at 7sec “I know this must be hard for you…” since it is the first time we see her and him, you might tie them together by doiing an overlap with “I know” over her shot, the pacing is not very tight at that moment and tightening it up might help it.
at 13sec :It’s Important Haley” cut to her faster, in the middle of the word “Haley” tighten it up a little, your music might be subconsciously cutting to fit phrases
at 16sec after I’ll try his closeup, he stairs at her and then looks down I would tighten the heads of his shot and get to the head tilting down at least 1 beat earlier. in her next statements you can see the natural pauses that most actors do, to set up for the next line, it is sometimes why we make so many cuts. Also moving cameras (slightly moving) do tend to mask mismatches in action
at 33sec delay the crash sound effect till the next 2 words are out of her mouth, or try the car screech much lower till she finishes and then cut it in up full on the black followed by the crash… check out soundsnap.com for some good ones.
at the next shot, of her in the car with the rain on the windshield
think about a somewhat slow fade in, like how someone would feel after getting their bell rung, also add sound effects, pieces of metal falling off the car, the engine running rough,
at 44sec the trunk popped open, the cut away of the hand feels like a cut away,, cut it in earlier over her last line and start the next line over the cut away of her hand. then when it goes to the person in the trunk, cut the head of that shot till the action seems already going, it feels like i heard action then the person in the trunk moved, just trim the front and get to the heart of the shot earlier…
at 57 sec She must have still been alive, to build tension do an optical effect here, a slow zoom in on her, then a slow zoom into the trunk, not even a half a field on a 10 field animation scale.
at 1:08 he just beat her… move position of the shot farther into the shot, 3 to 10 frames so the action doesn’t have to much of a stall
you have one flash, to make it a motif use it 2 more times, there is a rule of threes that does work a lot of the time, you might think about a flash during the wiped the blood off
editorially why is the wiping the blood off the hammer to then inflict damage to our heroine so important, why would she know that, might use the flashes to help establish her frozen with fear, in fact maybe a shot that runs then the last 2 or 3 frames are frozen before a white flash hits,, think about the flash might cause an action to slightly repeat itself. use sound effects to accentuate the flashes, use them to really bring out the thuds, the moans and groans of the victim.. And somewhere (like the next shot in this scene) you go back to the investigator
and yes the shots of her in the car need some contrast, and some lightening perhaps,
All in all it is coming together well
Films are never totally finished……
….. they just get a release date!
