Rough-Cut Screening - Feedback

Feedback on our film:

For the rough cut screening we didn't really have a rough cut to show, it was more just the rough structure of the interviews with some cutaways. The main thing I wanted to gain from the feedback was thoughts on the interview we had decided to keep in because was a lot of stuff and I wanted some guidance on what people thought could possibly be cut out. 

A lot of the comments made were about the use of cutaways, style of editing and I think sound was mentioned even though I had explained the film wasn't going to be cut like that with short sporadic cutaways and jump cutting interviews and also the sound we had on was only camera sound but we did have separately recorded sound from the zoom that was a lot better quality.

We did get some useful feedback though which was:

• People wanted less sad stuff and wanted us to make the refuge look like a more positive place. 

This was helpful as it meant we could go back to it and maybe cut out anything that was sad and maybe not necessary or it means we just have to balance that stuff out with more positivity and humour.

One comment was made about Pam talking about all the things she has wrong with her but I don't think that was all about doom and gloom because Pam actually talks about it with an amount of humour and after reeling a list of problems off she says 'but the angina and diabetes don't really affect me that much' which I thought was quite a refreshing and funny way to look at it because anyone else with that would probably think it is a big deal. She also makes a joke about losing sight in her eye and says 'it makes signing cheques a bit difficult which is convenient' and again that is her poking fun at the situation and the fact she hasn't really got any money to pay for things anyway. I also think knowing her personal problems is important to the story because I think it helps show how remarkable she is for managing to carry on with such a big and important thing despite having all the medical and other problems.

• Don't care about volunteers

Chris stated that he didn't really care about the volunteers which was helpful as this was quite a big section and probably didn't need to all be there anyway so we knew for definite we could cut that right down. I don't know if I will get rid of it completely because a few nice statements are made from Pam about the volunteers so I might just keep a little bit in towards the end of the film so it can finish on a more positive note.

• Less about money and costs – cut out Pam talking about this.

The section we had on money problems was also quite big because they said a lot about it and people thought this could be cut down because some of the people say the same thing but in a different way and it just goes on to long, again we don't want to focus too much on just the problems. We decided that we would not have Pam talking about the money problems and instead just rely on the volunteer from the office to give us these facts and maybe just have Pam for the emotional backup. 

• Don’t have interview then cutaway – have longer shots

The shots we did show were quite quick and as already discussed we knew this wasn't the pacing or style we wanted to go for, I think we just added them in so people had something other than just interview to look at and also to show people some of the kinds of shots we got as we managed to film a lot of animals without cages in the way.

• More breathing space

Again the interview didn't have any spaces in-between it so it was quite compact with no room for thought but this is something we had thought about and wanted to make sure that we did have in the finished film. It was good to hear it again though so it gets ingrained in our minds when editing to make sure we don't get too carried away with trying to need to fill every silence or lull with something and also the interview definitely needs cutting down a lot more or we need to make a longer film which I'm not sure I want to do as I wanted to keep it at or under the 15 minute mark.

• Sense of location – establishing shots of places, e.g. mid-shot of a cage and then cut to close up of the animal in cage.

Someone mentioned we need to make sure we show a sense of the location and also establish the things that we show. We have got quite a few general views of around the location which I think gives a sense of the refuge, where it is and what it's like inside. We also have shots of the cages from different distances although I think we may have more close ups of the animals then we do of the cages but we will just have to go through all our rushes from shoots this semester and last and see what we can pull out.

My Feedback on another groups work:

During that session we didn't really watch many films because some people hadn't got them, one wasn't ready or didn't work, one only had the beginning and hadn't actually been shot yet, there was also an experimental film which didn't have sound yet and one film that was shown as a full rough cut which was Alli's film 'Sunshine Calling'. It was interesting because I had actually watched another version of the rough cut that they had up on Vimeo the night before and during the screening noticed that they had cut some stuff out. First of all I like the mix of characters they got for the film because I think they all had individual personalities which gave it some depth and on the whole I thought the acting was quite good. I feel like because they were such believable characters that they could have developed them even more because we could see there was a reckless one, a more reserved one and so on but then that was it and I felt like I wanted to know more about them.

When they are in the car at the beginning travelling to their destination there is a really smart sequence where split screen has been used to show a passage of time and a journey and has incorporated all the characters in it. I think it's a visually more stimulating and creative way to depict the journey rather than cutting backwards and forwards from each person. They also had some good up tempo music to accompany that and also lure you into a false sense of security.

Despite all the building up of tension though, for me it didn't seem to lead to anything in the end because the one of the main characters does drugs and ends up in the woods, trips out a bit and then is found by one of the others on the floor. I felt something more needed to happen to him or between him and one of the other characters.

There was a sequence in the rough-cut I had seen the night before which they didn't show at the screening where the two girls go into the woods together and there's a moment when one girl touches the others hand and nothing is said. It was a bit of a weird moment but I liked it because I thought what's going to happen next, it was built up with the two girls looking at each other and then a close up of the hand touch which made it feel quite awkward but then after that nothing happened and it was as if it was all forgotten about. It felt like it was one of those moments where if nothing happened at the time that it would be re-addressed in the film so the audience would finally know what it was all about. I'm not sure why they left it out, maybe because it was because nothing really happened so they thought it was a sequence they could do without but if they do decide to put it back in I would like to see more come of it and maybe it feeds in to the conflict of the main story somehow giving that more depth.

I'm looking forward to seeing the effects again with this film to see if they've pushed the boundaries more from last time but I'm not sure if adding effects alone can help give the story the strength it's bit lacking and at the moment there is a clear conflict there and a story to be had but nothing seems to fully materialise from it.