Wiping Non-existent Tears

A student noticed that our actor was wiping her face when there were not any tears to wipe away. This was intentional as it emphasises the deterioration of her mental state. The fact she is wiping away imaginary tears suggests how she could be hallucinating or the fact that emotionally she wants to cry but physically her body is too drained to produce tears. This could also make the audience question whether she is guilty because she is clearly distraught over what happened to her 'friend' which makes you question is she is responsible of affected.  

Changes

• We cut the slow zoom shot of the mirror shot to edit out the cameraman 
• Added a few seconds to the establishing to extend the introduction 
• Made the fade to black a second longer between the production company and the establishing shot 
• Added laughing audio to flashbacks 

Adding Laughter Audio

One of the comments made by our classmates was to add audio in the background of the flashbacks because it seemed to missing something:

This is the audio we added: 

  /Users/asy12group4201617/Desktop/352558__jazzinda__sfx-girl-laughing.wav

Reflection

The feedback that we gathered was extremely constructive, it opened our eye to ideas we would not have thought of, had we not carried out this research. All the suggestions were insightful however, not all of them could be applied to our project due to the complications they would cause to the structure and continuity. An example of this is the recurring comment that the ending was too stretched out. Even though  re-filming this scene would have improved our project, there would be difficulties to maintain continuity because our actress had a hair cut which is clearly very different to her hairstyle in the original footage. This means we would either have to film all the scenes again so the mise-en-scene would be aligned or the more realistic option which was to just leave out the changes. Continuity has been the main reason we are so hesitant to re-shoot scenes as it could result in more inaccuracy's if the set is not the same as when we first filmed. 

For the time being we are going to focus on the improvements we can make through editing the footage we already have.   

Friends response

More feedback:

Q: What did you like?

A: My favourite part was the blood and the photo frame scene. The camera shots were really good as well and you get bits of the plot but not fully so your still in the dark. Its open to interpretation.  

Q: What would you change?

A: I would make the ending more of a cliff hanger, leave a note or something that adds suspense.  

Q: Would you go and watch it?

A: Yes probably but I would be a little scared because I do not like psycho thrillers.

Teachers response

Here are some more responses:

This time we asked the audience three questions to get an understanding for what they think of it and ways they would improve it:

Q: What did you like about it?

A: The atmosphere that it created was really good and so was the acting. The suspense was also very effective.

Q: What would you improve?

A: The pacing at the end was a little elongated which makes you expect something else to happen, but nothing does. 

Q: Would you watch the rest of this if it was a film? 

A: No because its too suspenseful and I would get scared. 

Class feedback

Now that we have finished our project we decided to show it to our media class because we wanted to get feedback from people that have not viewed it before as they will have a fresh perspective, compared to our group who have been editing it for the past few months. The aim was for them to pick up on any mistakes and faults that we may have overlooked as well as any improvements that they think would make our opening better. 

Here is their feedback:

            

The overall response was fairly positive except for a few minor criticisms and suggested changes:

• In the over-shoulder shot with the slow zoom the cameraman is visible for few seconds in the reflection of the mirror.
• The establishing shot was too short because we only had one, they suggested adding another one that is different or extending the length of our current one.
• The black screen between the production company and the start of our opening was too short.
• When our actor is crying she wipes her face, but there are not any tears on her face.
• It would be good to have ambient sound in the flashbacks to make it more like a home video, or add disturbing demonic sounds to reflect her mindset  
• The pacing at the end was too long.  

Trapped

This is our finished film opening:

            

The Flashbacks

In order to make our flashbacks stand out against the rest of the opening we altered the colour of the shots. By dimming the flashbacks it made a clear cut between her memories and reality to ensure the audience know what was going on. The dull tones also reflected the patients thoughts as she reflects on their time together in a negative way this informs the audience that they are not fond memories. To edit the picture we altered the exposure, brightness, contrast and colour saturation in the settings.

 

 

Duration Of Titles

At first when we applied our titles to your opening they appeared for various duration's of time ranging from about 2 seconds to 4 seconds because we were inserting them to fit in with the duration of certain shots. After re-visiting them we realised that the inconsistency of the tiles made the opening seem rushed and poorly constructed, as well as difficult to read because they were so short. Although the conventional duration for a titles to be on screen is 4 seconds or more there are some openings that have their titles up for less even though it is not conventional in the film industry, an example of this is 'The Last Panthers' (2015) where the title appear for 2-3 seconds:

'Gone Girl' (2014) is another example of this, as the titles barely appear for 2 seconds before slowly fading out. This is half the expected time for film titles however they get away with it because the majority of their titles are short so you can read them before the text disappears: 

   

Through doing this research we concluded that although our titles do not necessarily have to be the customary 4 seconds long, they do need to be consistent in their duration. It just so happened that the agreed duration was 4 seconds because they aligned nicely.