In the Blink of an Eye Response:

In the book, In the Blink of an Eye, the chapter Test Screenings: Referred Pain was very inspiration to our group. The chapter discusses how when you work to closely with your movies sometimes you become too invested, and it’s often helpful for you to get outside perspective for your final production. During each phase of the Body Break commercial we would often stop and ask a group of people for reassurance that we were not to invested and become blind as to what the audience would think was funny. For example, after we completed the script to Body Break we read the script to our friends to make sure what we envisioned as funny was also funny to our potential audience. So we tested out product on multiple levels, not only to the class during each submission process but we also showed our friends before hand as last minute advice givers. The audience since they had an impartial connection to the commercial would have no problem telling us things that they thought worked for us, and gave us pointers or ideas of what we could also to enhance the overall commercial. A lot of the times when you do “test” previews to an audience, they can find things that you can no longer see since you have just been watching it over and over again and can’t see those particular things anymore. It is interesting as to what the audience will pick out, that you perhaps never saw before that becomes helpful for you later.

Also in the chapter, Seeing Around the Edge of the Frame, Walter Murch discusses how “the film editor is one of the few people working on the production of the film who does not know the exact conditions under which it was shot, and who can at the same time have a tremendous influence on the film”(Murch 23). This statement was very true for our group on Body Break. Karen and I were our “set” while we filmed and we knew exactly everything that went on, and different changes to the script that we made just on location that we thought would be better. However, Laura was not on set with us and at the beginning she was our “editor” who did not know all these on set conditions, however, at the same time she had tremendous influence on the film. She was able to see past different things that Karen and I kept seeing while watching the different takes and she was able to pick out which clip was the best one. She was also able to make connections of rough footage that Karen and I did not see before because we were still envisioning it how we had filmed it and had this personal link to the footage. Where as Laura had this outside perspective that was tremendous to us in the editing process that was helpful.

Overall, this book gave us a lot of guidance and ideas to think about throughout the production process of Body Break, which was very helpful along long the process. The book was also very interesting and very relatable to read, it often said things that we were not even thinking about that was useful for us to read about.