In the studio yesterday, I showed my rough cut #1 of my film to the class via the projector.

I received some advice after the viewing of my short film.

Advice from classmate:

• Rearrange the videos and audio so it’s backward to forward, as in have the song that Andy sings playing at the start of the film and then have the stuff that Natalia, Clare and Tung said in the end.

Advice from Adrian:

• Only have the shots of the parts of the lounge, for example, the walls , ceilings, stuff, but not the gay stuff, for example, the resources and books on the bookshelf.
• Use the part of your script where it talks about Clare Colebrooks article, that entire paragraph.
• You don’t need to use all the 100 shots.
• Make your film shorter.
• Make the font at the start of the film smaller and more centre.

I’ve taken aboard the advice of my classmate, that is, I have rearranged my film to when the song that Andy sings will be playing at the start of the film rather than at the end of the film and where Tung talk about his coming out at the end of the film.

I’ve also taken on board Adrian’s advice. He noted that I don’t need to have exactly 100 shots in the film……. You see… I didn’t know that… I thought that we had to use all 100 shots in our films – I knew you can reshoot footage to replace the footage that you didn’t particularly like in project three but I thought that was it. I didn’t realised that we just use half of that or even less. I’ve already edited rough cut #2 yesterday afternoon in Adrian’s class and I’ve rendered that out. It looks good. I like it. I haven’t inserted the recorded audio of the script yet but I will do so today – right after I post this blog post – I was late to class yesterday as I was busy recording the script/narration for my short film in my office. I use a Zoom Z4N audio recorder for the recording.

In the rough cut #1, the film was around 8:39 minutes long, right now, my film sits on around 4:20 minutes. I’m not sure if I’ll be cutting out more shots as of yet to make my film even shorter. I quite like the length of my film, it’s not as boring as the first cut.

I’re already made the font at the start of the film smaller and more at the centre and I’ve deleted all the shots with the queer resources and queer books on the bookshelf. It seems that I’ve been explaining too much in the film, that is I keep reinforcing what the context of the film is rather than allowing my audience to come up with an idea of what the film is about.

Over this weekend, I will continue to work on my essay, I think I’m more worried about the essay than my film to be honest. This is only because I feel that no matter what, I feel that my film can be quite self-explanatory even though it can be ambiguous to some of my viewers. I’m worried that I won’t be able to express myself properly, the process of the “making” part of this studio. Either way, I’ll try to write as much as I can.

Also, I haven’t started thinking about the presentation yet. I have not prepared anything.