Feedback - Changes

There wasn’t a dramatic screening room moment. No projector flickering. No gasps. Just a quiet upload to my blog so Sir Zia could access the rough cut in the middle of internal exam chaos. I hadn’t seen him in days. Our conversations were reduced to dry text and the occasional call. When I finally sent him the link, his response was so neutral I couldn’t tell if he was unimpressed or just busy. Probably both. Sir is always nonchalant over text or maybe he was mad at me for taking this long. Either way, the verdict was simple. The audio was messy. Subtitles were needed. And above all, the film was too long.

That wasn’t a shock. I knew this version wasn’t the final anything. It was just a draft to show narrative structure. None of the real work on sound, pacing or even shot polish had been done yet. And Sir knew that too. So did a couple of other friends and media kids I showed it to. The comments were all aligned. Fix the audio. Tighten the cut. Add subtitles for bilingual clarity. Clean up. Basic stuff. Stuff I knew.

But something funny happened the next day. I called one of my juniors whilst they were in class with Sir Zia and handed the phone around. Turns out the whole class had just seen my draft. They said it gave off a proper Hollywood vibe. That it felt cinematic but still rooted in where we’re from. When Sir came back into the room and someone told him I was on the line and pointed the phone at him so he could see me, he looked annoyed. But then he smirked. It was barely a smirk. But you could see it. That quiet nod of approval. That proud dad look he pretends not to have. I don't know if I read into things however, And I won’t lie, it gave me the push I needed to keep going.

Now came the real surgery.

First, the runtime. I called up Umer, a close friend who’s off at uni in Arizona now. I miss him and I hate him for leaving, but I’m also proud of the guy. He had a day off the next morning, so we jumped on Discord. For thirteen hours straight we screen shared and cut. We trimmed down scenes. Shaved seconds off shots that were originally held for emotional impact. I didn’t want to, but we had to. Even after eight hours we were still stuck at five and a half minutes.

So we made the big cut.

An entire act. Gone. The original flashback scene at the start was completely removed. It hurt, but keeping it meant risking the whole structure. And with it gone, a few things got lost. Like when Saif’s brass knuckles fall from the cupboard later in the film, the audience no longer has context. They never saw them earlier. It weakened the emotional payoff. But then we had an idea. We took parts of the original flashback and chopped them into overlapping mini-flashbacks. Inserted right before Saif opens up. That way, the backstory still exists, but now it’s filtered through memory and emotion. And it worked. It actually worked better.

cut out the entire orange - green acts in the beginning

I never touched the present-day scenes. Couldn’t. That’s the spine of the film. Cutting those would have collapsed the whole thing.

All in all, the feedback was helpful. But most of it just confirmed what I already knew. I couldn’t stand the audio either. No part of me thought it was okay. It physically hurt to listen to it. There was no way I would have let that stay. But the structural changes were different. The decision to cut an act and redistribute it as fragmented memory made the story tighter and kept the emotional core. For that, I’ll always be grateful to Umer. He was one of the first people who got me into this whole world of film and creating. Still is.

So yeah. Rough cuts are rough. But good feedback, the right people, and an angry sir with a proud smirk can push you into turning it into something way better than you thought it could be.