Here is our rough cut feedback;
The First bit of criticism we got was the fact that the camera was a little bit shaky, especially when we filmed the external scenes with Alex following Stacey. The camera was shaky because we used a dolly and moved it along the road which was bumpy this is why the camera was shaky. To fix this we refilmed the scene but instead of using the dolly wheels we used the tracks to do a tracking shot instead which made the movement of the camera smoother.
The soundtrack didn't suit the action that was going on. The soundtrack needed to decrease or increase to create tension. We needed to add stingers throughout the film in order to show the audience there was something tense happening to create a build up of tension.
We tried to make the scene look dark in the editing instead of natural darkness. This made the lighting look quite artificial and more blue than a night. We fixed this by importing all of those videos again and just left them with their natural lighting as we felt it looked better than it did when we tried to change the lighting through editing.
Another criticism was that when we have Alex looking at his watch and then it skips from 3 o'clock straight to 5 o'clock it looks artificial as no one understood what was really happening. To fix this we could have added a dissolve transition to make it looked as though time has passed and he had been waiting for a while.
When Stacey hits Alex over the head with a bottle in the kidnapping scene everyone thought it sounded more like a comedy kind of sound effect rather than a real hitting sound. We could add a louder sound effect to it to make the scene look more realistic and aggressive and more like a thriller.
When we filmed the dragging scene we couldn't see Alex's feet. We could re-film this scene and have Alex's feet in the shot to make it look like someone is actually being dragged because before all we could see was the floor so for some people it was confusing and they didn't really know what was going on.
The next criticism was the flashback scene was quite difficult for people to understand. No one really understood what it was, what was happening etc. We could add a fade to white instead a fade to black and we could add a flash transition to make it look more like a flashback scene and to make it more understandable.
In the kidnap scene we could film the scene as if the kidnapper is gradually getting closer to Alex to build up tension instead of just having the kidnapper appear in front of Alex straight away. This is because when the kidnapper appears straight away and then the film ends everyone thinks "what just happened" if the kidnapper gradually appears it will give the audience time to process that it is the kidnapper.
We could have the kidnap scene at the end as a point of view from Alex and then instead of using a transition to make it look as if he is being unblindfolded, we could use some black material to make it look more realistic like the kidnapper is taking the cloth off of his eyes.
Looking at the feedback we refilmed some parts of our film to improve it and make it look better.
From the comments we decided to move the place of this scene to make it look more realistic. As the scene was there were a lot of things that caused a distraction for the audience like the curtain and the picture so we changed the place we filmed. We also added an establishing shot of the school and the school bell to make it clear to the audience where the scene was taking place.
In this clip we decided to add in a graphic match from the bell to Stacey's eye, from the comments we received we thought that it would be a good idea to do this, it is to create tension as we know it is in a school and it also show the audience the expression on Stacey's face which creates tension.
This is before we made any changes. This is where Alex id following Stacey home. We then refilmed it and changed the angle of the camera to make it more understandable for the audience.
This scene is when Alex is waiting for Stacey to come out of her house, he looks at his watch so the audience knows how long he has been waiting there. We decided to change the scene back to natural lighting as we thought changing it to dark in the editing made the scene look artificial.
This is the part where Alex gets dragged away by Stacey after being hit over the head.
We refilmed this scene and kept the light natural as again we thought it looked artificial. We also refilmed it with Alex feet in the shot as we thought it was more understandable for the audience that there is someone being dragged.
We then improved the kidnapping scene as the lighting wasn't very good. We also made the jump scare more tense and realistic.
We made the whole scene using low key lighting so that the scene looked more dramatic and made the audience think more about what might be happening as before we felt the scene was a little bit too obvious like everyone knew what was about to happen.
My next post will be the final cut.
