Test Screen Reaction

After test screening we recieved alot of critical feedback - the minor mistakes that we needed to fix in order for our sequence to run perfectly. There was some obvious hiccups with the sound on the big speakers such as background fuzz in some shots and not others, and Rob's voice still being too loud but Matt's being too tired. There were also a couple of dodgy cuts during the conversation to fix. People liked the beginning titles but were dissapointed by the main title at the end as they thought it was too small, did not stand out, was not distinctive from other films and was boring as it used the same font as the rest of the titles. The last thing people suggested was a lock sound on the door rather than the shout of 'help' as this could also anchor the meaning of locking the victims away and the hand appearing being of a trapped man. This obviously left us with some work to do...

We worked hard on the sound, getting the voices the same level throughout. We also had to play around with the music for it too rise and fall with the sequence. We were told about a technique to take off the camera fuzz by lowering the treble booster, so we applied this to every clip and we were amazed at how effective this was. It cleared up alot of mess and helped make the dialogue clearer. It was miraculous! We also fixed up the cuts in the conversation as we were told and played around with the main title. We were not happy with the effects used on the editing software so we consulted our media technition and he suggested a programme called After Effects. We played around with this as well as checking out some effects on the technition's Imac before deciding to edit the effect of each individual letter in RESERVATION on After Effect. Jack did this in a free period, adding a mysterious glow and thickness to the font, whilst making random letters fade up until it spelt the word, RESERVATION. We loved the spooky, mysterious feel it gave to add a chilling end to the piece, accompanied by the music going silent leaving a thrilling echo. Finally, we found a sound of a locking door and applied this to the scene where the door is closed. We kept the 'help!' in for further feedback, but overall we feel we are one step closer to completion.