Film Progress Update

Today I showed Neil my latest film edit and he pointed out several things that could be improved to make the story better since some of the animation isn't clear.

Here are the improvements he offered:

Shot 1 - hold the title for longer so the audience has time to read it

Shot 2 / 3 - add some more shots between Betty and the clock to emphasise her wanting to leave as soon as the clock strikes finishing time

Shot 10 - remove the initial blinks as they're quite erratic and not really needed

Shot 18, 19 and 21 - for the apartment building with the party in the background, make this a little clearer so the audience knows what Betty is about to look at (18) and what she has just looked at (19 and 21) after shot 20 with the apartment building on its own

Shot 20 - push back the apartment building a little so it's clearer what she is looking at

Shot 45 - make the animation and the amount of movement the characters do better so its clearer to read e.g. instead of having her rip off the paper from the notepad and place it down on the table, just make her throw it on the table or instead of having William throwing her the wallet, just drop it into her hands

Shot 46 - change it from a shot of her with the wallet open, make her open the wallet

Shot 47 - change the electric zap to make it clearer, instead of seeing just a zap, see the moth actually get zapped

Shot 48 - make this a little clearer so the characters' emotions are easier to read when they change

Side Notes:

Push back the backgrounds a little (saturate colours a little and add some more blurs / depth of field)
Tidy layouts a little to make the characters stand out more especially Betty against the pink walls
Use lots of foley to emphasise the animation!

UPDATE

Since the clock is a signifier for Betty wanting to leave, and the thing that she is worried about i.e. running out of time before the party, I took note which shots had the clock asset within it and planned out the times during the film:

It wasn't imperative to get these times exactly right, but I felt is was important for the audience to follow the time throughout the film since it is the core of the film; running out of time and the race to beat the clock.

Shot 2.4 - 10:25 - 10:26
Shot 2.6 - 10:26 - 10:27
Shot 2.8 - 10:27 - 10:28 (slight pause with next shot)
Shot 3 - 10:29 to 10:30
Shot 5 - 10:30
Shot 6 - 10:30
Shot 7 - 10:30
Shot 18 - 10:40
Shot 21 - 10:42
Shot 22 - 10:44 - 10:45
Shot 33 - 11:15
Shot 35 - 11:15

I had planned to have a translucent clock that would float in front of the camera across the screen during the montage sequence but after speaking to Neil about this, he commented on how it wasn't needed since the montage. I did a quick test to illustrate what I mean: