Editing Process

Monday:

We looked at the footage from the 'rushes' bin and used the timeline to review our shots. We picked out specific pieces that we wanted to use in our thriller and organised them into bins. We then dragged them all down to cut the pieces and put them in order. We put the different sections of the thriller, ie. The panning shots of the alcohol bottles, family photos and police documents. Then grouped up all the shots of the man drinking and smoking, and then the pans of the other room and the girl who was tied up. We then re-watched the shots and decided on an actual timeline for the thriller. I came in, in my free time, and created a new version to adjust the timeline to see different ways in which the order of the shots could affect the narrative, as well as figuring out how long each shot is going to take and what that will do to the mood of the thriller.

Tuesday:

The next day, I noticed that there were too many shots that we had included which meant that we had to begin eliminating certain shots. There were shots such as, shots of beer bottles, that were completely unnecessary as the audience can already tell there is a sense of alcohol abuse within the thriller. We then found other shots, such as outside the house shots and stills on different aspects of the house that we found useless to us and would not add anything intriguing to the thriller. After eliminating as many shots as possible, we began to cut and edit the thriller, I looked at a specific section of the thriller where the man was drinking and I tried to include the varied shots we had on the actual glass, him pouring it, and then drinking it. I learnt how to cut on action to make the thriller flow better by using the crop tool and blade tool to trim the clips together. This included starting with a focused closeup of the glass, then cutting to the mans arms grabbing the bottle of whisky, then back to the glass, then there is a mid shot of him drinking and a cut on action as his head tilts back when he drinks we cut to a close up of him drinking.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday we began to look at the vibe that our thriller was conveying and whether or not it set the right mood. We had shot several scenes of the girl who was tied up however we realised that even though we could build up the tension to seeing her face and wounds, as well as the way she was tied up, it did not create the right suspense and intensity we wanted. So we decided not to give any clues about the girl as well as not showing her face at all, this meant that we had to change the order of our sequence. We cut straight away to her screaming in a point of view shoot, which will shock our audience and make them more thrilled by our sequence. This distances the audience from the girl and adds no personal connection to her, making it evident that the main character that we will be following in the film is the male character.

We also added titles using the text symbol, which allowed us to add text over a specific shot or a chosen background. We added few titles, as we did not want our audience to be distracted from the sequence. We included the necessary titles ie. producers, institution and director, at the beginning of the sequence, then at the end we put the name of the film in bold. I added a blurred effect on the text by creating a text and changing the effects on it. I added an effect in the distortion files that created a blurred effect on the title.

Thursday:

We worked on sound editing on Thursday and we looked at different options. We wanted to make our thriller not the typical thriller that has deep suspenseful music throughout, so we tried to add a tense rock song from 'royal free music' in the background that would be dragged down into the timeline and amended to be muffled to show that it was coming from another room to hint to the audience that there is something the character was trying to hide, and that there was something happening in another area of the house. Although as a group we found this quite cool and different, we found that keeping a majority of our thriller silence, with the normal sounds of our character pouring the whisky into the glass, breathing deeply, lighting the cigarette etc. built the tension more effectively as we are aware that something must happen through the diegetic sound, but the normality of the scene makes it more intense as we are expecting something to happen.

Friday:

On the last day we watched our thriller and analysed it thoroughly. We made sure there were no problems with continuity as well as making sure the sound was synchronized with the actions in the scene. We found minor issues that were easily resolved by dragging back and forth the sound tab in the timeline to match the shot. Our final aspect was to come up with a title for our film. We decided on Blanche as it worked in context of the whole film, as well as having a certain creepy thriller-esque vibe. I worked on a blurring effect on the title, to give it more originality as well as giving the audience a feeling of uneasiness. We decided to put the title at the end, so that it is last thing that the audience will remember, as we want them to remember the name of the film. It also appears at the exact time where the action happens, at the peak of the audiences thrill, being what they are about to cringe at, and they almost get a sense of relief when the title comes up instead of the gore.