Critisms From Rough Edit

We have recently shown the first rough cut of our film to the class to receive constructive criticism. Here the things we were told to focus on when improving our rough cut.

1. We were advised to speed up the dolly shot from over the mothers shoulder as she walks down the hallway. This is because she looks as though she is walking slowly and then in the next shot from inside the kitchen it is clear she is walking at normal pace again. This should be quite easy to achieve as you can easily out an effect on clips on Final Cut to make them faster. However its difficult to make it look like it hasn’t been made faster.
2. We didn’t have time to add all the diegetic sound to our rough cut before we had to show it. so obviously one of the criticisms was that the sound wasn’t consistent throughout. This should be easy to sort out though because we have all the sound available, we just need to add it and make sure it is synced.
3. Another thing we were told to consider was that the first ident is very abrupt and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the film. We as a group totally agreed, although an ident doesn’t have to have any connection with the film we understand that ours doesn’t flow smoothly into the next ident and into the rest of the film. We noticed this ourselves before we showed our first edit but were unsure on how to make it better, so we will all have to get together and think about what we can do.
4. We were told that the childish, creepy music box music makes the what is going to happening in the opening far too obvious from the start. However as a group we do really like this music and think it fits very well and it was only one person who thought it was too obvious so although we will try different music, I don’t think we will make a permanent change.
5. Obviously we were criticised for the title page at the end rough edit but we are already in the process of improving this, we just didn’t get the chance to improve it before our rough edit was submitted.
6. We were also criticised for the scream at the end of our rough edit and were told it would sound better with more of an echo or something to make it sound more eerie. So myself and Vicky have planned to go into our school sports hall, a large empty building, where I will record Vicky’s scream with a natural echo. Hopefully it will work much better than out current scream.

I feel that all of this feedback was very helpful and will greatly improve our film opening once we get back on Final Cut and make the improvements we need. We have discussed the criticisms and are aware of what we must do to improve them, its just as case of getting to work and making the improvements now.