EDITING 5

Editing- Day 5

As we come to an end of editing our opening sequence to its final product, it came to the stages of editing the subtleties and final perfections of our footage in order to appear as professional as possible.
As we had completed the narrative structure, or so we thought, we spent time after the school day had finished on editing in the sound and adjusting the audio of the product. 
The sound adjustments is probably what I found the most challenging to edit as it was trying to get certain parts of the opening sequence with lower volume and some dialogues enhanced; in short, the sound of our opening sequence was just extremely complicated and challenging. 

To overcome this, we spent a lot of time cutting the audio up using the blade tool, so that we could make the volume of the music featured louder in some places and quieter in others. Additionally,  we had to take in to account our non-diagetic sound and dialogue and make sure that this was easier to hear than the soundtrack over laying it in the background. Finally, we were able to come to a compromise with our audio in general and decided to have the theme song from 'Candy man' throughout the majority of the opening sequence in order to improve the opening sequences continuity as before this we realised the two songs we tried to use together over-complicated things and didn't flow enough. We were much happier with how things were when we simplified the soundtrack and it made it appear much more professional than it was before. 


We also added in the credits, such as 'Directed by', and we immediately were happy with the positioning of them but it did take us some deliberation as a group to decide on a font as we decided that a simple one would be best for the credits, due to our lack of variation on the software we had to go with the safest choice. 

EDITING 4

Editing Day 4

On our 4th editing session it was my turn to edit again and I made a chunk of our opening sequence improve by the help of my group. We realised that we wanted to change the order of our opening sequence so had to make a new project and copy and paste half of it into the new event. This allowed us to adjust the order of the clips and audios without any complications, as well as saving us a lot of time finding an alternative way to rearrange the clips. 

Once I had done this, we began carefully cutting and selecting smaller clips and editing them so they fit perfectly into a match on action, a reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. Splitting the clips up like this allowed us to see where things would fit best and allowed us to do it easily and efficiently. 

Also, we decided to have the title come up before the end of the opening sequence and slightly begin the actual film and have that as the interview so it seemed as if the film was actually starting. This would improve our opening sequence as it will now appear much more professional and will mirror many other horror films, how after the title appears it goes straight into the plot of the film. It will also improve the structure of the film and make the audience aware when the present day is. 

This editing session allowed us to clearly rearrange and order the clip properly once we had gotten used to using final cut pro. The more we have used the software the easier it has been for us to edit it successfully and exactly how we wanted our Opening sequence to be when we first came up with our initial ideas. 

FILMING 3

Re- filming part of our Opening Sequence

Whilst editing we realised that we didn't have enough footage to make our opening sequence as long and as scary as we first set out for it to be. We decided to set a new filming date at Sophie's house on the 28th of March, and we carried this out successfully. 

We got our actors to act out an interview scene between Chayce (the subject) and Kate (the interviewer). Kate asked Chayce a series of mental illness related questions before finally confirming there would be no further interviews on "the Subject". This allowed us to include dialogue in our opening sequence as well as giving us enough footage to make our opening sequence better. 

We have now put the newly filmed footage onto final cut pro and will continue to edit it in with our opening sequence to complete our final product by our deadline. 

UPDATED IDEAS

Changes to our Opening Sequence: Updated Ideas

As a group we decided that it would be a good idea to take a step back and watch the opening sequence through and be critical in what changes we think we could make. We all wrote a number of potential ideas to change the opening sequence and then share and discuss them as a group.

Kate decided that our opening sequence lacked shot type and camera angle variety and after we all agreed we decided to set a date to re-film in the forest in order to get more camera angles, such as an ariel shot/ birds eye view shot, over the shoulder shot, extreme close up. We also decided it was necessary to edit in more match-on-actions in order to show that we understand it fully and can use this skill to make our product look professional. 


Also, Lucy then came up with the idea of an interview scene, after we decided that more dialogue was necessary, between the main female character and a nurse character. We would use a camcorder as a prop in order to show the 60's theme and make it look more old as if the film was filmed by an old camera. We were to film this in Sophie's House just like the other indoors shots. 

EDITING 3

Editing Day 3

We added in more footage and continued to build up the opening sequence and to make it flow and all fit together I utilized the blade tool to  precisely cut the footage as I knew that it needed to be as fine tuned as possible. 

I then layered two clips on final cut pro so the transition was a fade and not a fast cut. We did this on purpose because this part of  our  opening sequence was a scene which was meant to be portrayed as blurred and delirious and is meant to reflect the mood and feelings of the character.

Once we realized as a group that our initial idea for the background music wouldn't work, we  took a break from editing and I went to find another song which would fit our opening sequence better. I came across the theme song from 'Candy man' and as a group we decided it would work much better. We added the music in to the opening sequence  for the scenes when she's in the hospital but again used  the blade  tool to stop the music when the scene switches to the forest. We then used the volume fade tool to make the sound gradually die out so  it sounded more professional.

EDITING 2

Editing: Day 2

On our second day of editing, we made sure that everybody in the group was given a chance to use the software and edit a section themselves, so for the majority of this session I advised what my team members could edit but had less of a direct impact to the editing. 

We began by re-watching what we had already done, and immediately saw faults in it. I noticed that we needed to make the transitions fade slightly more, so we used the transition tool to improve this, which made the opening sequence look massively more professional, just by improving that subtlety alone. 

As a group we selected and uploaded all of the footage from day 2 of filming and discovered that we needed to alter the colour scheme of these clips. Because we wanted it to represent a 60's style camera and theme, we played around with the colour board until we found that we would lower the saturation slightly in order to create a warm and rose tinted filter, which we think portrays a 60's camera film. 

I also discovered how to use the reverse tool, and we swapped a clip and made it backwards so it fit better with its previous clip. When it came to adding in the flashbacks of the opening sequence I realised we would have to find a transition which made it clear that a flashback was happening, so we discovered the 'flash' transition which appeared as if a white light was what was switching between past and present. 

Lucy utilised the title sequences, by adding in a location, date and time to further emphasise that it was a flashback and not set in the same time so the audience don't get confused. Our fonts we have gone with for now are quite simple as we have realised we don't want our opening sequence to look cheap and unprofessional which is why we have gone with simple fonts for now until we find something more suitable and fitting to our research. 

Overall from this day of editing I have realised that we might need to re-film some footage as we have a lack of dialogue and shot types compared to what we set out to have initially. We, as a group, plan to get footage with some more dialogue and a range of shot types to improve our final product and make our editing much easier. 

EDITING 1

Editing: Attempt 1

After we finally had uploaded our footage onto Final Cut Pro, myself and Kate found ourselves just playing around with the software in order to get a feel for how it worked properly. 
We discovered the blade tool, the zoom tool and the Ken Burns tool; all which was useful to our first attempt at Editing. 
The clip below shows what we did on our first day of editing, despite it only lasting a few seconds and still requiring a lot of work, we did successfully use the colour board where we altered our saturation and colour contrast to make the footage appear darker and have a more low-key lighting. We also used a fast- cut transition to make the film appear to be fast paced and to build tension quickly. We overlapped the footage with a wind noise, as well as a composition which we found on final cut pro which happened to fit perfectly on top of our footage. I discovered the title sequence tool where you were able to get the film title to appear at any point of your opening seqence, however I was disappointed with the range of fonts which Final Cut Pro had to offer which meant we couldn't use a font which we had originally wanted to use. By the end of our editing we will hopefully be happy with our font and also have added in credits and more subtitles, etc. 
Overall we were really happy of how our first editing session panned out, and we now know what to do next time and how

to use the software effectively. 

FILMING 2

Filming Day 2: Sophie's House

On the 18th of February we filmed the rest of the footage at Sophie's house in an empty room. We had Chayce back in the costume but this time with a more neat and tidy appearance. 
Because I directed and filmed the previous scenes, the other girls took charge when it came to filming this footage and directing it.
I made sure that we were roughly going off the shot lists and story boards which we had produced to ensure that we would have all the footage and shot lists we would need so we didn't have to re-film it and waste time. 
On the day of filming the window in the room had natural lighting coming through which was suitable for our footage and meant that we wouldn't need to spend as much time editing as we thought. 

Here is some of our raw footage from filming DAY 2. 

FILMING 1

Filming Day 1: 
On the 8th of February our group set out to Alderley Edge to film some of the scenes for our opening sequence. We had our actor, Chayce Smith get into costume and one of the group members did her hair and make up, inspired from the research I did into horror film mise en scene. 
Both myself and Kate hand held a camera and stood at different angles to what we were filming; we decided to not use a tripod to film as we believed that  a hand-held camera would make the scenes in the woods much more realistic with a horror-vibe to it.
I directed this part as I knew that I had creative ideas about the camera angles and shot types which would really make our opening sequence spooky and startling. 
The reason that myself and Kate filmed the scenes at the same time but using two different angles was so we could match the action of the footage easily without having to re-film the footage. 
I did a long shot to capture the main characters body and costume and this came from a pan in order to establish the setting. I also did a close up of a side profile of Chayce's face which we took 3 times. The footage I shot was utilized in editing.

Here is just one clip of our raw footage of filming day 1 which I directed and filmed which shows a long shot of the main character from the side.