Major Project: Post-Production: Rough Cut Feedback 2 & Fine Cut

Introduction

Now that a couple more weeks have passed, the edit for DownStage is now beginngin to show a much bigger improvement. The scenes which I mentioned in my previous rough cut blog post have now been removed and cut down, as well as a few others. Nonetheless, we got back together with Simon to see what else would need changing, in which we wrote the following notes:

Rough Cut 2 Feedback 

Feedback

Likewise to our previous feedback, this feedback session too was helpful - perhaps even more helpful now that all the scenes are now organised and we are presenting what we aim for our final cut. Moving on, Simon seemed happy with our draft so far - he laughed a couple of times which is rewarding as this is meant to be a comedy! Using these notes, below are the key changes Kate and I will be making for our upcoming fine draft:

   - Cutting down Scene 15: John's first part of his interview.  This can coincide with the next scene where he walks to the car to find the 'warning' letters, and his conversation with his mother (where we will be cutting it to 'yes I'm fine' for both interviews, as there's no need to hear the rest of the conversation)
   - Mainly focusing on the party scenes. As this hasn't really been altered this much, Kate and I feel it can be alot shorter to make it flow much easier without loosing any of the tension. This can be done by cutting down Alex's interview and even cutting down Jordan and Chantelle's argument, as we feel that Jordan's response was quite weak and doesn't seem realistic.
   -  General tweaking and cutting dow scenes, as mentioned in the notes above.


To conclude, I feel that these amendments are likely to cut down the length of DownStage even more, even though this rough cut is 4 minutes shorter than the previous. Nonetheless, if this makes our narrative flow much easier then the changes will have to be made. Furthermore, the production has clearly paid of - now that our edit is coming together, it feels rewarding to see all the work from pre and production come together. Stay tuned for a fine cut edit which will hopefully be available in the next two to three weeks!