Editing Evaluation

                         

To begin our editing, we began by transferring all of our shots from the camera onto the computer, and uploaded them into final cut pro.  Then we created a range of different “bins” and put them under a variety of names (such as “blood splats, live action of girl, live action of artist, ambience, ink in water”) in order to enable us to categorize and organise our shots.  After this we played through all of our shots and put them in the bins appropriate and putting the shots that we wanted to discard into the trash bin. Most of our shots that we discarded because the inks did not diffuse through the water correctly so were unusable or we deleted shots where the artwork page that we were filming got moved, or shots which we realised had our shadows in or was not in focused or blurred.

For our thriller, we decided quite early on in the process that we wanted to have an artistic, fast pace action sequence shown on the ink, as it moves throughout the water. In order to put this idea into process, we decided that we should create two sequences, one of our live action footage of the artists, and another sequence, showing the ink reveals, which we would merge together in adobe after effects once they are finished.

First of all, we looked through all of the live action sequence and compiled them into a sequence which we thought complemented each other, we also wanted the sequence to contain evenly spaced different shots (for example so there is not too many blood splatters/ live action next to each other) We also wanted the pace and tension of the thriller to increase throughout. As a result, began the sequence with reasonably slow, zoomed out shots in order to set the scene and establish each characters roles. However as the sequence continued, we included faster paced shots whereby the characters become more violent and Ellie shows more pained facial expressions. In order to create an arty style, we experimented with a variety of different effects, for example we duplicated some shots and overlaid them on top of each other to create a distorted effect, we also learnt how to cross fade our shots together to ensure a smooth transition between each shot.

Then we put together the ink reveal sequence, we wanted these shots to flow together so we made sure that each ink shot flows onto the page from the same direction that the previous scene was wiped away from. As we had only shot around six different ink reveals, we had to zoom into each reveal and take different sections from each shot and rotate them so that it would not look like we had used the same shot twice. We also had to make sure that there was not too much white space around the inks, however we had to leave enough space to write the titles.

After these two sequences were complete, we imported them into adobe after effects and layered the ink flows over the live footage. Then we put the “luma inverted” matte setting over the top to ensure that the footage is only shown in the black ink rather than the white open space we also utilised a brightness and contrast filter to adjust clarity of the revealed footage.

In order to increase the artistic look to our thriller that we wanted to achieve, we picked a background, which looks like canvas and added this as a layer to the top and bottom. Then we added the “multiply” blending mode, which burns the texture onto the footage layer.

After this, we decided upon a font for are titles, by looking through the selection in final cut pro and went for bold, meaningful large font to correspond with the deep atmosphere of the sequence. Then we typed up all of the titles and placed them in a position where we wanted them throughout the opening sequence, either over or under the ink.

After this we decided that we would like there to be a slight blur over the dripping ink layer so we duplicated the ink sequence and added it slightly below the ink footage and added the multiply mode to blur the edges.

Then on the base canvas layer we prepared it onto a separate composition and changed around the positioning and scaling of the original canvas, zooming in on different sections, this is because we decided that that our original canvas looked too repetitive as it did not change throughout.

Next, we placed blood drips on the empty space of the canvas to create more depth to our piece and heighten the dark sinister atmosphere.

Finally, we found some suspenseful, eerie music from a stock library of music the piece begins reasonably slow and increases in pace. As the track continues, a chanting choir begins at the climax of the piece, which begins at the time when the live action reaches its most suspenseful shot of Ellie running backwards away from the artist. I think the sound goes perfectly with the footage to enhance the distorted yet menacing tone whilst encouraging the fast yet flowing pace to our sequence, clearly defining it as a thriller.

 Overall I found the editing process of bringing the whole look of our sequence together very enjoyable, however quite challenging at times.  I found using final cut pro quite difficult to begin with however I think that we all got the hang of the basics after a few sessions. However I found learning how to use all of the different overlaying, distorting, and blending methods particularly hard as we used so many different settings.

Generally I feel that we all contributed evenly to the editing of our thriller. A general session would consist of all of us going through every single issue until we were all happy, whilst all sharing our inputs and ideas, whilst talking it in turns to edit. I particularly enjoyed doing the additional features on after effects such as putting in overlays, background canvases and blood splatters in the background as I feel these elements really enhance the look of the clip, which what made it so successful. However I feel my main role consisted within the titles. Sam and Christie were all very busy in the later sessions due to other commitments and during this time I was responsible for completion of the titles, I enjoyed picking the font and arranging them in suitable places in the sequence, there was some difficulty in this however as we wanted the titles to be visible for a long enough time whilst remaining a fast, eerie pace to the piece. As a result, I decided to go against our initial idea and overlay some titles over the live action and change to colour in order to show some variation in the sequence whilst enabling them to be bigger and visible for a longer amount of time.