FEEDBACK FROM PRESENTATION OF FINAL CONCEPT IDEA

After speaking with my production team and head of production at Hurtwood, Luke, we have established useful feedback suggestions that have played an instrumental role in progressing our concept idea overall.  

Firstly, Luke pointed out the detail to the point at which the openings narrative is established and when we reveal to the audience that the hunted has ultimately become the hunted. As a group we took this feedback on board and have collectively decided to alter the moment at which the protagonist becomes the hunter and kills the first man much earlier on in the sequence; this specific alteration helps to establish the genre and overall motive of opening. Luke also mentioned another development in which slightly manipulates the progression of the opening, more specifically who is killed at which point. He felt that by killing both hunters (like we originally pitched) would leave no more anticipation for the rest of the narrative after the titles, which forced us to alter the openings narrative and changing it to only one hunter being taken out by our protagonist and leaving the suspense built for what will happen to the other man.  

Our original idea involved a calm opening, almost like a type of ‘calm before the storm,’ however after speaking with Luke, we realized that it would make a much more effective opening to begin straight in the action with a violent death sequence for example. This forced us to develop the very beginning further and to establish the genre from the get-go; we began brainstorming ideas which would instantly catch the audience's attention and set that shocking tone. An example of our ideas was to begin with a gory sequence of a character being killed by the hunters, with a big emphasis on the blood element.  

Sound and music was another key emphasis on our feedback point discussed with Luke; our original concept involved creating a sound bridge which switched from an ambient sound of music through headphones of one of hunters which would then switch to the non-diegetic soundtrack as the titles begin playing. Collectively we really liked this idea as we felt it really complemented the narratives strong female role to juxtapose the extreme masculinity of hunting. However, after speaking to Luke we distinguished the logistics of hunting whilst listening to music was not viable; so instead we decided to move our soundtrack to begin playing as the titles start appearing. 

Here is an example of the type of music we would play: 

We also began to discuss the sounds within our sequence; Luke suggested using soundscapes to allude naturalism in the woods which would emphasize the tension as the hunt continues.  

Moving on, Luke also commented on a very interesting detail through which we would ‘show’ and not ‘tell’ the audience that she is actually now hunting them through the way in which the characters move from one end of the screen to another. For example, we could show the men running from left to right which conventionally follows the ‘norms’ of movement on screen but during the protagonist's movement sections, have her running the opposite : from right to left, which distorts audiences' expectation and hints at the juxtaposed position of power between the ‘hunters’ and the ‘hunted’ protagonist. 

Overall, I felt talking through our concept in much more detail allowed our ideas to merge and progress into a much more viable overall concept.