R+P Post 19: Our rough cut

From the footage we shot during the test shoot, we created a rough cut of the footage, which demonstrated how we planned to use the shots; how quickly we wanted the cuts to come in, where the titles would come in and what they would look like in size and font, and also adding in our music and sound effects.

We found that some of our ideas worked really well once we'd finished our rough cut. The pace in the middle of the opening was quick and that made the intercuts between the characters interesting and dynamic.

We also liked how the music complimented the scene, particularly when our idea to have the music turn from non-diegetic to diegetic worked successfully. This happens when the character Raj is shown to be playing music through his earphones, and when this is shown, we cut the music from a downloaded 'clean' track to one that we had recorded earlier through a microphone that had a tinny quality to it. This effectively made it seem as if the music was now coming from Raj's headphones and not just a part of the soundtrack.

Our group, with the help of feedback from our teachers, also agreed on a few changes that we could make. Because we couldn't achieve the arc we wanted when we were filming, we had to try and edit the tilt we had filmed to the best of our ability. However, the cut felt like a jump cut and the change of characters at that moment was not as effective as it could've been. We agreed that the speed at which the camera panned from the detective to the teenagers at that point could be increased to achieve a more dynamic effect. We also thought we could add a shot-reverse shot somewhere in this sequence to make the pan less tiresome.

We also agreed on a few other points:

• cut to more reaction shots (e.g. when the detective passes over the clipboard, add a shot of the detective's face)
• cut quicker on some shots (e.g. when Cherish says 'Please')

Overall, I think we worked really well to finish our rough cut and we managed our time well to get it finished before the deadline. Furthermore, it was an enjoyable process, particularly as we had a few outtakes from the test shoot which were funny to watch through. Although not everything went as planned, I'm glad that we have a lot of things we know we can work on to improve the quality of the main cut of our film, and I'm also glad that we know that certain aspects of our rough cut are good enough to keep for our main.