Construction - Final Cut

The day has come where our final cut has to be handed in! We exported in from Final Cut and exported it again for the web, the makes it a smaller file and this means that it would be uploaded quicker and played better when it is on my blog. A few things that we had to do before we exported it was add the voice overs into the correct placed and add in our extra bit of filming that we had filmed earlier today. We also had to change colouring of the extra clip so that it matched with the rest of the sequence and flowed well.

We are now going to show our opening sequence to people in our target audience and recieve feedback from them about what they think about it, what they like and what they think we would have improved on or done differently.

Preliminary Task

Final Cut Feedback

After we had shown our opening sequence, we wanted honest feedback from the audience. We were prepared for some negative feedback and these will be taken into consideration, but overall we were quite excited to see how our target audience would react to our film opening.  I had taken record of what was said about it so I could post it on my blog!

Positive Feedback:

• Was very good, built an atmosphere.
• Continuity was well done.
• Effective- but not a lot too it.
• Appropriate music.
• The feet shots were really good.
• Captures the eerieness well.
• Well filmed with smooth continuity.

Negative Feedback:

• Running could be a little more convincing, looks a bit like jogging.
• Was like a trailer.
• Not enough storyline
• A bit repetitive. 

Re-filming Again!

After watching our opening sequence through, we decided that we needed a shot at the end of the sequence between where the characters are running and where they fall to the floor and get dragged away. We thought it would be a good idea to have a shot which shows someone actually pulling them to floor and then they get dragged along, this will help it make a bit more sense.

By having this shot at the end, it improves the story line of the sequence as the audience now knows that someone as pulled them to the floor, and they are the ones that are dragging them away along the floor, where before it wasn't as obvious.  It also adds a wider variety of shots as this is a close up and we do not have many of these through out the sequence.

As we were at college when we discovered this problem and decided we wanted to add more filming, we were not able to get to our original location. However, we were lucky as there was like a little area with lots of trees and bushes, which we made to look like the woods we filmed in before by filming very close up to the trees and trying to cut out anything we didn't want to be in the frame.

When we added the extra shot into our filming opening, we cut it right down so that when the film opening was played it was like a quick snap shot of someone reaching out and putting their hand on the girls shoulder. We thought that this looked better because when the clip was longer, it seemed to go on for too long and didn't look as good and wasn't as effective.

Re-Filming

Today we did the extra filming that we needed to add continuity to our opening sequence and add in a wider variety of shots. We returned to Weston Woods and went to our original location where we filmed before, luckily it wasn't as cold this time!

We filmed a few more long shots of the characters running in different angles, for example we put the camera on a tripod and filmed from high up in the trees, looking down on girls to show vulnerability and to give the effect that someone may be watching them and another with the camera filming face on. We also did a few shots on the girls running towards the camera and then away from the camera to improve continuity and also a few shots with the camera of the floor so we could get shots of just their feet as they run past. We filmed a few of each of these shots, just incase some were better than others and so that we could use them for extra footage to make the sequence a little more quick and choppy.

There were a few things we had to be careful about such as the characters wearing the same costumes and making sure that we were filming in exactly the same place as we did the first the first time. If these things weren't the same, it would look strange because the costumes would suddenly change and the same for the location. We also had to make sure that there were no public people in the camera as this would ruin the effect if the girls be scared and alone.

Rough Cut Feedback

Today was our deadline to have our rough cut finished so that it was ready to be shown to an audience and receive feedback from them. The feedback that we wanted to receive from them was what they thought we had done well and what they think that we need to improve on. We would then take this feedback and think about what we could do to improve our opening sequence.

OUR FEEDBACK:

- Titles are good - accurate and well timed.

- Music works really well.

- Interesting hook - Who's chasing them, etc?

- Need a greater variety of shots in the chase sequence - to create continuity/make it more interesting and create more drama.

- Hand held camera shits were effective

- Go Pro creates 'creepy trees' - good!

Fortunately, the majority of the feedback we received was positive and I am very pleased with what was said. The only real negative that was said was that we needed to add a wider variety of shots in the chase scene and add continuity, which both me and my partner recognised ourselves and were planning on fixing after we had finished our rough cut. We are going to be returning to our location to film different shots and we are hoping that this will add continuity to our opening sequence and that it will flow better and look more professional.

Rough Cut

Today we continued to edit our film opening together and we managed to get all of the titles onto the clips and in the right places, we added the ident to the beginning and a sound effect at the end of the sequence to give the effect that something bad is happening to the characters. We also had a look around for some background music, it had to suit the genre of our film and we wanted it to create tension. We found some music called 'Forest Silence' and we both agreed this is music was the most appropriate for our opening sequence.

                                                            ROUGH CUT: