Second showing

So this past weekend I had two separate viewings of the latest edit.
On Friday I showed it to David. Since he has been quite involved in the production I wanted to show him the cut by himself.
His response? I will start with the practical.
First, it was clear, on the most basic terms, what was happening. Now I have always been worried about this. I have always been an abstract thinker and I too often assume that people are able to follow me. I need to fill in the gaps.
The biggest gap at this stage was the lack of sound design. It was difficult to know if some of the problems could be solved with the sound, which is so central to what I am trying to do.
He thought that perhaps the first segment was too long, but also wondered if it had to do, to set out the plan of the film. I have to say that there is a lack of texture in the first segment, to set it apart from the second segment. This was a weakness in production along with a few technical problems as well. For example, the pub scene, which added some noise, opened up the story to the outside world, and presented Claire in a human situation, meeting her best-friend, Sophie, I removed from the last edit. First, I could not see their conversation making sense in light of the other changes I have made to the edit. And secondly, the primary shot was soft and so unusable.
He also that the blackouts were too long, and also needed sound (I will talk about this more in the next post).
In Norway, specific repeating shots were quite striking, and others were quite weak.
But I would have to say that his strongest criticism was that it was now too cold, too intellectual, that we are able to see Claire as human.
Now of course this is rather a fundamental problem, but I will for now avoid making any conclusions. I will add another post from the third showing from last Saturday.