Editing Process

On the first lesson we reviewed the footage in the file name 'rushes' and then dragged them down to the timeline enabling us to move the footage around and place it in order. A lot of our footage had many of the same takes on it so we ended up dragging down many of the same shots, as some of the clips within each shot had better quality footage or light exposures or there were issues of continuity. Decisions that I made in the editing process, was to put the shots in order, which is difficult as our first initial idea was to cut from both of the rooms, one after the other so that it gives the creative effect of making the characters look as if they are in different locations.

On the second lesson we eliminated some of the shots that didn’t fit into the narrative of the opening sequence and grouped them together in order on the timeline, we used the bins to delete and organize certain shots. We did this as this helps us to then visualize how to crop the thriller in sequence together to make up the correct narrative and chronological order of the thriller.

In the second scheduled lesson we also dragged the mouse down to select the shots and then used the crop tool to crop from a mid-shot to a close of the same scenario, like when the father attempts to smoke his cigarette. Cropping is a useful technique as it allows you to show the audience what you want them to see and it creates a natural flow within the build up of tension for this thriller. In some occasions we used just the sound of the liquor pouring into the glass without having to show it, this was a useful technique as the apple juice that was supposed to be seen as bells whiskey actually appeared as apple juice, as bubbles appeared in a majority of the ‘glass pouring shots’. Our initial thoughts eventually adjusted and changed due to the fact that we wanted to cut in between a shot of her eyes opening and then to a shot of the point of view and what she was seeing as her eyes opened, however this looked messy as the adjustment and timing of when her eyes opened was too fast for the shot to actually be seen by any audience member. So from an editing perspective we decided to drastically change this to just a POV (point of view) shot of the father walking towards her, as this created enough tension in itself.

On our third lesson we introduced the text symbol (‘T’ symbol) which added text and credits to the background of each shot. As a group we decided to only involve the main credit points, this being the director, the title of the thriller and production companies. This was effective for our thriller as a majority of our shots had a lot of movement and space taken up by the use of props, which was important for the audience to see so we used a blank screen for the credits at the beginning and at the end of the thriller. The black screens were needed as this made it clearer for the audience to see the font and for the font colour, which was white, to visually stand out.

In our fourth lesson we worked on the sound effects for our thriller. We originally had the idea of the father playing loud music in the other room. We were able to use sounds from ‘royalty free’ and make an MP3 version that we could then drag into the timeline. By using the bottom of the timeline for sound we were able to adjust the loudness of the sounds to be quieter when he closes the door and louder when he appears in the same room as her. We did this via the use of changing the sound levels and adjusting the gradient levels higher to make the non-diegetic soundtrack louder. This appeared as an effective idea as it made the scenario of the hammer, and the violence come to an overall climax. However we muted this sound by clicking on the ‘m’ button at the bottom of the sound timeline to see what our thriller would visually look like with another sound in relation to its ‘thriller’ genre. Instead we came to the conclusion that the thriller was just as effective if we use emphasis, by turning the sound up on the diegetic sounds, as the quietness of the whole beginning scene made the thriller appear sinister at the same time as leaving the audience unaware that the father is the killer. We decided to add a ‘heart racing’ or ‘scary’ soundtrack as soon as the father picks up his hammer as this is now allowing the audience to recognize that he is the killer. At the end of the opening title sequence we used free snippets of sounds already in the folder on the computer to create the effect of her toes being crushed. This sound was actually the sound of meat being crushed. By moving the sound bar around on the timeline we were able to adjust it so that it fits in perfect relation with the hammer going down and the picture being cut. The effect of this is that it creates a climax of tension and shows the negative conventions of the character without actually having to show any fake blood, therefore making the task effective and simpler for us to edit or to film in the first place.

In our fifth lesson we used the playback button to view the thriller in full screen as this sometimes helps to see the thriller and see what aspects of it we could change. Luckily for us all that was left was to make up a title and font for the title. After we came up with ‘blanched’ we used the same font as previously, to revolve around the same theme and then clicked we on to the example folder of this text, labeled ‘title of film’ and made 3 or 4 other folders of the same title and font but instead, each time we moved the title down gradually it made a ‘Blurred’ movement effect, as all of these titles layers were actually moving to make one. We used this blur effect to represent the genre and to emphasize the climax of tension and ambiguity of the film.