Peer Review

We had a peer review on our final project, which is where we give our project to another group to review. My group and I will then use this review to improve our final project. We also had to review another groups project. The things we had to look for include all of the required shots, angles and camera movements, sound, lighting, and generally anything the film could improve on. The project that we got to review was unfinished. It had no titles and was only a minute and twenty seconds long. Obviously, these are things that need to be improved on, but when reviewing this project I wanted to give them other stuff to fix. One of the main things I noticed was their use of sound. Every cut had a different volume of white noise and during one of the clips, their dialogue was cut off! This simply couldn't do, and luckily there are ways to fix this! To fix the white noise, you can simply turn the volume down on the clips so they are all the same volume when you listen to it. For the cut off dialogue, there are several options to fix it with. You could separate the audio from the video clip and extend the audio clip so the dialogue carries over to the next clip. The second option is to record a voice over to put over the existing dialogue, which you would mute. My group and I used a combination of the two options in our project, so both options could work for the project I reviewed. One thing I liked about their sound was the music they used. The music picked up in key points and enhanced the action.

Another thing I think could be improved is the use of shot types to improve their story. At one point, one of the characters had to pick up a paper, and we never got to see what was on it. While normally this would heighten the suspense, but in this instance it only confused me. It is implied that the paper is a warning or wanted sign for a serial killer but in the film it's unclear enough that, when you only realize what is it when you see the serial killer. This ruins the suspense built up to this moment by distracting the audience. A way to fix this could be to have an over the shoulder shot of one of the actors holding the paper up, or a eye line match of the actors looking down at it and then a shot of the paper. Despite this confusion, there are still great uses of angles and editing in the film I reviewed. At one point there was a shot reverse shot that went from behind the serial killer, to an unsuspecting actor, back to the serial killer slowly approaching, then to the actor turning around, to then to where the killer used to be. The last shot was a wide shot of the actor, making him seem entirely alone. This sudden change from being closely pursued to being alone heightens the suspense in a new way that I wasn't expecting.