When we pitched our film to the class, the students all had sheets which they had to give their constructive criticism and tell us what was good and what wasn't good about our film idea.
In hindsight, I feel that a lot of the responses were very positive, we didn't really have anyone slating our idea saying it is rubbish.
The first question to the mark sheet was:
What is the genre? Is this clear?
A lot of the results were very accurate but the responses were varied. The result which was most common was a thriller/mystery, I feel that this is due to the whole story being quite eerie and very odd. We also received
results such as 'Drama' and 'Psychological'.
Who is the target audience and why would they pay to see it?
Most of the results that we received stated that middle aged and cultured intellectuals will prefer to see this film. To be honest, this makes sense because this film will involve a lot of thinking. Also, a lot of the other responses were just simply anyone who is interested in films that make you think.
Does the mood and style fit?
The majority of the responses all explained how the dead man is shown which creates the intriguing enigma. I agree with this statement because that was our intentional idea in the first place, to create a nice amount of flowing enigma throughout the start of the opening scene.
One response which really caught my eye stated "Mood with rain and pathetic fallacy is a good idea" because this shows that they reflect the attitude of the scene. For example, it is stereotypical movies to have rain in sad/depressing scenes.
Lastly, some people said that the main character is clueless and selfish between life and death. This is interesting because the initial enigma created just from this presentation suggests that this character is resisting himself into going to life after death.
Narrative interesting? Enigma?
The responses show that the narrative is interesting. For example people said that the opening scene will be left on a cliffhanger. However, some people said that the narrative is minimal due to the character, "we don't know what will happen to him." But overall most people said that there is good elements of enigma. For example, people want to know how the character changes and develops.
The last thing which was mentioned was that the voice over is interesting, this is helpful to us because we wasn't sure whether this idea was good or not.
What films is it similar too?
A lot of people said this film was a very original idea, this will help us in sustaining our originality marks within the preliminary. The only thing that people said it was similar too was that it was quite similar to the 'Day i died' music video. Therefore, our advice was to make sure we do not make it look like a music video and keep with film.
Comments/Advice
Overall, a lot of people liked the credits idea and they said that is a good, original idea. On the other hand, a lot of people didn't know where we were going to film, so this meant we didn't explain where our locations will be. This is true because we didn't really mention where our locations will be purely because we haven't yet picked where we are going to film.
On a lighter note, mostly everyone said that this is going to be a very good film opening if we can pull it off. The reason why people said that is going to be hard to pull it off is purely because it is going to be very hard to compose. I feel that sound, body language and facial expressions are going to be crucial if we are going to compose to create a successful opening scene. Here are example of reviews from our classmates, as you can see they spent a lot of detail into their feedback which we are very grateful of because we can use this feedback to create and improve our idea which should help us access the grades we all want.
