Editing: improvements on credits

Some feedback we received said that it was confusing when the names appeared on the screen too long after their role in the film showed up.

So, we went back to Final Cut Pro and edited the credits so the name and role were a lot closer together. I had to edit out some of the names because when we inserted them before, to make the space between them we added one text piece for the role and the next one for the name a few moments later. Editing out the names and deleting the text piece was what I had to do to change this, and I had to put the names back into the text piece that appeared with the role on the 'text line two'. This was good feedback for us because it makes it less confusing and distracting to the scene.

Continuity improvement

Continuity Improvement

We received feedback from an audience watching our video and discovered there was a break in continuity in a part of our opening scene.

 This took place as the victim escapes through the door and the killer turns around to find our where she's gone. After being made aware of it and re-watching it we could see the Killer turn around to see where the victim has run, the shot then changes to the killer running out of the door and then cuts back to the Killer turning around again. To preserve the importance of continuity we would have to cut it so the killer was already beginning to run after her in the second shot of him.

During editing I used the blade tool and deleted the beginning part of the second clip of the killer and started the second clip where he is already beginning to run after the victim who has escaped. This allowed continuity to flow smoothly and was accurate to real time making it much more realistic. 

Class Feedback

We got feedback from the whole class on things that were good and what to improve in our opening scene. This is the feedback from one of the groups.

They said that they could see that it is a slasher/horror from the conventions of a young, female victim and an isolated location which shows that we successfully followed the conventions of a slasher film opening. The group also thought that the genre could be part psychological, which it isn't meant to be and I don't think the opening scene gives any indication of it so I don't think anything needs to be changed about that.

This group said 'excellent hammer sound at the end' and it's good that they said it was excellent because we chose it from the sound effects on Final Cut and were unsure which one to use and if it sounded realistic, so it's helpful to know that it does. They also said that the sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic is very good overall.

They said that the point of view shot was good and I'm glad that they mentioned it because it's one of my favourite shots and not many people have commented on it.

For the titles section of feedback, they said that 'some were creative in positioning', which is referencing to how we fitted the titles into the scene by having them angled on different objects within the frame. I also really like this and I think it makes the opening scene seem more creative and less common. However, the group also said that one of the titles in the outside scene is 'random and small'. We had it in a shot with just grass and it was hard to find a suitable place to put it so we had it at a high angle. Since reading this feedback we have changed it so that it is bigger and in a position that make sit seem less random. The group said that the typography of the title for 'Faceless' is good.

The things that the group said they liked is the production company and the light scene at the start. The production company that Kelsey made is very good and I think it conforms to the genre well and also fits in well with the professional production company that we have used, which is Blumhouse Productions. The shot of the light at the start was something we thought looked good when we filmed on the first day when we saw that the light flickered when you turn it on.

The only improvement that they wrote is that we should make the screaming at the end louder as it is ineffective. It is Kelsey's real scream from when we filmed it so we can't make it much louder but we could find a scream sound effect and use that but it may be less realistic.

Class Feedback

The whole class was told to watch our opening scene and to review it in groups. With this, they had to state the genre, with its conventions, comments on sound, editing and titles, and also comment on the specific details that they like and state what they think should be improved.

The group whose feedback I am commenting on recognised that our opening scene is a horror/slasher from the conventions of the 'bloody corpse' and 'mask'. This shows that our opening scene is explicitly a slasher, which is what we aimed for.

About the music, the group wrote that it is 'cliché', which could be good because it means that the music in our opening scene conforms to the music conventions of horror opening scenes, so we won't change the music from what it currently is. The group also said that the music is eerie, which is the effect we were expecting as it fits with what is happening in the scene.

For editing, the group just said that they liked the match on action, which is good because other groups commented on how there is some bad continuity in the match on action part of the scene. We will fix the continuity by using the blade to specifically cut the clips so that the continuity is accurate.

They said that the typography of the titles conforms to the genre of horror. We went through all of the fonts to find the best one so it's good that we know we chose one that is conventional.

The group said that they liked the titles and the conventions in our opening scene. These comments are quite brief and so hard to reflect on, but it shows that we made our opening scene correctly and it is conventional.

We've been told to improve the lighting in the garage scene, which is what many of the groups said. We are going to change the colouring of the scene even more than we have already to ensure that it is dark enough for the conventions of the genre.

Peer Feedback

Once we had finished editing our opening scene the way we wanted it, we asked someone in our class to watch it and tell us what they thought would make it better.

Actor names:

We had put the names of our favourite actors into the credits, but we were told that it is very unrealistic for that many popular actors such as Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth to be in a horror film because usually the actors are relatively unknown.

To fix this, we changed the names to ones we had made up instead of using real actors which looks much more conventional.


Titles:

The titles throughout our opening scene are angled to fit onto certain objects, but a few at the beginning were left straight. She said that we should either make all of them straight or have them all angled as it looks odd with some straight and the rest angled.

We decided to angle all of them apart from the first one which we thought looked best straight as it is the name of the director and so is quite an important one.

Non-diegetic sound:

The soundtrack that we had out in at the time was taken from YouTube and the music didn't completely fit the genre and so we were told to find something more conventional.

We eventually found an un-copyrighted clip on YouTube that was the perfect soundtrack for the scene and is much better than the one before.

End title:
We were told that the 'Faceless' title at the end of the opening scene was too dark and quite hard to see due to the black background against the red and silver text.
To solve this, we edited the brightness and contrast to make the text more visible.

First draft: feedback

After viewing the first draft of our coursework piece, we were given feedback from every other group.

Feedback was mainly positive, however depending on the improvements we have to make changes to our video. This feedback we aren't able to change, as that would mean re-shooting our piece and we are unable to do so.

This feedback is constructive as we can easily change the titles to make them closer together. It is understandable to change them as the credit and name of person were a few seconds apart and so didn't connect very well.

This is simple to achieve because we have some more time to think of music to make. The scream seeming unrealistic is difficult to re-record because it really was part of the scene and it was Kelsey's scream as we filmed. We won't change this, but can create better music that sounds better than what we already have.

The feedback we received is helpful because the changes we make can end up seeming like better decisions to us and also help us make improvements to make it look more professional.