Plan for Screening

1. ‘Lost in the Eve’ – HELK Productions

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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:

6. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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:
Printed name Time in Time out Signature
Date: 28/04/16

10. 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.

11. 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’.