possibly see it as a career option, but this would be for the editing side. I would also possibly like to try participating in a bigger stop motion project.