Production: Group Crit

Today we watched back all of our films and talked about end of year arrangements. Level 5 and 6's get priority but the lecturers try and get a level 4 production in. It looks like they are judging on length due to time restrictions which isn't very fair. It feels like the Hunger Games. 

http://glee.wikia.com/wiki/File:May-the-odds-be-ever-in-your-favor.gif

So ours was mostly criticism (makes sense as it's a group CRIT) but not so much positive which is a shame and demoralising. Anyways here's a few notes Mike made and pointed out to us (transcribed from his notes), my comments in pink and also how we changed it in our fine tune edit and our reasons behind it in green;

• No titles, abrupt start. This was intentional. There was no titles scripted and I think it works well how we have it at the moment. It's cinematic. We decided to leave this alone.
• Something about setting and lead actors. ???
• Something about the wig on Jo. I believe this worked well and shows her as the light witch. The wig suits her!
• Binocular shot. Cut to the inside shot. Not quite sure what this means! We did have a shot of Gartha looking through a window but didn't use it at the end. We could have got a shot of Lerysa through a window but we didn't think of this and just didn't have time. We literally couldn't do this unless we reshot it.
• Traffic in the field scene. I know the setting isn't ideal and we used it as it was close to the house. We could have done some ADR. We didn't have enough time so Jamie put some music in to distract us from this.
• Music choice. Not sure if this is good or a bad point. Good music? Nathan's song was made especially for us, even though it doesn't quite fit, we used it. Jamie put some more music in the field scene to distract us from the traffic noises but left the others alone as we liked them and Nathan's was made especially for us.
• Some nice imagery. Match cut of picnic. AYE SOMETHING GOOD!
• No tea in cup. It's obvious! Is it?? To be honest I didn't notice it until Mike said today. We had bigger issues than not having tea in a cup. We can't change this (and didn't notice!) unless we reshot it.
• Lighting on Jo/lower shot to her eye level. We had a lot of issues cinematography wise. Jamie changed a few wonky ones in post and if there was a boom in shot by cropping it out. We seem to have got away with the out of focus shots. But I think we worked well with what we had. We can't change this unless we reshot it.
• To long on potion mistake. Too wordy. I think this scene is just the right length. We cut a few lines out on the day to make it flow more. We needed to establish that the potion was also a love potion and not that they has just messed up. We couldn't have just had June saying "too much water dilutes it", he needs to realise this later. Plus we couldn't have cut it due to continuity errors. Jamie cut it down a little bit (after carefully talking it through) we decided to remove the "go through the ingredients with me" bit.
• Sound when Gartha runs away. Sound op issue! Should have said that we can hear her stop. Again, not a major issue compared to what we had. Jamie fixed this by cutting the sound off sooner.
• Convenient bunch of flowers in garden. Yeah I was worried this would come up. I was disappointed in the garden not having any flowers and we couldn't dig it up to plant the flowers we brought. So we will have to combat this by saying it's compost. We can't change this unless we reshot.
• Sound on Jo. What about it?
• Sound on phone. What about it?
• Why is June still in field. He isn't. It's a different field. All fields look the same. Plus we wanted to film something on the other end as a backup/more to edit with. We decided to leave this alone.
• Blip on going in Jo's house. Include atmos. To be honest I don't know why we didn't include atmos here. Jamie has fixed this.
• Too long. Cut the montage down. It's supposed to be a short film. I wasn't very happy with this comment. Short films are usually 10-15 mins long. I like to think the pace works well and we had already cut quite a bit out. The montage is my favourite bit and if we cut that down it wouldn't flow as well. I like to think it works well the way it is. We decided to leave the montage alone as it fits well and we like it.

I also picked up that the colour correction turned out darker (does the Avid's do this??) But overall the students enjoyed the film (especially the fight scene) and was well received.