Evaluation of Preliminary: Question 5

Feedback from Others

For this area of the evaluation Connor, Alex and I paired up with Daniel, Dan and Dane aka Picture Picture's, their piece is The Race.

Our groups evaluation of this was both positive and negative.
One of the things that we noticed, that was positive, was the continuity throughout - no one was wearing different clothes, the surroundings were the same within the changing room shot, this enables the viewers to became focused on the action as the background will not be distracting them.

Another positive is the shot types used i.e. the sweat drop on Daniel's forehead the shot helps create tension as the viewers are not yet sure of the plot and this shot enhances that the character is nervous about what is to come. I also found the shot on the track to be very effective, this is because you do not see the whole character you only see his fingers lining up with the line, creating a sense of anticipation.

I thought the sound effects used within this piece helped to create the atmosphere, for example the heart beat and clock ticking helped to portray the sense of waiting and nervousness amongst the character.  However, like all good films there can always be areas to improve on, one of the main areas our group noticed was that we feel the plot needed to be expanded or enhanced, this is because at the end the screen goes black and there is a gun shot, this makes it seem as the character has been shot. I think this is mainly due to the fact that the character sets for the race alone with no competitors.

Another area we felt that the group could improve on is the transition between shot reverse shots as during the changing room you did not feel you were watching a conversation due to the waiting time between lines. You felt as if they we're waiting for action, this is easy to avoid by cutting the pause out during the editing period.

Lastly we felt the dialogue audio levels could be improved as it is unclear what the characters are talking about, this makes it hard for the viewers to follow the storyline as they are unable to hear what lines are being exchanged. However, I feel this is an area that we have all struggled with while doing this task.

Positives

- Brilliant variety of shot types and editing techniques such as Close-up on keypad, CCTV etc.

- Storyline was clearly thought out and evidently a lot of effort went into the planning phase.

- Editing is smoothed out and continuity is well done.

Improvements

- The focus is somewhat of an issue in some shots and definitely something to look out for in future projects.

- Audio levels aren't solid throughout the footage and also something to try and fix next time.

- Only a minor improvement and not necessarily something you've done wrong; a title sequence could be implemented to bump up marks for your final project.

This is Daniel, Dane, Dan's evaluation of our piece. I strongly agree with the improvement of the focus on some of the shots, however we were unaware of this until the editing process due to the playback on the camera looking fine - if we had more time we would more than likely have filmed theses shots again, but this is something to learn for our main task.