Reflections on tutor report from Assignment Three

Interesting feedback on this.  I was pleased that Peter was quite critical about this assignment. I hope this means he feels that it has solid enough basis to be worth looking at very specific improvements which will help my later work.

The main comments were around the sound, specifically that the soundtrack does not reinforce the visuals enough.  The changes are too abrupt making the cuts seem amateur. I think I did intend for some of the tea-making sounds to seem unpleasant as I wanted to set the mood for the narrative but I seem to have gone too far.

Peter also commented that final conclusion is 'more than a little ambiguous'. I think this would normally be fine but the specific brief for this assignment was all about the implied meaning so this is a failure in that regard.  

Other people who watched the film did interpret it as the protagonist feeling suicidal and I had hoped that the note on the table would be a strong enough signifier but I can see now there could have been other connotations.

I really liked the suggestion that the actor breaking the frame was acceptable in this circumstance "so long as she is made to return, confinement is often a matter of trying unsuccessfully to escape" - this is a great way of taking forward my plan of cropping tightly and its justification.

I have tried to re-edit this and filmed myself in the role with some medium shots and more look room which was instructive but not really fit to be seen by anyone. I would love to have reshot the whole thing properly to allow myself more footage for a new edit but my actor selfishly sold her flat and moved to Australia!  

Given the time constraints in completing this course, I have made a decision to move on and practise the suggested improvements in other projects. 

My research has also continued on narrative structures and context. Barthes goes in to this in depth in his Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives essay in Image Music Text.  He looks at the language of narrative, levels of meaning, classes of units. He explains how drinking a whisky in and airport lounge "is an action which can act as a catalyser to the (cardinal) notation of waiting, but it is also, and simultaneously, the indice of a certain atmosphere (modernity, relaxation, reminiscence, etc). In other words, certain units can be mixed, giving a play pf possibilities in the narrative economy." 

Barthes, R., 1977. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.

I think I may need to read these essays several more times before I can really make sense of it all...