Reflective part 3

Heylo again

What I intended to do after completing the 3 variations of the Film was to contemplate a testing method, now in the development of the 3 film is did indeed research into the UK Film Associations and ask there advice on how they tested Films and also on Film and sound forums however it was a fruitless effort as a game of pass the parcel began which every time was passed on and got no nearer an answer.

Likewise in the forums I was shunned and only asked for directions to where to find answers - after all the Internet; the place to share information, obviously I was mistaken. The search led me onto more dynamic areas looking at other students work and projects involving Film testing which had more promising aspects in which I found out mostly screenings and questionnaires where used with mostly positive and useful information gathered.

Delving into the creation of my questionnaire I considered qualitative and quantitative questions and scoring systems, what originally came up with was a purely qualitative questionnaire for which was preparing to test itself once I had found another element to my testing. This next element was found accidentally ( again with accidents ) in a random assumption that blinking could maybe be affected by audio. Backed by my supervisor the research on this led to Walter murch's book 'In the blink of an eye' which was recently overlooked because I believed it was only about Film and not specified on audio.

To my surprise it was very enlightening albeit short on the subject of blinking and visual, but in one instance he mentions possibly not by intent of a sonically proven way blinking is affected by audio intake, not effects but vocals. He says

" Start a conversation with somebody and watch when they blink. I believe you will find that you listener will blink at the precise moment he or she 'gets' the idea of what your saying, not an instant earlier or later."

This lead me to believe that If I was too capture the viewers as they watched I could match up the blinking of each subject in each film and see if there was a connection.The initial test proceeded shortly after this.

The test was conducted at a friends apartment and captured using a hand held camera and shown on a laptop, the quality of the results from both tests where very useful in developing my testing methods. With the results of the questionnaire especially I re evaluated my test and submitted it to a lecturers approval and after such modified it again with both qualitative and quantitative questions and making sure multiple choice questions where used instead of open answers apart from a few questions which needed to be open.

The Video test was also useful in detecting blink points and notably other variables like eyebrow movements and rapid blink and any mouth movement like smiling. At last something had come together to use to test whether the sound effects had an effect on these. Hence the test was then approved by the supervisor and bookings were made at the university cinema and cameras were hired as well.

However this was not by any means the final chapter of the project. More next time