Class Feedback: First Draft

Today all of our classmates watched the first draft of our film and they all gave us feedback in order to improve our film. We took on board all of the feedback and decided to make amendments to our film. 

Improvement comments:

• A low angle camera shot could be used.
• You could put transitions on the titles to make them more interesting.
• Make all the titles the same colour so it looks professional.
• The voice-over is too quiet at times.
• I think you need to justify the black and white scene.
• Make the shots transition better as it looks jumpy. 
• The shot of the teacher getting angry at the end goes on for too long.
• Text messages could be displayed to show more of the abuse she receives.
• Foley sounds could be used.
• It ends abruptly with no direction.

Our response and improvements we made:

In response to our feedback we included a shot of the actress walking down the stairs with it focusing on her feet and legs as this adds more variety. We decided to add cross fade onto the titles so that they flow better and seamlessly. Also we changed the font and made all the titles black so that it looked more professional. These also now reflect the nature of a drama, which is our genre, as they look formal. We moved the voice-over of the insults so that they could clearly be heard and also we increased the volume of the main voice-over to 22 decibels as it is very important for the story-line and needs to stand out. We decided to have the 'in-mind' scene in black and white to make a clear contrast between her normal life and how the girl actually feels. Depression and other mental illnesses make you have very dark thoughts and many people feel trapped in a never-ending dark place where there is no escape so by putting the shots in black and white is reflects this and also makes the point that we are inside the girl's head. We filmed and added more shots in order for the story-line to flow better and for it not to be jumpy. The shot of the teacher getting angry has now been cut and a few shots follow this as it became uninteresting and didn't really add any enigma to our opening. We took into consideration the feedback and decided that it would be a good idea to include a shot of abusive text messages to emphasize why she is depressed and what she's having to deal with. The shot also breaks up the multiple long shots included and also gives more variety to the shot list. We decided to add foley sounds of the character walking up and down the stairs and also of the door opening/closing so that it sounded clearer and realistic. We noticed ourselves as did others that our film opening ended abruptly with no real direction therefore we decided to add more shots of her walking out the classroom with another section of voice-over and introducing a new character which will help the girl and tell her story of her battle with depression. This would allow our film opening to seem like an actual film opening as it now would have direction and could be actually seen as carrying on.