Rough Cut - Miss Miller

 YouTube link to our rough cut:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H88l1vLEXZ8

 A rough cut is something very important to have considered during the time of filming as it gave my group and I the opportunity to reflect on our work with the help of others in order to gain an honest opinion and constructive criticism so that whether the product be finished or not, we would have the opportunity to improve our opening sequence. If we didn't do a rough cut, it would mean that we wouldn't hear the opinion of others and would as a result of this, not get our final product to the best of it's ability creating a lack in the amount of marks we could potentially get.

Feedback is something that my group and I value very much as without it, we wouldn't be able to take on board ways to improve our work. Getting feedback allows us to identify both our strengths and weaknesses running through our opening sequence to a thriller film, therefore we knew what was working well within our opening sequence with what to keep in it, but we found out what elements wasn't working particularly well so we knew to change them.

In order for  my group and I to get some feedback from our peers, we produced a presentation showing reasons for why we included certain editing styles, camera angles, what characters we used and why, iconography etc so that our audience gets a better understanding of the opening sequence so they would be able to give the correct constructive criticism because they are aware of what the opening sequence is about and have a clear understanding and perspective of our opening sequence. Further to our presentation, we also included our narrative, how our narrative is conventional to a thriller, what themes we wanted to present to the audience and why we included certain elements. During this presentation, we also made sure to include our rough cut which has been exported to YouTube so that our audience would have the opportunity to watch the opening sequence as much as they felt necessary in order to give us clear instruction on how to improve our work. 

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.

My group and I were very pleased to see our audience responded well to our strengths and picked up on our hard work in these areas, and were still able to pay close attention to our weak parts of our opening sequence. My group and I found this to be very useful because as a result of this, we were able to re-film these parts. Due to our opening sequence feeling less successful than expected, my group and I agreed upon re-doing the whole opening sequence so that it could reach it's full potential. We made strong improvements by using the same characters the whole way through. We done this by making sure the characters we wanted would be available to film when we deemed as necessary so that there is consistency throughout. Another way in which my group and I turned our weaknesses into a success is when we changed the dialogue to be minimal, this left room for us to be able to develop the tension so our audience will be more shocked and surprise if something happens. Lastly, in order to get rid of all our weaknesses, we slowed the ending down slightly so the audience would be able to recognize what's going on and therefore get a better understanding of our ending, therefore it will no longer be confusing. Despite being able to restart our filming in order to gain a better grade being a positive thing, there is still a negative view on this. This is because we have re-filmed the whole opening sequence, which means the opportunity to present our idea to the class is no longer there, which means we were unable to get feedback and could only take ideas from our previous, rough cut so we have taken a risk. Yet, we have still kept everything the same with camera angles, sound etc, we've just adjusted the elements necessary. We have taken into consideration what our peers and audience thought and applied them into our opening sequence.

Completing a rough cut and getting feedback has helped my group and I with finalizing our opening sequence to our thriller. We have picked up on the potential reactions from the audience and how they may view our opening sequence, so we have been able to adjust certain small changed in order to get the best marks possible and achieve the best that we can.