Audience feedback

I have conducted a detailed questionnaire. It handed it out to ten people.  There was a mixture of unhelpful and helpful answers, and i will only write about the relevant ones in this post.

My questionnaire

The questionnaire has 7 detailed questions, all open ended. The questions involved some things that i was uncertain about such as the ending, and also involved things that I wanted my audiences opinion on such as the music and sound.



The first question was asking my audience if they knew what was going on regarding the story line. This is important as otherwise the audience will get confused.  All the audience wrote about the boy getting up and leaving the house. There were mixed ideas on weather it was his house or not, but I was pleased with this. As I did not want to reveal everything in the first 2 minutes of the film.

The second question was asking the audience  what they noticed about the characters. I felt this was important as social class is very important in social realism. The most encouraging answer i got on this question was 'Middle Class fallen on tough times' , I was happy with this as it sums up my character well.

All the people I asked thought that the music was appropriate and they didn't think I needed a voice over. They also said they think the setting was appropriate. I was happy with the answers on setting as i choose my setting very carefully. I wanted to show his transition from middle class to a less privileged person through the settings he walked past in the opening,

The audience thought that enough story was involved and one wrote 'i think you had a good level of story line as you don't want to reveal too much in the opening'. The audience also liked the ending, although one person wrote 'the ending was very sudden and seemed slightly less perfected than the rest', this was helpful, as I found end very hard to do and this answer proved to me that I do need to go over it again.

One more piece of criticism I received was about the order of my titles. My teacher said that it would be conventional if the directed by title was next to the edited by title, so I will change these around.

Although I received relatively good feedback I did form some targets from the questionnaires.

• Make the production logo's last slightly longer at the start. 
• Make title of film show longer after the effects.
• Make sure there are no shorts gaps in footage that you have not noticed.
• Tweak the ending to be more smooth
• Change the order of titles

I will do all the above targets before competing my final edit. 

First edit

Below is the first edit of my opening. I will do audience research and than complete my final edit.

Note: there is a small spelling mistake that I noticed after exporting. 

Third editing lesson | First Edit finished

I have now finished my first edit of my opening sequence. I found doing the last 10 seconds hard as i did not want to end it badly, as I want to give a good lasting impression. u had filmed many walking shots on filming day so i tried to choose the best ones.  I choose the one of him walking past salvation army and than one of him walking past a run down industrial building, as I thought it suited social realism as a genre. I also added a fade to the music at the end, as I didn't think that a sudden cut in the music would be very effective.

Complete time line of my first edit

As I have now finished my opening sequence I will conduct audience research. The audience research should highlight the things that I could change, and I will than do my final edit.

Second editing lesson

This lesson, i basically finished my editing, except from the very last shot.

This lesson required less technical editing, due to the longer shots, and the shots of my character walking. One of the things had to perfect, was the part of my character climbing out of the window. I started of by using continuity editing, and having my character climbing out of the window form different angles. I was happy with this, but it did look a bit messy because my actor scrambles out of the window quite clumsily. My character is represented in a cool, collected way, and I think showing him struggle out of the window at the start would take away from the vibe I wanted.  So instead, I decided to have my character opening the window, than a title, than him outside closing the window, this will show an obvious movement in time, as well as not showing him trying to scramble out.

My final decision of how ti show him climbing out the window. 

Cross dissolve of my character walking down a road

When filming I filmed my actor walking down quite a rickety road in my town. I really liked how this road looked, but it was too long to use the hole shot in my film. So instead I cut it into three small sections, and cross dissolved them into each other when the character is at different points down the road.

Effects folder in final cut

Before completing editing, i need to decided how I will end the opening. I want the music to fade out at the end, rather than having a sudden silence, I feel a fade will be more appropriate.
In the effects folder there is a large range of effects you can use on video and audio.
I had a lot of fun playing with the effects, and this really helped my knowledge of final cut, and of what you can o as an editor.

Editing

As I have finished filming I have now started editing.

The programme I am using for editing is Final Cut Express. The two programme i could choose between were final cut and Imovie, I chose final cut because although imovie is simpler, there is more room for different techniques, effects, and interpretation on final cut.

Showing my bin with my shots and the two folders in.

The first thing I had to do was organize my shots. As I had filmed most shots more than once, I decided to make two folders in the bin that my shots are in. One is called 'Used' and another called 'not needed', this is so once i use shots i can get them out of the way, and also so i know which shots i have used incase I need to go back and change something.

Whilst editing I had my animatic open in another window, so i could check the timings whilst editing.

I edited all film chronologically, paying extra care to continuity. During i filming I tried to film the same thing from different angles, so making sure the continuity that I learned earlier in the year was put into place.

In this lesson of editing I got to roughly 1 minute that I was happy with.  One of the new ideas I got in this lesson was that before the shot from inside the fridge I would put a title before it than a black out, this looks effective in my opinion, as the fridge opens from complete darkness. It also gives the feeling of a movement in time form the last shot.

The edited section of the character doing up his shoes. 

The hardest piece of editing I did this lesson was the part of my character doing up his shoes. As i had so many shots, I had to cut each one up in too short parts than piece them together. This was also hard as I wanted to time to start when the music becomes more up tempo. It took very long, but I was happy with it.

Filming

I have now carried out all of my filming.

 Prior to my actor arriving I needed to organize my location so it looked appropriate. My story states that the residents of the house are on holiday, therefore I needed to make the house look less lived in. I also worked on the lighting of the area, and i set up an extra light in the kitchen area as I felt that the lighting of the room was to dark. I also set up things that I needed pacifically for my opening such as placing family photos on the table for the start, and putting lots of mail on the door mat so it looked like the residents had not been in the house for a while.

When my actor arrived, I firstly made sure that he looked appropriate, by messing up his hair more, and also creasing and dirtying his clothes. When than started filming.
I was going to do the filming in the order of location, for instance I would film all the shots in the living room than the kitchen etc.
But instead i decided to film the shots chronologically, as others there could be certain props left in the locations which could effect the continuity.

As soon as we started filming I faced a problem. As I could not get the pan i needed to be the right speed. So therefore I had to film this shot over and over again. I filmed all the shots more than once prior to this, as that meant that I would have more than one option when editing.
One of the trickiest shots to film was the shot of my character from the inside of the refrigerator. I had to start filming, than put the camera in the fridge. open the fridge get the camera out than stop filming. This was quite a lengthy process as I had to keep doing it to make sure the camera positioning was right and to see if any items in the fridge were blocking view.
Another shot that was quite hard was the shot of my cat. I had to try and make the cat co- operate, and it was hard to make him stay in shot. So after many attempts I decided to just keep the camera going for a long time, and therefore I could just edit it, as i was bound to have a good section the shot. To make my cat stay in place I had to throw food in to the area. This took a long time to do.
The section where the character was doing up his shoes took very long. I arranged the camera in 4 different angles facing the shoes and the actor than did his shoes up. This is a part that I suspect will take the longest whilst editing, as I have four 7 minute shots that I need to edit into a 5 second section.

One idea that I had whilst filming outside was to have a shot of the character walking past the salvation army building. The organization has many connotations surrounding it, linking to homelessness which is a strong them in my film. I got this idea from the film This is England , where the characters are walking past a church.

One mistake i did make when filming, which I only noticed when I up loaded the footage was that my animatic was on the table in the shot. This was annoying, but I did not need to re film it as I had enough footage with out it. I made sure that throughout the day I filmed lots extra, particularly of the actor walking, just incase i did not have enough.