FIRST DRAFT & FEEDBACK

This is the first-draft of my movie-trailer 'VIGIL' that I had directed, filmed, and edited. I had filmed most of my footage around Central London, near the areas that I had previously scouted out when I went location scouting. The soundtrack I had used is also the original soundtrack that I wanted present in my trailer. As this is the first draft, the voice-overs weren't refined, there are no visual effects present, such as muzzle flash, and there are some scenes that haven't been implemented.

After showing this first draft to some of my friends and peers in my class, it is clear that there are changes that could be made to make the trailer even better. First of all, the main issue was that the narrative story of the trailer wasn't clear, although this may be due to the lack of voice-overs, I also thought that my trailer wasn't clear in the story it was telling; who was being followed? why is he being followed? These are questions that I need to answer when recreating my trailer. To do this, I may need to re-film some scenes that could make the plot more apparent and give the audience an indication as to why Mason (the main protagonist) is in such a predicament.

Another issue that friends found was the gun sound effects that I had used near the end in the action scene, my friend thought that the shots were too quiet to be classed as gun shots, and should be louder to sound alot more menacing. Thus, I may need to find louder gun shot effects from freesound.org, the site that I used to find my general sound effects. They also thought that the lighting could be adjusted at the main action scenes during the raid in the household, as it may have been too dark for anyone to see anything happening.

There were however, alot of things that went really well: everyone really liked how the scenes/cuts synced up with the soundtrack in the background, as well as how the scenes transitioned from the first scene to the next scene. They found the soundtrack very effective in setting the mood and tone of the trailer. They also really liked the variety of shots and angles that we included in our trailer.

To conclude, I know now what I have to work on for my second draft; I have to think about how to make the narrative of the trailer clearer, adjust the lighting in some scenes, try and see if I can spray the prop guns black, as they do not really look realistic in their natural plastic form, try and shorten some of the action scenes near the end as some of them seem too long, sharpen some of the cuts, and introduce some scenes that could make the montage at the end even better.