Second Rough Cut

After our audience feedback, we have produced another rough cut. This has changed from the first rough cut:

Individual clips have been cut right down

• Our shots have been re-ordered to add clarity
• We have tried a number of different ways of creating connections for the audience e.g. matches on dialogue ("You need to see someone" / next shot is in counsellor's room), graphic matches (little girl in dream tilts head to side / cut to mother's head coming into shot tilted on one side as calls upstairs), matches on theme (running / danger shots)
• We have cross-cut more with the dream sequence to make the connection between the older and younger girl clearer.

Photos for Magazine Cover

Here we are experimenting with some photos of the main character for the magazine cover:

These photos were taken of the main character in our piece. They are taken from behind with her looking back at the camera to make it look as though she is running away. This style of shot was the closest we could get to an action shot as when we tried to make her actually run and take the photo, they all came out blurry when put on the photo editing package. They do not look blurred in the camera playback, so it is the resizing of the image causing the problem.

Although we liked this idea and started a rough mock up as seen above, when putting the photos on the editing package and starting to make the magazine cover, we realised the shot felt more like poster photos. We feel that the poster will be able to put this image in some kind of context, whereas the magazine cover won't have the space to give it enough impact or explain the facial expression and pose.

After realising this, we checked through other photos we had taken, some of them were out of focus. The  close ups we had done were not of a good standard and this is why we took  more. We believe that the lighting was the main reason for the photos being out of focus as  we could not find a setting on the camera that could cope with a dark room and bright torchlight at the same time. This is why when we took the new photos, we did not use torches to light up her face. Instead, we used the lighting from a bright coloured wallpaper on the apple mac and put it close to her therefore it reflected off  her face. This resulted in the photos coming out really well and they are the new photos that we are using for the new magazine cover. We feel that the choice of a close up is more impactful for the cover which relies on the one image to get the message across and therefore that image needs to be really striking.

Poster Ideas from Research

We liked the idea of this poster as it represents someone with a lot going on in their head, like our character:

We took two photos from our filming:

We took some rough photos (not of the cast member):

And mocked up a rough poster:

Ultimately we have decided not to go with this idea. Although we love the idea of something going on in the head of the main character, one of the key issues it raises is space. The head area is relatively small to place such a key image, and as it is impactful, we want to see more of it. We are also not so sure this will have an obvious connection with the title.

Here are some of the many photos we took of our actual cast member:

 

As you can see, we have been thinking hard about lighting - we feel the photo will be much more effective with interesting lighting on the face, however it is quite difficult to achieve. We liked the first photo because the shadow on the left side of her face suggests someone coming, which is why she has turned round. We really like the idea of her being trapped between the murder she saw in the past (behind her and faded out to represent the past) and a connected future danger (the shadow coming towards her). This is a line of thought we want to develop.

 

 

 

Although we feel this poster idea has potential, we are not going to continue with this version as a key issue raised is whether this gives too much away. We have limited photos available for the drowning as it was a challenging scene. In our film, we are imagining the drowning being revealed in the dream little by little. This poster might therefore tell the audience too much. Of course, it will be seen in the trailer, but the poster will be released before that. If we had a more partial shot from much closer up, that might work, but we could not spend too long organising photos because we had to consider our cast member, Kelly, who was already doing us a big favour agreeing to lie in a river in winter!



Reaction to Feedback on First Cut

 Switch – re-watching rough cut

-reorder

-add effects for dream sequence

-add voiceover?
-make shots shorter

Comments on audience feedback

-they were unsure whether the girl at the start was Lucy when she was little but I think this will become clearer when we reorder our shots and have a more shaped cut as it’s a bit messy at the moment.
-someone said there were too many suspects, however I think this leaves mystery for the real film. Most of them said the two main suspects were the teacher and the caretaker which I thought was a good thing as there wasn’t one clear suspect.
-they were confused about the person in Lucy’s bedroom as they didn’t know whether this was real or she was imagining it. I also think this is good in a way as it leaves it ambiguous for the audience but a simple effect could show that its her hallucinating from the drugs.

I found it hard to know how to interpret some of this feedback. I appreciate the points raised but some of them reflected deliberate choices rather than mistakes. The main points I will take from this is the need to make the dream sequence distinctive and the need to change the order to help clarity. I also know we need more pace, which was mentioned and acts as good confirmation.

Response to Audience Feedback

On Re-Watching First Cut:
 

Loads of shots that are the same - we have duplicated material

Some of the sound needs to be toned down

Add effects on the shots that are dreams – filters

Make it a lot shorter

Show more about the plot of the film – not enough info

Make dream / reality clear

Comments on audience feedback:
 

They were confused about the person in the bedroom – we are going to put filters on all the shots that are dreams so that this is obvious they are dreams and not real.

They said there was not enough info – by having a more shaped cut, it will help us distinguish the plot of the story clearer for the audience.

They said they could not tell who it was and the suspects – I was pleased with this as we want people to be unsure on who did the crime and to lead people on to the wrong suspect.  

Filmed Audience Feedback

Here we see a Year 12 class watching our rough cut. The dialogue tells us where we are in the cut and we can see their reactions. Afterwards we watched some discussion of the piece so far, focusing on understanding of the story. Last year, we took a similar approach to getting audience feedback and felt that it worked well. Not being there gave the Year 12s freedom to be critical without feeling rude. We were also able to tell our teacher what we wanted to know and let her guide the discussion. In some ways, this manipulates the feedback; but at the same time, we are aware that not all feedback is useful. For example, our teacher was able to move discussion on when it was getting to areas that weren't useful relevant for us. We did find out a lot from this, mainly that while some people seemed to understand the narrative easily, others were more confused. We need to make it clearer so that anyone can understand.

Whole Rough Cut for Feedback

Here we have put our separate cuts together and created a whole trailer to show an audience. We are hoping that they will be able to focus on what we want to know, as we are aware that there are a lot of distracting mistakes in this. We know a lot of these and the value of this initial feedback for us is in establishing what the audience can understand about plot and character. This is our key concern right now.

Initial Edit

To begin the editing process, we divided the storybaord between us and each put together a very rough cut of our separate sections:

Oliver's Section

Katherine's Section

 

 

We have used some of the same shots here and need to work out exactly where each belongs. We also know the trailer lacks pace and some coherence. However, we are pleased with what we have achieved so far as our main purpose was to select the shots we wanted to use from all of our filming. We have had to choose from various takes and angles and then trim these shots down even further. This was time-consuming, so we feel that from the work we have done so far, we can finally begin to work on a proper cut of the trailer.