Yesterday our group showed our pilot to a focus group. We had mixed reviews throughout the showing but over all they liked it except for the ending.

For the ballet sequence they loved the elegance of it but felt it went on for a little to long. I think this is something we cannot change because we need this sequence to be long enough to show the credits. I feel we will just have to get more interesting shots to keep the audience interested. Another point made by one person was that our ballerina was not good enough which I felt was a very unfair comment. Although we are not using the ballerina shown in the video I felt she did an excellent job.
The focus group were all girls which is slightly biased because if we showed it to boys they may have a different op ion. We did however have Phil our teacher with us and he thought when we come to shoot the real thing we should hardly see the ballerinas face, we should just concentrate on close ups of her feet and arms etc. This ties in with what another person from the focus group thought. The ballerina in this scene will not be our main character but naturally the person from the focus group thought she was. If we go with Phil's idea about close ups which means we will hardly see her face this will hopefully suggest she is not a main character. Personally I have seen films which open with characters who end up not playing a big role in the film even so I see where the focus group are coming from. In some ways it may be a good idea to make the audience think she is a main character and then when she gets killed early on the audience will be surprised.

A great example of this happening is in the film "Psycho". The films starts by following Marion Crane but shortly she is killed off and the audience are left shocked!

The focus group did not like the way we filmed the car scene which I agree with. They liked the idea of the car scene but they thought it was to much of a jump from the ballet sequence. We presented the idea about the crime scene office instead of the car scene and they preferred it which is good. Now we are moving forward with the office scene and we are currently casting our actors.