Changes we made based on feedback of our rough cut

To try to improve our thriller, we thought it was essential to ask other film makers and our potential audience of any improvements that they thought could or should be made to improve our thriller.

Sheet of feedback from our thriller.

By asking for feedback from others it outlined several issues which we did not even recognise as issues of concern, and therefore gave us a fresh insight on how to further improve our thriller.
To gather this feedback, we had others view our thriller and make notes for feedback.
For example, a key theme highlighted in the feedback sheets was the font that was used. Many said that the font didn't quite fit the thriller genre we were after, and based on this, decided to research and find another font. This was useful as I found deciding on a particular font difficult, and by being informed before our final cut was due in, I had time to rectify this.

Font used in our rough cut

 In addition to the font itself not fitting the genre well, many said the title of the film itself was not suited to the genre. For this reason, we decided to abolish the title, as it was not necessarily needed this early on in the film, but like many thriller films, it would be later introduced after an opening sequence, such as in Se7en whereby the titles do not begin until after 4 minutes, giving the audience time to be solely focused on the enigmas set in place.
As well as this, I already noticed from comparing my own thriller, to those of fellow media students that the titles were unevenly placed, varying in length, and did not therefore flow, and so I edited and adjusted the credits accordingly to look more appropriate in the final cut.

Font used in our final cut

The font was changed to Nite Club from the previous font, completely changing the impression of the opening of our film to one I believe more suited. The previous font was hard and stern, and gave the impression of a serious and plain film, compared to the latter font used, which reflects 1930's Hollywood glamour, a distinctive feature of Noir films.


Other changes I made, were the shot lengths of Ray, as in the Rough Cut, it seemed to be unclear to the audience who the man in the photograph was, and who the man who was pursuing Scarlett was. As it was too late to shoot more footage of Ray with Scarlett, we had to make do, by lengthening the time of the clips of Ray to give the audience longer to make the association between her husband and the person following her.

One final change that we felt needed to be made, was the ending of the film, as we didn't feel that we used the most appropriate footage to create enough tension, and therefore changed the last few clips used, as we felt that, especially the final clip whereby a gun shot is sounded, the part of the scene which was supposed to have the highest point of tension, seemed too relaxed. Therefore, we chose to add an ambiguous shape of Scarlett's shadow running up the stairs, rather than herself as we thought it would create another sense of enigma and add unease to the audience. 
We then chose the final shot of Scarlett, to one of a low angle shot, making Scarlett appear powerful and in control with a sense of interest and apprehensiveness, rather than the previous, where Scarlett was concealed within a doorway, looking extremely apprehensive and making her appear vulnerable, which is not how we wanted to portray Scarlett, as it portrays her as more of a victim than the Femme-Fatale bought to moral justice.

Whilst we did rectify accidental errors in our Rough cut, such as deleting accidental clips, when exporting our final cut, a fading transition was accidently deleted during the final few moments of the opening of our film, which was unnoticed, and which resulted in the skewing of the non diagetic sound of the bell, to the fades and final shots ,which was not noted until after our media product had been exported.