Friends and Family Film Review

 With my film nearly finished, the next step on my creative process is to have it reviewed before I submit it. For this task I considered many of my peers and family members, but it eventually came down to three reviews. Two people I wanted to have reviews from but couldn't get to were my Aunt Sarah and a fellow classmate Arial. I wanted to have my Aunt Sarah review my film because she is currently in college studying film, but our schedules didn't align before my deadline. Arial is in the same AICE Media Studies class as me, on the same level as well, but I forgot to contact her before the publishing of this blog. My remaining reviewers are one of my actors, Sofia O'Connell-Zamakis, one of my best friends, Nadia Akhtar, and my mother, Amber Brown. I admit that all of these participants are subject to bias through their relationships with myself, but it was ultimately unavoidable.

Sofia is particularly qualified for this as she is also in AICE Media Studies, and had hands on experience in the production of the film. Her comments were more technical because of this. She advised me to add a dissolve transition and corrected one of my spelling errors in the titles. She also noted that the current copy of my film was seven seconds over the two minute time limit, which I fixed before the next review. In exchange for her assistance I gave her notes on her own project.

Nadia, who is inexperienced in film but somewhat experienced in music, provided comments more about the picture and soundtrack than the technicalities. She mentioned that one of the clips showed Clare standing a little too long, clearly waiting for her cue to begin acting. Another point she made was on the placement of the background music. She suggested moving the climax of the song to match the climax of the film. Following this, she told me to have the climax come down when the characters enter the bathroom to fit the mood of the scenes.

Contrary to the previous two reviewers, my mother gave no original comments on the film. Like Nadia she pointed out my musical mistakes, but other than this only provided encouragement. I mostly expected this coming from my mom due to her natural bias, but it is not very helpful nonetheless.