Peer Review

    Last week as a class, we started presenting our films and magazine projects in order to receive feedback and some critical criticism from our teacher and peers. Skylar and I volunteered to show our film first and took notes on the criticism we received. Overall, most the class didn’t have anything too harsh to say. It was commonly stated that it was hard to hear the actors, specifically the teacher in the theater scene, due to having to wear masks and not having a professional microphone. Their advice was to lower the background music or to in cooperate subtitles to let the audience know what is being said clearly. Some other suggestions brought to our attention were to use less transitions, fix lighting in some scenes, as well as including a larger variety of camera angles. On the other hand, someone had many more comments to present. My group and I were very disappointed to hear her comments, as she critiqued almost every element of our project. She stated that she felt as though our film looked like it was thrown together last minute, scenes went slightly too fast, and that she could not tell what our plot was. In our film we made sure to in cooperate dialogues, actions, and camera movements to convey the characters emotions and feelings, but she felt they were not obvious enough. For example, she stated it was not clearly stated that it was the groups first day back at school or that they all had interest in the same boy (Troy). In some defense, the attitudes of the characters lines were hard to hear in some parts, but other dialogues such as, “Hey guys, isn’t it great to be back at school” conveys that it is their first day back at school. Also, actions such as walking up to Troy smiling and laughing to each other as well as obvious flirting in their conversations were hints to show that they shared interest. As these plot issues are not something we can fix with editing, Skylar and I have decided to reshoot our film. Doing this will give us more time to add more details, as well as extra time to shoot again if needed. Skylar and I will be doing the reshoot ourselves, as our other group member Elena has dropped out of the class. We plan to begin conversing about our new elements and film dates next week.