Feedback from day 1 footage

    After finishing our first day of filming our movie, I thought I should collect some feedback from those around me about our footage. I asked both my parents as well as my siblings about the film to see what we should correct next time around, and what we did well. 

    Oddly enough, both of my parents had quite similar responses. The main criticism they both shared was the poor lighting. My mother said the lighting was too "yellow" and it looked out of place, she also did not like the massive chandelier taking over most of the scenes. My dad on the other hand criticized the brightness of the film, saying "it doesn't match the genre". He told me that we should have made the lighting much dimmer, and although it wasn't something we could have fixed at the time, we will be sure to add some color grading in post-production to set the mood.

    My mom was very happy with the storyline and found that our lines really set the intimidation factor for the film. She thought it was good how the mobsters really showed fear in each of their lines, as it tells the audience how important the boss is. My dad also liked the script as well as the acting, saying that " the acting sets the tone".

    For my sister, she pretty heavily criticized the lighting as well, calling it "tacky" and bright". While this wasn't a much different response from my parents, it made me realize how important the lighting aspect is, and how much we need to do better for the next day of filming. She also criticized our acting, saying we look like "robots". This is something I also noticed when watching over the footage, but considering none of us are actually actors, I think we did well for the roles we were given.

    My brother surprisingly did not criticize the lighting as much as my other family members, but he did, however, mention the camera work. He told me that the angles lacked variation and that we should have gone for more variety. But even with that criticism, he did very much like how we hid the mob boss's face throughout the film and found it very clever at times in how we did it.

    Overall I am not surprised with the many criticisms we received, as it critiqued my film very heavily beforehand, and knowing my family, I knew what they would like and dislike. However, I
am surprised with the positives, as I didn't expect the aspects they found good to be noticeable.