Improvements

We looked at the feedback we'd eben given and tried to work out what we could improve on without having to re-film and restructure chunks. Most of the major improvements could be done by editing. We planned to sort out the title sequence and sound bridge as our priority and hopefully re-film the screen shots on another screen that wouldn't flicker.

When it came to actually sitting down to edit we found we didn't need to re-shoot the screen as we could instead insert clips of pasty events flowing backwards which looked suprisingly effective when put together with close-ups on Allison's face.

We wanted more feedback before we committed ourselves to a final cut so we went to the other class as they would be watching it the first time and we needed a fresh look at our film. The feedback we got was pretty much all positive with some very minor adjustments mostly to do with sound which i made that evening. The final cut was ready.

Feedback from first Viewing

After the first viewing we seem to be ahead of most people with a complete rough cut, sound included, but there are still lots of amendments to be made. Some of the major points were:

· Narrative issues and confusion through minimal dialogue
· Confusion over identity of Heather
· Why doesn’t Allison pick the papers up if they are so important?
· Screen flickers during the final scene
· Relevance of photograph unclear
· Radio sound bridge short and unclear
· Title slide amateurish and slow
· Volume issues

Although I intend to amend most of these problems I don’t see what I can do about narrative issues, there is reasoning behind Allison leaving the files and the age difference between Allison and Heather but it’s hard to see how we can explain this without shooting the entire film. We only have two minutes after all.
I am keen however to fix sound and editing issues something I believe I should be able to do quite easily. I also plan to film a couple of additional shots of the screen sans flickering and try a different photograph hopefully with a younger Katie in it.

Editing

You could say editing was left to the last minute. Due to the high quality formatting of my camera and the low quality PC computer I have to edit on uploading and exporting takes a lot of patience. The only way to do it is the spend hours tediously converting files to those of a lower quality.

After a couple of tedious days of converting I was ready to start editing but even then it was put off by James’ availability. Eventually we sat down and edited on Thursday evening, we quickly established a very rough cut which I perfected over several hours that followed including adding music, titles, transitions and the like.

I was happy with what we eventually came up with but there are still a few rough areas, in particular the amateurish title ‘Lab Rats’ which will need a lot more work and we will need to talk about the sound.