Editing Experience

Now that all of our editing has finished i found that it has been quite extensive because we have now re-filmed and edited almost 6 times including our:News report, re-filming the second half 3 times, our 1st half and any singular shots that needed to be redone or broken down slightly more. Editing has become one of my favourite things since we started this opening and as its finally priced together i can how see where to changes we needed were made and how much this improved our opening as whole. Also the feedback we were given from our peers helped a lot as it showed us what people thought of our product as we went along from an audiences perspective rather than just ours as we were less likely to pick up on the smaller details that we needed to improve as we went along.

I found throughout our editing experience I was the one to do all of the music and the sound affects and pricing in the music and sorting out the timings for the ending where April opened her eyes which i was glad to fond a sound affect for which made it more intense and sudden. This experience has really shown me how much music and sound affects effect the quality and flow of a film. I also find that the editing took a lot more work than i had initially expected, as i thought it would be more filming. 

As a group I'm glad that we had started filming very early on into our coursework as it really helped us time wise as we had managed to perfect things, that we wouldn't have been able to change and improve if we didn't have that time. I think as a group we worked really well although some people did not do as much editing as others we were able to spread out the jobs between the four of us quite well. When we first started the topic we had done a preliminary task which wasn't very good but int he time between then and now i think all of us in the group have really improved and have gained a lot of new skills and experiences. I think my own editing skills have improved enormously since restarted and have progressed to get better throughout, it took some learning curves but i also found that if i wasn't sure of something someone in the group knew how to do something or if not we would would do some research and find out.

Also for the match on match on the van we found it very hard on how to make the two images blur together to make one smooth movement. I found that by using a transition and cropping down the second image i was able to line up the two shots and use the transition to pull them together. At first i found that the transition didn't work but then looking closer to the computer tools, there you can shorten the transition so it was quick between the two shots to make it less obvious and the shot was then clearer for longer.

Towards the end of our editing it did start to become a bit of a chore as at some points we felt so close but so far to finally finishing. Some of my favourite shots that we took were: the van, ending shot and when we filmed Hannah leaning back in her chair and the shot changing half way through. I think these were my favourite shots because they took so much time to figure out and make them work, that when we had got them right they looked really good and you could see how much time we had spent on them.

Initially when we had created the ending to our Thriller there was scream, at the end but now that we had changed that to the beaten face coming through the title and then the loud sound emphasising it i prefer how we changed it and in my opinion it links better to the genre ofd the film and works better.

Re-filming 3rd March

Finally this is was our last time filming and I'm glad that we decided to change our ending as now everything fits into place so much better also our 360 degree turn although we found was very hard to do we still manages. As luckily Hannah has a Lazy Susan (a turning disk in the middle of her table) where we were able to place the camera and do the shot in one go but the turning of it at a consistent speed was really hard as either someone was seen or it went too fast or slow at times. So it took us a long time to finish this. 

For our last shot we had changed it completely from the other times we had filmed. For this i had done Paige's makeup to make her look like she had been abused which thankfully turned out really well. We also used a simple black pair of tights to make the gag as we weren't sure what to use but we found that they were the closets thing we were going to fins.

After doing her makeup in Hannah's house there is a wall in her kitchen that is a drag grey that worked perfectly with the filmed lightly to use as place to film Paige, and we would edit it by darkening the background so it doesn't look as textured and fit better at the end as the shot Fades through the title.

When editing we found that when we originally filmed the shot of April walking down the stairs and putting her shoes on that a coat was in the way so although there was the indication that she was putting her shoes on you couldn't actually see so we decided to retake the shot. As we had done it before, i found it very easy to retake the shot it just took a while to get the right position from above to get the angle we needed for the shot.

I think the shot of Paige opening her eyes is one of my favourite because with the correct sound effect and piece of music i will be able to give the shot some more intensity and impact as she opened her eyes so quickly. 

Production schedule for 3rd of March

The reason we are re-filming our 2nd half again because we were not completely satisfied with how our Opening ends and we thought that we would change the ending completely as we think by doing this we could get a much higher grade using a better ending. We also found that we were using quite a stereotypical ending that has been used in previous films, so we thought that we would start the 2nd half fresh and come up with another way to end our opening scene and make it less predictable

We will still be filming at Hannah's home after school on 3rd of February. We will be continue using the same props and Outfits that have been used previously, and my outfit will be with the white blouse and smaller amount of makeup as we decided it worked better. This time however we will be using a remote rather than Hannah leaning over the TV, we will be using the Kitchen table as one of our props and also a glass of water and some tissues.
Characters: will be Susan Richmond, Hannah, Jessica and Poppy.
People that will be present will be: Myself, Paige, Hannah, Jasmine and Lacey

Last time we had re-filmed we had planned to use a school camera but ended up using my own as some of thew members in our group hadn't given in our permission slips. However to our advantage my camera had worked really well and improved the quality of the film with little to no blur, but the battery was not fully charged so we had to recharge half way through filming so it had taken a bit longer than expected. So we will have to make sure it is fully charged this time. Also instead of filming the interrogation in the living room we will be doing a 360 degree shot so that every time a question is asked a new person is answering the question. Also after the screen goes black at the end of our opening we will have our title come up and then a fade in of April's face all bruised and battered with her eyes closed before they suddenly open.

The production schedules that we have used to guide us each time we re-film and the story boards have really helped and i think they have kept us on track although we may have slightly changed and improvised while filming.

After we have re-filmed this last part of our opening which will hopefully we will be finished so we can start editing on the Monday 5th March. We should be finished with all of our editing and filming after a couple of weeks.