Evaluation of Rough Cut

The rough cut was the clips that we had complied so far (we are yet to fully edit it, add sound or credits).  The main issue with our rough cut is that it is much too short. The brief was for an opening to a thriller (at least 2 minutes long) and our's is currently only 1:09. This is because we are yet to add all of the footage we recorded and also the transitions between each shot should lengthen it slightly.

At the moment, our opening looks very unfinished but I think we have a good basis to work up from. The strongest part of it so far is the shot of the extreme close up of Billie's hand tapping against the desk. With the effects that we added on Final Cut Pro, it looks eery and creates the scary atmosphere that we wanted to create. The weakest point of our opening is the sound as, because we have been working on just the visual side, we are yet to remove the sound that was recorded on each clip. This meant that the clips we slowed down or stretched to look visually better, also did the same with audio. However, this did give us an idea for the sound effects we can use in the future; the tapping of Billie's nails against the table could be used effectively as Foley sound.

Another thing we are yet to work on is the titles. After looking at different fonts and learning whilst we created the prelim, we decided that using a typewriter font could look effective. We also like the idea of incorporating typewriter sounds also. We started experimenting with possible positioning's of the text, however we couldn't complete it as we were yet to add all the footage. This, I feel, we could improve on. However, I did like the contrast of the white against the dark imagery that we'd filmed.

We wanted to draw the audience in to our thriller, and so we tried to make it intriguing and suspenseful without jumping into the whole plot. We did this through the use of extreme close ups instead of revealing the whole character, as I think it leaves the audience asking questions. However, I think what we need to improve in order for this to become more interesting is that we need to have an opening shot that will make more of an impact because, although the shot we have at the moment is an introduction to the chessboard, it doesn't do much to draw in the audience.

Overall, despite there being lots for us to work on, we have a good basis of what we want to do next.