LH: Editing Reflection

Today in our media lesson, we carried on from our previous lesson by adding more titles in. Last lesson we managed to get the end film title into its correct position in the film, but we had not sorted out what it does on screen. We decided to go for the name increasing size on the screen in a plain white font on a black background for a simplistic effect. Then we began with the smaller titles, for the opening credits. For this we chose the same font as the main title to show continuity between them, we also chose a simplistic idea behind them where the fade in and out of the corners of the screen where it is easily seen. The names we got for many of the opening credits are relatively big names in some of the independent horror films, including the production company.

LH: Editing Reflection

After showing our rough cut to the rest of our class, and after seeing ourselves on a big screen we knew that we still had a lot to complete in our classwork. Today we had to begin with adding our titles into the scene and make sure they are well embedded linking to what is in the screen at that point in time. As well as the main title screen at the ending, we took inspiration from many of our films that we researched, we liked the simplistic design of a white font on a black background and I think that it has worked well in this instance. Also we realised from our audience feedback that the sound in many of our shots needed altering, in most cases it was the ambient noises being too loud, so this was changed in our lesson, also we began to research on freesounds.org a piece of music that could be used as a soundtrack over the top of the film opening. Also, a couple of our shots had to be cut down in order to reduce the length of the piece and cut out certain points where the acting is unrealistic.

Group: Rough Cut and Feeback

Rough Cut feedback

We showed our rough cut to the rest of the class in order to obtain feedback and collect ideas on how we could improve on our production. The main points that we considered from the feedback were that we needed to use a sound mix on the ambient sound throughout some of our clips as they felt it was too loud in some places. They also said that it would be nice to include a sound track throughout the first half of the film when the character is walking through the woods as this would help to build tension. As a group, we already knew that we would have to work on this but it was good to receive feedback in understanding that a soundtrack was needed over the clips.

From the feedback, the class said that we should shorten the length of the clips that aren't integral to the plot in order to make the story line much clearer. This was useful as we were able to have an idea on what clips were needed to be shortened. They also said that the jib shot when the character enters the building should be shortened because the camera becomes unsteady and the shot is prolonged. They also concluded that the sign that is featured in the jib shot is not relevant and so we should cut the clip just before the sign in featured. Finally, from the audience feedback we were able to understand that we should shorten some of the clips that features unrealistic acting. An example of this is when the character is in the chair whilst the antagonist is walking round him with the knife in his hand.

FP: Editing Reflection

We began this lesson with all of our chosen shots in a new project, arranged in an order that matched our storyline and that we all agreed on. Also, some of the earlier shots had been cut to length in the previous lesson. This meant that during today's lesson our task would be to cut more of the clips to length, in order to ensure that the video flowed properly and looked visually correct, as well as to ensure that we would not go too far above the two minute limit for the final outcome. This is proving to be quite challenging, as the total length of our clips (not cut to desired length) is over 5 minutes.  However during this lesson we managed to cut most of our clips to size, with only the last few shots remaining. Also, we rearranged the order of several shots, specifically at the very beginning. To ensure we didn't have two shots involving the camera moving in similar ways placed next to each other, we swapped the first two shots around so that the first shot is the forward tracking shot, followed by the static pull focus of the leaf. Finally, we decided to split the shot where the dog runs away into two halves and place the handy-cam shot of the dog running in between the two halves.