M2

Feedback

After finalising my audio tracks (this means finishing edits and placing them into the same timeline as the animation), I asked my peers to review my animation with the audio included to assess what they enjoyed, what they didn't, what they would change and why.

To do this, I created an online form for them to fill out. I then had them watch my animation and listen to the audio.

Here are the questions I included in my form:

I asked very simple questions in regards to whether they enjoyed the animation and if they thought that the audio was fitting in terms of the theme. I gained 8 responses in total, all of them containing some sort of improvement I could make.

Question 1 Responses:

The first question in the form contained a scale from 1 to 10, where the audience were able to say whether they believed that the audio was high quality or not: 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. Overall, the majority of votes were 8 and 9, however, a few voted for 7. I believe this is because some of the audio files weren't as high quality as each other.

Question 2 Reponses:

The next question was in regards to the voice acting. Not many people had any disagreements with the voice acting, however, one individual said 'no' for their own reasons and provided feedback as to why they believe this. I believe that the majority of people voted for 'yes' because of the editing for the dialogue. I believed that it made it stand out because of its originality and difference to usual voice overs.

Question 3 Responses:

Question 3 follows on from question 2, asking for reasoning on why they thought the voice acting was either good or bad in their opinion. The response that stood out to me was the one that suggested on adjusting the speed of the dialogue: They believed that the dialogue was said too quickly and did not fit the duration of the animation. This, however, could be in issue in context of the animation rather than the audio itself, as they did not specify whether they disliked the editing or not. For future reference, I will ask the voice actor to do multiple takes; some that are slower and some that are faster than others. This is to avoid the risk of having too little dialogue recordings or having a recording with errors in them.

Either way, this person still agreed that the voice acting was up to standard and apart from the duration of the dialogue, they were satisfied with it anyway.

Question 4 Responses:

Overall, everyone that provided feedback agreed that the audio tracks fit the theme of my animation. Although this question does not ask for criticism in terms of the audio itself, it is reassuring to know that the audio was not off putting or too different to the theme, mood and genre that I was aiming for.

Question 5 Responses:

This question is the second part of the 4th question: but no answers were provided, as no one disagreed that the audio fit the theme of the animation.

Question 6 Responses:

This was the question that gave the audience the most freedom with an answer. I included this as I wanted to receive some more detailed feedback that might have not been tailored for in the other provided questions. With this question, the audience were able to freely express their own personal opinions and take on the audio / animation and what exactly they liked or disliked.

I will be responding to the feedback I received in detail in D1, explaining what criticism I received, how I will respond to it and what changes I will make to my soundtrack based on it.

The first response was in regards to the quality of the foley tracks. There also a few other responses that were reviewing this aspect of the audio. They described it as being low quality and unintentionally distorted. Apart from this, they did not have any issues with the other audio tracks. I agree that the foley audio tracks after editing were quite low quality, however, at the time I did not how to normalise and improve the quality of the audio. Now, if I were to improve or make changes, I will use Adobe Audition to re-edit the audio and make improvements to the quality to make it match the quality of the other audio tracks.

Another suggestion someone made was that they suggest that I change the equipment I used to create the foley sounds. Due to the limited equipment available, I was stuck only being able to use what I had access to. However, I do still heavily agree with this feedback: If i had the choice, next time I will use a heavier object to recreate the gavel sound to make it sound more wooden and loud. Also, next time, for the gate sound, I will use a heavier sounding door. It also did not help that the quality after editing was not very substantial.

One of the audience members suggested using a different soundtrack as an alternative to the one I used: This is because the soundtrack I used was from a video game that contained copyrighted music. I decided to use this soundtrack initially as it supported the theme of the animation and had similar qualities to my audio tracks. Despite my reasonings for why I used it, I agree with this individual that I should have still considered using copyright free music. I can do this by using a copyright free audio library or finding a copyright free song on the web, such as YouTube.

Next time, I will create 2 finalised versions: one with the desired music, sound effects and foley tracks, and one with copyright free alternative sound files that are still similar sounding.

Other than this the other responses were positive and mainly pointed out the fact that it had a very recognisable style as it was inspired by the vide game OMORI. One strength I can point out from this feedback is that I know how to take inspiration and use it will having my own charm and uniqueness in my work.

Overall, I can clearly state that one thing that desperately needs to be improved is the quality of the foley sounds: after gaining more experience in using audio editing software, I can confidently say that for next time I will be able to normalise the audio and make improvements to the audio where its needed. (D1)