Post-Production: Changes to the Ending

After we showed are focus members our first edit of our production, we received feedback about the ending our production needing a bigger impact on the audience. Some members of our target audience also stated they were too confused about what happened to our main characters best friend. They weren't sure if she was killed, if they had an argument or she wasn't real in the first place. To solve this we decided we needed to change the ending to our production.

To create a bigger impact we decided to edit a montage of small clips from the memories and flashbacks we filmed. This would act as her life flashing before her eyes due to the trauma she is experiencing. We decided we would also time these flashbacks to the rhythm of a heartbeat. This would show the audience the complete decline of her mental health from the happier memories to the penultimate moment when she is sat alone on the bench without her friend.

Some other feedback we got from our focus group was that the fate of her friend wasn't clear in the production. It was too confusing whether she was real or had never existed or if she had been hurt. Although we originally wanted to leave this up to interpretation, we decided we needed to add a few shots into the opening to give a brief explanation for what happened to her. To do this, we set up one extra evening for filming a quick scene with a hand holding a knife dripping with blood. We chose not to include our actors for this as it would take us a very short amount of time and we could use our own hands for the shot as the persons face and clothing won't be shown in the shot. These shots would show for a very brief amount of time but would hint to the audience about what happened to her friend and would give reasoning for why she is sat alone at the end. We also included a Point-Of-View shot of her looking at her blood stained hand, this represents her realisation of her actions. As most of the clips used for the montage were of our main character, it would be clear that the hand and the POV shot were her.