Audience feedback

We've received some mixed feedback for our rough cut, but there seems to be some key features which need to be looked at.

Camerawork

• less scene cutting 

• "A flashback may be good to split the speaking scene up." 

• "The camerawork is jerky and unsteady, especially in the second scene."

• "The panning shot could be re-done as over the shoulder - the movement of the pan was not smooth."

• "The dialogue scene is too long."

Audio

• "You an hear people in the background whch distracts from the dialogue." 

• "The audio is clear and easy to understand." (aside from above problem)

Mise en Scene

• "The genre could be confused for horror."

Narrative

• "The credits were very effective in creating suspense."

• "The dialogue scene is too long; and becomes a little wearing."

As you can see the two main areas which our audience highlighted in their feedback as needing improvement are camerawork and audio. In terms of camerawork we received a lot of feedback suggesting that the camera was somewhat unsteady, and jerky- which the audience found somewhat distracting. The only way to resolve this would be to re-film the scenes which are unsteady; this time making sure that we have better control of the camera. Additionally, it may be a good idea to use a different camera as the majority of the footage that was observed as being poor quality was filmed on a eight year old camcorder rather than a digital camera. 
 The audio while clear was pointed out to have voices in the background; which detracts from the overall quality and realism and distracts the audience from the dialogue. The voices which are audience observed were due to the fact that we had been filming within a school at lunchtime-next time it would be wiser to film during lesson to avoid this.

The response to the credits themselves was positive; being reviewed as "effectively creating suspense"- and by doing this, conforming to the conventions of the thriller genre. However, many viewers felt that this suspense was not sustained throughout the piece as a whole, and that the dialogue in the second scene lasted too long thus disturbing the pace of the entire sequence. This was emphasised by several viewers, and is something that we must address if we want to create a successful piece. We have had the suggestion that we could do this by way of a flashback: having considered this very deeply we feel that a flashback during the speaking scene would only be appropriate if the protagonist had been at the scene of the murder, which he was not. But we still think that there may be use for something similar to this to remove the burden placed on the dialogue of essentially explaining the entire plot so far. Certainly it would be worth it to employ some sort of narrative device such as a flashback to do so; but not quite in the way suggested to us.