The Editing process

DAY 2

Today Natalie M, Elena C, Natalie N and Elena A all got together and finished editing our Thriller. We also ended up filming another part to bulken it up a bit where it shows the villain boiling a kettle and sharpening his knife. The sharpening of knives is a powerful shot as the audience will be curious to see why he is doing this. The way it shows him making sure they are all straight is quite good too. Elena C shot the kettle scene which was difficult as the sun light and the window were reflecting in the kettle. Elena tried to hide heself in the reflection which was too hard and so she ended up kneeling down and getting it from a lower angle. I filmed the knife scene using the tripod. We then went back to the computer and added this part to the whole film and carried on editing.
In the end we decided not to include the kettle scene as we thought the sound of the knives brought enough tension to the scene.
We added the opening titles to the film. We decided to do this by placing red writing onto a black background. We used the colour red as it is associated with blood and danger. We also managed to add music to the film. We had originally only planned to use one clip of music, however in the end we used more than one.

Re-filming

Tuesday 7th April

Today we re-filmed the last few shots of our thriller. As previously we were unsure of the outcome of our current shots we decided to re-shot. As soon as we got to the location we had a small discussion of the plans and what we aimed to achieve, after this we went straight into filming ensuring no time was wasted.

Again the role of director and Filmer was shared between us. We successfully worked together helping each other to accomplish the best result. After an hour of shooting yesterday we were satisfied with our outcome. The afternoon was an overall success and we have now completed the filming process. Next week we will be reviewing the shots of yesterday and editing the final product. We will plan to edit and add music/credits in one day, in order for us to have enough time to concentrate on other aspects of this course.

The Editing Process

As well as choosing the soundtrack, today we also began the editing process. As a whole group we all sat down and looked at all the current footage we have filmed. This took a little longer than expected and after thoroughly looking at the whole clip we chose the specific shots that we wanted to use for our final opening clip. Although our ideal goal was to have nearly the whole clip edited by the end of the day, this was not accomplished.

Once we began to look over the clips we immediately noticed some continuity errors present. This had an effect on the way our work was being perceived. After trying to correct these errors with fades/cuts we have decided that the wise choice will be to re-film these shots in order to achieve the high standard we are aiming for. Even though we encountered problems today, it hasn't all gone to waste. The good news is that the scene that we will be re-filming is the less time consuming and most of our footage is successful, most importantly it is usable! We aim to re-shot the scene in the Easter break where we will have enough time to mend these mistakes.

Choosing The Soundtrack for our Thriller

As a group we wanted to put a soundtrack with our Thriller which we hoped would help create the mood and atmosphere we were hoping for. The main problem with choosing a soundtrack is the issue of copyright. In order to prevent this we used the website http://www.audio.lgfl.org.uk/. We found out about this site whilst at the CLC editing our preliminary task. We found a few soundtracks we liked which we believed would work well with our Thriller. These were called:

• Heart of Hell
• Heart of Hell 2
• Mystery Killer
• Crime against the person
• Enemy Within
• Arachnophobia

However, when we tried to download these soundtracks we encountered a problem whereby the ICT technician had to download them himself. Once he had done this, we listened to our chosen soundtracks and selected various points in the track we believed would work best in our Thriller and deciding to mix and match a few too.

The next stage with our soundtrack is applying it to our Thriller which we will do after we have edited it.

Tuesday 24th March.

The last scene we filmed was the beginning of our opening, this was the final part to our Thriller. We tried to do these shots in the previous week but the lighting proved too dark for us so filming was postponed. We learned from our previous mistake and chose a suitable time which enabled us to film successfully, the opening is now complete and we can focus on the editing stage.

[Clip of us Filming.]

Filmed on Mobile.

There were some disagreements along the way, but we worked through it for the benefit of the group. We chose to film scenes with multiple view points, with a different person on the camera and we gained different shots. We did have fun filming as we got to experiment with make-up and fake blood. But it wasn't all hard work.. We still had fun :)

Second Day of Filming.

Friday 20th March
Our second day of filming we aimed to have the whole filming process completed. However this goal was not reached as we suffered some problems from camera difficulties and the natural lighting in the atmosphere was too dark and this prevented us from filming successfully. Although we were unable to accomplish our orginal aims this time was not all wasted, we were still able to film a few shots which we could potentially use for our final production. Having learnt from this problem we have planned to refilm at a later date of Tuesday 24th were we shall meet at an earlier time therefore we will be able to get the shots we need.

First Day of Filming

Tuesday 18th March was the day we began filming our Thriller. We used a basement as our main setting. The props we used were:
· fake blood
· rope
· materials
· make up
· lights
· costumes

We shared out all the roles equally amongst each member of the group, these included;
· make up artist
· prop manager
· director (& assistant)
· photographer
· & we all had a share of the filming.

Before we began filming we all had a chance to discuss our storyboards and make any changes. This also enabled everyone in the group to fully understand the storyboard.

We applied fake blood & make-up to actors/actresses and surroundings in order to create the perfect Thriller environment.

We chose this sort of filming to create an air of mystery for the audience. We also made sure that we would be sending out narrative enigmas to the audience.

We began filming at around 9am and finished at around 2:30pm.