See my original video here:
Identify Criteria for Feedback
Genre: The audience should be able to identify the genre as a kids animation. However this may not be the case, as the animation may not correctly display the genre I am trying to get across. Such as the minor threat level in the video when the biscuit smashes on the ground with sinister music in the background, so the audience may find it more suitable to older audiences from ages 7+ possibly, rather that the original target audience of ages 3+.
Content: The content of the video should appeal to the audience as it reflects the title in its content. It reflects the title as the content of the video shows the "Life of a Biscuit", which is also the title. I believe that the content of the video accurately reflects the title and so the audience should be able to know what they are watching before they open the video.
Style: The style of the video again should be evident to the audience, being a pseudo-realistic animation that presents a biscuit as having life. This should be evident to the audience because they know that the biscuit isn't actually capable of independent movement, but yet it appears as being able to move. This emphasises the pseudo-realistic style of the animation.
Narrative: The narrative of the video should be relatively easy to understand, as it is generalized in the title. The narrative of the video is that a biscuit has 'flashbacks' to early 'life' just before 'death', and so it shows different scenes such as a shop shelf, and the open boot of a car. The audience should be able to identify that the biscuit is having 'flashbacks' by the use of effects I have added in the editing stage, such as fading in and out to white, which is a common convention for flashbacks used in films and TV programmes.
Character: The characters used in the video are quite plain in nature, but they portray the emotions for what we needed them for. The characters included are the biscuit, and the person about to eat the biscuit. The biscuit portrays the main character, being the focal point in the animation.
Techniques: The techniques I used in the video are stop-motion animation frames taken at 8 frames per second, which looks very 'stop-and-start' due to the low frame rate. If we were to have to film it again and be given more time, then I would film at 24 frames per second, the only disadvantage to this would be that it would be extremely time consuming to complete for at least one minute of footage.
Technical Qualities: I believe that the technical qualities are obviously amateur, because of the low frame rate and a change of lighting in some scenes due to an accident with a lighting rig. A few frames were also lost in the editing stage, as importing an image sequence misplaced frames, which has impacted the animation heavily at the start, as it is a very fast movement when the hand takes the biscuit. Although I also think that given it is the first full animation me and Connor have made, it has decent technical qualities and stands as a strong start to future animation work.
Aesthetic Qualities: I believe that the character creation and the clay modelling we have done is a good effort to modelling life-like characters such as the human head and arm. The head was made with a simple ball shape with googly eyes with the clay stretched over to imitate eyelids, and finally we used a hook from a broken coat-hanger and sank it into the top of the head to hold for animation. The arm was again made from clay, but it was too heavy to keep itself upright, so we used broken plastic cutlery and submerged it inside the arm until it interlocked to stop the arm from breaking.
Creative Qualities: In my opinion, the idea of the "Life of a Biscuit" was quite original and creative. I thought the idea would be interesting and new, and we could also use biscuits from our own homes or buy them at a shop, and then add clay appendages to them such as eyes and mouths. I think the idea of the biscuit having 'flashbacks' before 'death', as it allowed us to implement different scenes into one short animation with a variety of locations.
Technical Qualities: I believe that the technical qualities are obviously amateur, because of the low frame rate and a change of lighting in some scenes due to an accident with a lighting rig. A few frames were also lost in the editing stage, as importing an image sequence misplaced frames, which has impacted the animation heavily at the start, as it is a very fast movement when the hand takes the biscuit. Although I also think that given it is the first full animation me and Connor have made, it has decent technical qualities and stands as a strong start to future animation work.
Aesthetic Qualities: I believe that the character creation and the clay modelling we have done is a good effort to modelling life-like characters such as the human head and arm. The head was made with a simple ball shape with googly eyes with the clay stretched over to imitate eyelids, and finally we used a hook from a broken coat-hanger and sank it into the top of the head to hold for animation. The arm was again made from clay, but it was too heavy to keep itself upright, so we used broken plastic cutlery and submerged it inside the arm until it interlocked to stop the arm from breaking.
Creative Qualities: In my opinion, the idea of the "Life of a Biscuit" was quite original and creative. I thought the idea would be interesting and new, and we could also use biscuits from our own homes or buy them at a shop, and then add clay appendages to them such as eyes and mouths. I think the idea of the biscuit having 'flashbacks' before 'death', as it allowed us to implement different scenes into one short animation with a variety of locations.
Collect Audience Responses
1.)
I think that this response is fair as the sound does appear slightly unbalanced due to the nature of the track I downloaded for the flashbacks scene from incompetech.com. Also I agree with the sound effects being a little too loud in comparison with the background track, such as the phone ringing and the smashing of the biscuit. In response to this, if I were to be given time to go back and edit the animation, I would start by lowering the volume of the sound effects to bring out the background track a little more so that the sound effects aren't the centre of the viewers' attention.
2.)
I think that due to this response the narrative of the video could be a little more clear, as the reviewer clearly has doubts about the structure of the narrative. To help solve this, I could have added a scene or two more to the animation as suggested to lengthen the animation and to add further depth to the biscuits' 'life' as it were. Although this could be quite tasking to come up with added scenes to show the 'life' of a biscuit, as a biscuit doesn't travel very far other than store to household, so adding scenes could prove difficult to generate ideas for. Other than that, a fair comment and fair review.
3.)
I do not believe that this comment is fair. The idea of the animation is to show flashbacks to a biscuits early life, where there is not much motion, as a biscuit cannot move independently; therefore the comment of 'lets it down a lot' doesn't really apply. Regardless, I do believe that the animation could have done with more motion, but not in the flashback scenes, but in another scene such as an extended falling scene or a scene before the biscuit is taken.
4.)
4.)
It's clear to see with this comment that the animation needed a little more work in terms of getting across the narrative to the audience in a clearer fashion. As the reviewer has commented, some annotations could be used to explain the storyline in more depth, or maybe a way to implement more speech into the animation to carry the story further. Overall I think this comment is fair and is helpful to further the quality of our animation.
5.)
From this comment I can see for definite that the animation could have been improved with a higher frame rate to increase the fluidity of motion. However, unlike previous comments, this reviewer seems to understand the story more than the others, which leads me to believe that the animation does accurately portray the narrative we were trying to get across but to some more than others. If I were to have to complete the assignment again, I would shoot the video in a higher frame rate, such as 16fps as this is an acceptable frame rate that is still time-consuming but not as much as 24fps.
6.)
6.)
This comment again shows that the animation needs more work on the storytelling aspect. Although the reviewer also mentioned that the end scene needs more work, this could mean that the ending needs an extra scene to further the narrative or that more can be done to emphasise the biscuit as having 'flashbacks'. Again to improve the animation I would work on the storytelling aspect by adding either extra scenes or annotations, or possibly a short introduction.
7.)
I believe that this comment is both fair and slightly unfair. Firstly, I disagree that the animation could be easily done on PowerPoint, as there is a fair amount of photo editing and sound editing to achieve the flashbacks effect. But I agree the stop motion animation aspect needs a little more work such as increasing the frame rate of the animation to increase fluidity of the animation.
8.)
I cannot really get anything from this comment that I have already have from the others, such as the sound seems unbalanced and more scenes are needed. To improve on this I again could add more scenes with more of an introduction just after the title scene.
9.)
From this comment I can see that the reviewer thought that the biscuit could have more of an involvement in the film. I have to say that I am not sure what the reviewer meant by this, as the biscuit is the main feature of the entire animation. However, I do understand that the hand could have been a bit smaller in comparison to the biscuit and also the head, as it looks out of proportion and the biscuit can barely be seen. To improve on this I would reduce the size of the clay hand and arm so that the biscuit and its' 'emotions' can be seen.
10.)
This comment shows that the work on the title screen has definitely paid off tied in with the opening shot. It also shows that the animation was a little hard to follow along with in terms of narrative, as the reviewer said that they had watched it several times, implying that the story was hard to follow at first, which they believe is because the length of the animation is short. The reviewer also thought that the use of backdrops was well used in the animation, such as the supermarket, which I edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6. To improve the animation I could increase the length of the animation so that it can be understood easier and clarify the story.
11.)
From this comment I get the impression that the reviewer enjoys the fact that we have covered the important events in the 'life' of a biscuit, and that we have given life to an inanimate object through the use of stop-motion. I cannot identify and areas for improvement in this comment so I cannot comment on how I would improve the animation.
8.)
I cannot really get anything from this comment that I have already have from the others, such as the sound seems unbalanced and more scenes are needed. To improve on this I again could add more scenes with more of an introduction just after the title scene.
9.)
From this comment I can see that the reviewer thought that the biscuit could have more of an involvement in the film. I have to say that I am not sure what the reviewer meant by this, as the biscuit is the main feature of the entire animation. However, I do understand that the hand could have been a bit smaller in comparison to the biscuit and also the head, as it looks out of proportion and the biscuit can barely be seen. To improve on this I would reduce the size of the clay hand and arm so that the biscuit and its' 'emotions' can be seen.
10.)
This comment shows that the work on the title screen has definitely paid off tied in with the opening shot. It also shows that the animation was a little hard to follow along with in terms of narrative, as the reviewer said that they had watched it several times, implying that the story was hard to follow at first, which they believe is because the length of the animation is short. The reviewer also thought that the use of backdrops was well used in the animation, such as the supermarket, which I edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6. To improve the animation I could increase the length of the animation so that it can be understood easier and clarify the story.
11.)
From this comment I get the impression that the reviewer enjoys the fact that we have covered the important events in the 'life' of a biscuit, and that we have given life to an inanimate object through the use of stop-motion. I cannot identify and areas for improvement in this comment so I cannot comment on how I would improve the animation.
My Overall Reception of Feedback
Overall the feedback on our animation has been quite helpful in the fact that the reviewers have given strong points of the animation as well as ways to improve. From what I can glean from the comments in general is that the animation definitely needs more work on the storytelling aspect in a way that it can be understood easier, possibly by adding annotations or by including an introduction to explain the premise of the animation so that the story is clearer and easier to understand. I also get the impression that to improve the quality of the animation a higher frame rate is needed to increase the fluidity of the animation, as in its current state the animation seems 'choppy' and this effects the quality of the film. I have also learned that the sound could be altered so that the sound effects could be made more subtle so they blend in with the background track, which I agree with. The final improvement that could be made as suggested by reviewers is that work could be done to reduce the size of the arm in the frames so that the biscuit can be seen in the clay hand of the human character so that it is clearer as to what is happening in the scene. So finally overall I think that the comments for the most part have been fair and strong and weak points in the animation have been highlighted in the reviewers' feedback, allowing me to find out where we have gone wrong in the perspective of our peers and older audiences; which in turn if it ever came to us having to recreate the animation, the feedback allows us to create a new and improved version of our animation with better quality and professionalism.
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