Final Cut: Audience Feedback

After we released our final cut on to Youtube we invited some of our target audience in to watch and give us instant feedback.

Firstly they thought that the opening sequence worked well with the titles and the build up of suspension with the non-deigetic soundtrack because they said they felt the tension build up. Also with the point of view shots  from the killer they thought that it did well at giving a different perspective , because we didn't just get the view of the teenagers instead it allowed us to understand how the killer would see things. Then they thought that our violent scene was a much better improvement from before where it wasn't believable at all because this time it was more realistic with the short takes and the cut away shots, they thought that the slow motion of the violent scene worked well as well because it gave this weird feeling for them.

However they thought we could of done more to reassure the audience who the main characters were, for example we hardly showed or final girl on screen but had the scream queen's boyfriend on screen for longer,  whereas we could of had more shots of the final girl as she'd be the main character for the rest of the film.

This is some evidence from 1 of our target audience that gave us feedback.

Titles Influence

John Carpenter's Halloween

For our titles in our film opening we were very much influenced by John Carpenter's Halloween title's with the serif font and with the title all being in capitals. Also the titles are shown on a black background which gives it a serious feel to it rather than a comedy feel or romantic, so here it's already providing some sort of exposition towards the genre as this is what you'd expect with a slasher opening title. Also there's a non- diegetic soundtrack over the top which works well to add to the spooky effect and build up tension.

Black Nightmare

So with our title we're going to use the same serif font and use a black background to try and create the same effect as Halloween did. Also we're going make a soundtrack to be the non-diegetic sound over the top whiles the titles are playing to build up the tension for the opening scene.

Soundtrack

First attempt

Second attempt

This part in the opening was the violent scene and we wanted to have the sound effect of a heartbeat over the top, so that it would build up tension and show how the scream queen's heart is beating and this is showing her panicking, and firstly i just put a normal heartbeat soundtrack over the top.

But then realised that it didn't have much of the build up of tension effect i was after , so i went back and edited it so that as we go deeper into the violent scene the heartbeat, which is supposed to be of the scream queen, builds up the tension by beating faster and i did this by overlapping the original heartbeat soundtrack with itself so that it seems to be beating faster.

Rough Cut 2: Audience Feedback

Here our audience suggested that we go back and cut out long takes so that the scene have more of an effect, so we'll go back to Final Cut Pro and cut up our long takes into much shorter takes so we don't loose the audience's interest. Also our violent scene has been pointed out to need some adjusting because it's not that realistic so to make it more realistic and believable we'll use fast pace editing with lots of short takes like with Alfred Hitchcock's shower scene in psycho so that it has more of a believable effect.

Then with this our audience suggested we make a soundtrack for our opening , which is what we were already going to do but haven't yet managed to put it together, but when we will we will take into consideration what they're saying with the gruesome sound effects like with the chopping up of the meat , and then build up tension with a non-diegetic soundtrack which will play with the audiences heartbeat.