Responding To Feedback
- 1. Responding To Feedback By Matthew Haddock
- 2. The Gun Props • As I would not be allowed to bring the original gun prop into my local council chambers a television remote was used as a prop to represent the gun, it was chosen as I felt it looked satisfactory from the distance it was filmed at. • Some people, when shown the video, did not realise that the assassin pulls out a gun in the final shot and were confused about why the main character fell. • To reinforce in the audience’s mind that the assassin has a gun in his waistband and shoots the main character at the end of the music video, I shot a scene wherein the assassin puts the original gun prop into his waistband before running off to the meeting where the main character is. • This encourages the audience to make the connection between the gun-shaped object being pulled out of the assassin’s waistband in the final shot and the original gun prop: strengthening the narrative.
- 3. The Drone Strike Memory Shot • I was given feedback that the shot in which the main character sits absentmindedly in front of the television before suddenly remembering the authorisation of the drone strike was ugly and ineffective. • I agreed that the shot was out of place; it was the most obvious use of digital post-production in the entire music video and the superimposed drone strike over the character’s face jars unpleasantly considering that the rest of the shots only use post-production to the extent of cutting and adjusting speed. • I realised that while I considered the character to be thinking more than watching television, the audience would make the connection that he is watching the television due to the prominence of the television remote in the previous shot. • I responded to this feedback by removing the superimposed drone strike and editing so that the character’s grimacing reaction would begin the shot. • This gives the scene a new narrative, of the character seeing something on the television that distresses him (likely news about the drone strike and the killed hostage) and the following shots see him going outside to compose himself. • The fact that the television screen is not seen encourages audience engagement with the narrative, as they can realise for themselves that the television is showing something distressing relating to the previous events of the narrative. To use such an obvious technique as superimposing the drone strike footage over the character’s face is insulting to the audience’s intelligence. • As Roland Barthes said, the birth of the reader is the death of the author. The fact that everyone who gave me feedback about the scene said that they thought the character had seen something upsetting on the television shows that this is the dominant reading of the scene. Based on this I had to align the audience’s interpretations with my own intentions for the scene. • In changing the shot I made the narrative clearer by confirming the predominant interpretation of the audience.
- 4. The Assassin Reveal Shot • The shot that fully reveals the face of the assassin was described as too long by most people I showed the footage to. • I felt similarly, and this problem was most clear to me when I watched the video with the sound turned off and the shot felt overlong compared with the more rhythmic cutting of the other shots. • This presented a dilemma, I wanted the shot to be shorter but retain the intensity that it held as a longer shot. • I ended up cutting the shot from 3.57 seconds to 2.21 seconds, cutting to black when the assassin’s brow furrows, creating a dramatic conclusion to the shot that raises questions about what the character will do. • The shot still ends on the beat, which I am satisfied with as I was concerned that the shot would end too early or too late if it was cut on a different beat than the one it was originally cut on.
- 5. The Assassin’s Father Newspaper Clipping Shot • In the sequence where the assassin character plans the assassination of the politician on a meticulously crafted board, I was unsure whether to include a brief cut to a newspaper clipping of the assassin’s father present on the board. • I acknowledged that it would reinforce the importance of the father character in the narrative, however I did not know whether or not this brief cut would add too much chaos to the sequence. • Upon showing this to a group of people, asking whether they preferred the scene with or without this shot, they unanimously agreed that it was better if the father shot was present. The reasoning behind this was that “it really helps to tie the narrative together.”
- 6. The Newspaper Shot • I filmed at least 21 different versions of the shot of the newspaper bearing the headline “Hostage Killed In Drone Strike”, leaving two takes I was happy with. One a static shot and the other a slow zoom. • I asked 5 people which of the two they preferred, all of them chose the zoom, giving the reason that it “fit better with the music”. • I ended up using the zoom shot as I agreed with their feedback, however, I was unsatisfied with the saturation of the image, it appeared brighter and less defined than the previous and next shots. Two people had given me this feedback as well when showing them the zoom and static shots. • As a result of this I re-filmed the shot with reduced white balance and increased saturation of the blue colour filter. • I asked 5 people which shot they preferred out of the more washed-out shot and the new more saturated shot, giving the reason that the colours fit more with the shots before and after and that the “images on the newspaper were clearer.” • I agreed with this description and so the newly re-filmed shot is used in the final edit.