Editing Review

Editing Evaluation.

We began editing on Wednesday the 6th of February, on this day Joe and Taryn stitched together the footage that we filmed on the previous Monday from Kes’s cabin. The edited footage did not include the drone shots from this location as Taryn and Joe did not believe that there was not an equal amount of light comparing footage from my GH4’s to the drones. This is very true, however I would have loved if they did include the footage from the drone, its only because the drone was a perfect (in my opinion) establishing shot of the location, it would have looked good with or without a vignette around it damping out the highlights, though Taryn and Joe are not as accomplished at editing as I may be so it’s absolutely fine that they did not include the footage, though in hindsight possibly could have included but I decided not too when I was editing as I did not want to tamper with Taryn’s and Joe’s editing as I believe it’s a really good thing that all four of us did some editing. So that was that sequence. Below are some screenshots from images from the drone’s camera and the GH4’s and it's clear to see why Joe and Taryn decided not to use the footage captured from the drone:

What had happened was the drone was exposing the image with a High ISO and the camera with a low ISO to reduce grain, it’s also down to the fact we shot with the drone before it was getting dark. Though the image could have been fixed in post, luckily it doesn’t make too much of a difference in the final film.

After the Wednesday we were doing no editing until Sunday, where Kes and I began the full edit of the whole trailer. We began stitching together footage from Myrtle Cottage mixed with the happy birthday sound that we had recorded earlier in the day. After doing this for about 3 hours stitching the first 20 seconds or so we had a look back at our notes: see picture below.

This was our plan for the order of shots in our trailer, a rough plan from a few weeks ago. Alongside this, we also had our treatment and proposal, while Kes and I were editing.

Also, while I was watching the rugby (before we started editing on Sunday) Kes was hard at work looking up uncopyrighted soundtracks for our trailer, gathering the links and jotting them down so that when it came to organising the timelines and creating the media bins things would run smoothly.

Before we started editing though, I made things easier for us by (like I said earlier) making media bins for each camera in each location, I also made bins for sound FX, music and colour overlays that we would use throughout the film.

Below is a picture of our media bins:

Other than the bins, other parts that made things easier for us when it came to editing was the use of a clapper throughout the filming of the project, on the clapper we had the scene take, SD card as well as the camera.

So back to editing and other decisions Kes and I had made, after editing the first scene I showed it to the rest of our group, over Snapchat and they thought it looked really good, I first used an establishing drone shot to gain a perspective of the location we were filming at followed by the rest of the party and letter opening scene, though one choice I made before I talk about titling, was the decision to leave out shots of my little brother. In these shots, even though we had close-ups of him, I left it out as I did not want to give away all of the characters, though if you go through the clip of my Dad bringing the letter to Ellena, you can see some of his figure on the right of the image, this was left in, intentionally.

So, Titles, after watching some titles on trailers from other thrillers and drama’s they usually only use one title and that’s the “A Village Road Show Picture” or similar, so we put in ours after Ellena opens the letter and it fading to red to signify danger, “An Infinite Roads Picture”. This was in a similar font to the film Shutter Island, because Kes and I liked this font the most out of a selection of other trailers.

So next the reading out of the letter, for this we tried to match images with the letter for example time is ticking; we showed a clock. We also incorporated the shots of Ross mischievously looking round the Backwell location which fitted with the line in the letter from Taryn “almost like a game”. I believe we did a good job at matching images for this.

After the Script scene, we had run out of steam and Kes and I decided to work backwards, (this is all on Sunday evening), we created the Credits at the end of the trailer matching to the beat of the music but also giving the view to pause on the trailer if they wanted to see who directed the production for example. We made these credits also with some Inspiration from the ‘Shutter Island’ Trailers, but we had our own roles and a different style we just liked the format of the lower size writing and the bigger writing for the names of actors. We also liked that the Titles were simple and not to overwhelming, as well as this we added our #wheresthebox as well as our Instagram account, finally we made sure the logos for our Instagram handle matched the colour of the font and that was our titles done (other than a spelling mistake we made which was pointed out to me by my parents which was later corrected on Tuesday).

Monday

On Monday we finished the whole trailer to a decent standard, but things still needed changing, for example, the Backwell scene would need completely new music that was a bit scarier as well as some more dark colour grading as some parts were too light, we were also advised to make Ross’s scenes warmer and grainier, like they were off an old film camera. So, what did we did on Monday and what decisions were made?

The day started at 8 A.M. I had myself some good breakfast, had a 2-minute breather outside then began to edit. We firstly again decided we wanted to work backwards, so we started off with the Clevedon scene, trying to get it to be fast paced and have a slight feel-good action pace about it to make the viewer think things are all good even though Ellena’s family are on the line. We had no trouble with the footage from Clevedon other than one shot that had Kes in the background getting changed out of his wetsuit, so, unfortunately, we could not use that clip (Ellena running down some stairs, handheld), luckily however we also filmed this shot with the drone, so we just used the drone’s footage instead. Also like I had said earlier in another post the footage from the go pro was brilliant, however, when pulling the box out of the water you could clearly see that it wasn’t Ellena in the water and that it was just some man in a wetsuit (Kes).

After successfully matching the last Clevedon scene to the music of the trailer we then progressed to work on the positioning in the trailer where the scene that Joe and Taryn had edited. After this and agreeing the music for this clip we then edited up the scene from the barn in the field, this also went really smoothly, now there was an error that I left in here and that somehow no one picked up on, one of the drone shots of Ellena running down to the barn, there was a shadow of the drone on the grass for about 1 second, you do have to look for it though, so Kes and I made the decision to leave the shot in as the beauty of the shot overcame the issue. We then proceeded to get excited over how stunning some of the shots from inside the barn were, filming the doors open and the blue box in focus with light from the outside being reflected off it, this has got to be one of my favourite shots I’ve seen (in a while).

So, after editing that in to the mix we then began to work on the scene where Ellena was waking up from her nightmare, I think it all looked good, I would have liked to use an ‘actual actor’ instead of Kes as he didn’t fit the part and both him and I understood that. In Hindsight, I could have gotten Kes to be the mailman and George to be her boyfriend to reduce the chances of people finding the clip ‘funny’ as its an important clip in the trailer, one that I think people may have overseen. So other than this brief reflection, I think this scene was well put together. (also, in this scene we added all the sound effects of rain hitting the windows and Ellena taking the quilt off her)

The next scene was the last Backwell scene which was primarily just editing to the beat of the music, some jump cuts, some fade cuts, we did use some weird music, to begin with but after a review from our teammates we swapped it out for some more suiting horror music, this was done on Tuesday morning. Other than this scene which was just bundling together a wide selection of clips adding some sound FX from uncopyrighted sources online, I think we did a good job of it especially with no dialogue which I thought we lacked in comparison to other thriller trailers.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning Kes and I work up early again and cracked on with some changes we had been suggested to make from my parents, a few friends of Kes and I and Taryn and Joe.

First, to completely change the music in the Backwell scene and completely restructure the editing of this scene (like I had mentioned previously). After spending a painstaking 3 hours editing fad dips to music, absolutely perfecting the transitions we had finished, we were much happier with the result. Next, we had to colour grade the whole trailer, which I admit was a bit rushed and not totally thought through, but I was happy enough to let the colours slide. At least the colours matched each scene’s tone and the music.

Then after this, Kes had to leave to go on a skiing trip. I then spent 4 hours fixing audio levels and fine-tuning cuts as well as sorting out render stings which were harder as it usually was when we shot everything in 4K, I did eventually find out how to do it however after some research. What I had to do for the best results was render in .mp4 at 80,000,000 bps (8 bit) which was the maximum quality you can get out of my GH4, so this render was successful. Next I made a 1080p version of the render just in case the mac’s at college couldn’t handle the playback of the 4K version off of the server, (to be more specific I made 3 rendered versions one at 4K high bit rate, one high bit rate 1080p version and finally a low bit rate 1080p version at about 7,000,000 bps, just in case the 4K or another version would not play off of the server).

So, overall when I had finished editing, I felt a feeling of relief, I was so happy with our team, I think we worked great together, though I'll leave my final evaluation for another post. But I am so happy with what we have produced in 3 and a half days, I think, and others think that it’s incredible, I can’t help but imagine if I had the full 3 weeks to edit and shoot! That’s it for my editing evaluation,

cheers.