Silence followed by a quiet “wow” was the first response we received from the class on our first cut of Imperfect Illusion. The fresh eyes and feedback from Rohan, Elise and the class helped us immensely in terms of structure and other minor details. The following was suggested:

• The hook really hooked them all and the first half overall was quite succinct. The second half is something that needs to concentrated on within this week.
• The syncing of the audio and consistency is number one priority.
• Claire seems to be more engaging in her rhetoric than Carli is.
• The details of how long they’ve been in a cult for must be somewhere at the start and not towards the end.
• You must revisit the hook from the start.
• More breaths must be incorporated so that the viewer has enough time to process the information.

I hadn’t mention it before, but we decided to narrow down the short doco between Claire and Carli in order to do justice to Mary’s story. I’ll reflect on this decision on my blog post next week. I feel that we are on track in terms of the focus on Claire and Carli reflecting on their respective cult experiences and the aftermath rather than a story about what cults are like in a general sense. We want to make it as real and human as possible to raise these issues that mainstream media often fails to portray.