Rough cut - Miss Miller

A rough cut is important when making a film as its a good way of getting advice from peers or anyone who watches it. This is because i have placed my rough cut on you tube and showed my class it, my whole class gave me feedback on my opening sequence and me and my group took the criticism and positives away from the discussion and had a meeting to discuss what we need to change and what we should keep.

Audience feedback is very important to consider when presenting our rough cut, as it gives us a chance to get an honest and un-biast opinion on our opening sequence. They can give you productive criticism to help you improve on elements that may not be working, but also tell you what parts are not as effective, so that you can improve on them, or simply make sure you keep them or keep them out of the sequence.

We created a slideshow in which we presented to the class to give them a better understanding of the background of the characters, the story line and who did what roles.We did this so we could get alot of feedback from them because they would understand the plot more. The presentation included; 

• What our group narrative was
• How we came to a conclusion of the narrative
• What our final narrative was
• Our individual narratives with the positives and negatives
• What we wanted to create. + How we think we have created it.
• How is it conventional to a thriller genre

We then showed our class our rough cut which we had posted on youtube to get their feedback on the actual piece. From the discussion me and my group found that people were laughing at our rough cut more than being engaged or scared so we decided to scrap the whole piece and start over as i believe i could make a much better piece. We then changed roles and i became the director and Vasil become a producer. This helped us as i believe i was a better director as i could control what was going on and make sure it was scary and not funny.  
As part of our feedback we received from our peers/audience, we discovered all of our strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths included:

• The use of low key lighting as it showed something that was conventional to a thriller.
•  The variety of camera shots we used. This includes a lot close ups and POV to represent enigma and hidden identity. The close ups show the characters facial expression which helps towards allowing the audience to build a relationship with the characters.
• Different sound techniques used which helps create different atmospheres and can represent how characters were feeling, the different and unique use of sound also allows tension to build, leading to shock, surprise and suspense amongst the audience.

 These were also followed by some weaknesses such as:

•  Lack of consistency through themes and characters created a lot of confusion amongst our audience.
• Lack of conventional elements to a thriller, resembled traits of a comedy.
• Order of shots seemed out of place and messy.
• Rushed and unexplained ending.