Teacher Feedback: The Final Cut

We were very pleased with the feedback we received from our teachers. They all were really impressed by what we had managed to acheive.

• The new fight scene worked well, with the 'bad guy' looking more professional and less like a thug!
• Continuity works perfectly with no very noticable flaws.
• The camerawork is imersive and lively, with handheld techniques giving it a raw quality.
• The editing is fast paced and action packed, but also thrilling and suspense-filled.
• The acting is really professional and makes the narative really dramatic and scary!
• The music works brilliantly with the picture and helps build suspense.
• The titles at the beginning and end make the final product look very professional.
• The fade to white at the end cleary indicates to the audience that the film is about to begin.

Summary of Audience Feedback

Group 2 Questionnaire

The Screening:

To get some feedback from other students in the school, we held a screening in the media department at lunchtime on wednesday 17th march 2010. 

After receiving an applause when the first viewing of the film ended, we handed out questionaire which we had prepared beforehand, and asked the audience to fill them in whilst we screened the film again.

The screening was a great success with around 20 questionaires fully filled in. People seemed to really enjoy the screening of our opening sequence.

Teacher Feedback: BLK

The overall feedback given to our rough cut was that most of it could and should be used for our actual film. This was agreed as bad weather conditions expected over the weekend would make any footaged gained impossible to match (e.g. if it was raining, then suddenly it was snowing!). It was agreed that filming the whole sequence again in the rain would not be worth the effort just to fix the minor problem of slightly imperfect footwear on our 'bad guy', as the sequence we have created out of our test footage works really well one the whole.

So, as a result it was decided that if we get good weather, we will try to film the shots of our 'bad guy' outside with the car in better costume.

We will also film, if weather allows, the shot of 'Matt' coming through the door, but this time, closing it.

We will also film, if weather allows, the shot of the 'Bad Guy' breaking into the house, trying there to improve the action - maybe he kicks the door?

We will film, regardless of weather (as it's inside) the final scene of our sequence (the fight) to acheive better matches on action and maybe make it a bit longer.

Rough Cut - Group Feedback

Here is what we as a group believe we need to change for saturday:

• Different costume - Tom P will order a balaclava tonight, and Hugh will be wearing black cargo pants and black boots
• We will experiment with focus pulls over the banister shots in order to have variety in what shots to use
• In one of the final shots (the slow pan over to Matt's eyes), we will use a range of different focuses in order to achieve a more thrilling effect with the mirror
• We will try to achieve better match on action in the fight scene at the end by making the fight more similar each time it is shot
• In order to make the bad guy look more convincing we will have him looking around less when he is on the street
• We will make sure Matt closes the door as he enters the house to try and give the effect of trying to keep people out of the house

Teacher Feedback: DYM

I must point out that the lack of posts for the past week and a bit is almost completely down to Hugh being on holiday. But we have completed our rough cut, and here is the feedback:

• The beginning of the sequence needs to be slowed down
• The kidnapper looks around too much - needs to be more subtle
• All the stairwell shots work well
• Matt shouldnt leave the door open when he enters the house
• Pull focus on the bannisters?
• Try different focuses for the wolfman shot

Proposal Feedback

• Great presentation
• Good Idea
• Strong conventional features
• Clear target audience
• Strong Actors
• Will we be able to sustain the visual look of the action-thriller genre?
• Second half of narrative is not working.
• Keep 'Matt' on the first floor until the guy enters the house.
• Then cross-cuts between guy walking up stairs and 'Matt' running upstairs and trying to hide.
• This avoids issue of having 'Matt' looking scared in the upstairs of his own house!
• Develop chronological sequence. 

We were given the green light to move onto pre-production.
We received an A grade for our Planning.
We received an A grade for our Presentation.

Initial Idea - Teacher Feedback

25/01/10


We told Miss our initial idea for the first time today, and she gave us some constructive feedback. Here is a summary of what she said:

• She reminded us of the importance of the titles, and how they would fit with the images.
• She said that having the victim looking out of the second window was too much, and put in that situation the victim would have climbed out of the widow and taken his chances on the roof.
• She suggested that the victim attempts to fight back once the man has found him (an idea that we had previously discarded).
• We discussed how we could keep the sequence under the given 2 minutes.

Titles

We have decided that if possible, we are going to try to integrate the titles into the mise-en-scene, such as on walls, on the ground, etc. To find out how much we can to with the titles, we have booked a session on the mac to see exactly what we can do.

The second window

This was not really sorted during the feedback, as we began something else, and as it stands, the victim still opens the window and looks out, retreating as he sees there is no way down.

The fight scene

We originally scrapped the fight scene because we didn't believe we could do it properly and make it look good, however taking on board Miss's words, we have come up with an alternative to a full-blown brawl. When the victim is found, he attempts to disarm the man, who easily shrugs him off and then knocks him out. We think this is a great way to end the scene in a dramatic way.

Time keeping

For the scene to be effective we need at least a full minutes for the sequence in the room when the two meet, so to save the other minute, both characters will remain anonymous, there will be no or very little dialogue, and nothing will be given away as to how they got into this situation.