Editing Techniques Learnt

· Ghosting
· Solarising, to create the flashing effect on the eyes in the beginning
· Expanding shots within the screen
· Parallel, non-linear editing
· Capturing, naming, and organising clips
· Changing speed/duration of shots
· Adjusting brightness/contrast/colour/saturation/sound
· Adding titles
· Creating different transitions (cuts, fades, dissolves)
· Linking and unlinking clips
· Rendering footage
· Layering clips
· Cutting up clips with the razor tool
· Creating new timelines to experiment and draft new sequences, and to leave bits of footage we needed on
· Putting things on the timeline/s

Pre-Evaluation Summary

General Information
Film Title: Blink Murder

Film Genre: Psychological Horror/Thriller

Production Company: forty4 Productions

Crew

Lighting, Camera, & Sound: shared between - Bhavika Popat, Bisma Arif, Mary Bardsley, Mia Obertelli

Cast

Emma [The Killer]: Mia Obertelli

Yasmin [The Housemate]: Bisma Arif

Location
House in Southgate, North London

Shooting Dates:

Sunday 23rd November 2008 [first test shoot] - Monday 12th January 2009 [final reshoot]

Equipment

Hardware: Canon HD mini DV (Digital Video) camera, mini DV tapes, tripod, DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), mains cable and battery for camera

Audio: on-board microphone, headphones

Lighting: paglights, studio lights

Software: Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop (part of the Adobe CS3 package)

LiveType, Soundtrack Pro (Apple)

Opening Sequences

In a film, the opening sequence has a number of differen functions:

• signal start of film
• introducing a character
• introducing the core iconography
• establishing narrative structure
• establishing the core themes of the film
• establishing genre using generic conventions, and so creating audience expectations
• evoke interest and desire to continue watching in audience

The typical conventions of opening sequences are:

• credits presenting key cast and production crew
• soundtrack significant to narrative in establishing mood
• predominance of action codes in narrative

Individual Feedback

I decided to get some more general feedback from people, and I found that people liked:
- "what [we're] doing with the flashy white stuff" (i.e. the solarize effect we used for the flashes)
- the eye movements and ghosting were very effective and unsettling
- climax bit from 0:43 - 0:50 is really well done; blink is "atmospheric" and "professional"
- the evil grin at 1:34
- the shot where Emma runs her fingers over the edge of the knife - "it really creeps me out"
- the final shot (ECU of eyes) is really good, and the soundtrack goes very well with it
- the titles are "really cool"

They didn't like:
- the fade at 0:50 as it seems quite unnatural
- the shot it cuts into, again, because it seems unnatural (we had to extend the shot for longer than we wanted to show the light was on and was switched off)
- one person commented that they completely missed the title
- the BCU of Emma's leg and foot as she puts on tights would've been better not in front of a yellow cupboard, as "it's too bright and cheery"

Mia its Bisma..LOL

Heyy...check the group blog :)

btw...November 16th should do it. Also, delete this post.

Bisma XxX

you're not going out at this time, are you?

p,s..taste the rainbow.

Fini!

So, we managed to get all the credits fixed up with a few adjustments - we changed the order of the ones at the beginning that were done on LiveType, so that they started with names from the production side, i.e. producer, director etc.; for the rest, we didn't make them move, made them smaller, and had them fade in and out over the shots rather than having a black title screen for them.
We'd advertised our screening, which was on Friday, using the social networking website Facebook, and generally asking people to come along. We wrote a questionnaire for people to fill in so that it would be easier for them to give us feedback, and handed copies out to people when they came in.
The screening went really well - we had a good turnout of people and got a lot of questionnaires filled in, so hopefully we'll have some really useful feedback now :)
And now it's just the written side left!!

...not so finished!!

Well, as it turned out, we're not actually 100% finished yet... (see group blog for more detail) we've got to sort out our credits as we didn't realise they had to be going all the way through the sequence - but this shouldn't take too long to do, so we're still pretty much there!
We started it off today and now we have all the titles so we just have to add them in tomorrow, and then that's that! All that remains is the screenings for the feedback for the evaluation...

Production: The End!

So, after three final shoots and a lot of hard work and hours spent in the editing suite, we've finally produced a finished opening!
When we'd nearly finished, we did a test screening with other media students as an audience, who gave us some really useful feedback about what we could change to make it better and anything that didn't seem quite right. We followed their advice and made the necessary changes, and are, at last, pretty happy with our final product.
There was a lot that I was particularly pleased with and I think made our product quite distinct from the others, such as the montage of 'sudden's at the beginning, and the foley used as a soundtrack without showing what it was from - e.g. eyeliner pencil being sharpened which produced quite a creepy noise, which fitted in well. I really liked the credit effects that Bisma and I chose, and think they fit in well - the fonts too! And maybe it's just because I'm glad we finally came up with them after ridiculously long, but the title of our film, Blink Murder, and our production company forty4 [because we filmed at my house, the number of which is 44... and 4+4 is 8! our group number!].
There were a few things we couldn't change, such as:

• inconsistent lighting - we had to use Adobe Premiere to try to get the light levels the same but unfortunately, in doing this, we lost some quality in the sharpness of the shot
• sound - we had a buzzing noise made by the camera in our dialogue shots which we couldn't get rid of without making the speech sound a little muffled - however, this isn't all that noticeable and I think I'm more conscious of it, as with the other problems, because we spent so long editing these things and trying to correct any mistakes.

However, this is, of course, all about learning, and I think I've definitely learnt a lot that'll stay with me! Now onto the evaluation...

Editing

Earlier in our editing sessions we worked out everything we need to reshoot [see group blog post], which is quite a lot! However, we got a lot more of the beginning sorted, and it's coming together much better.
In my free when I was editing alone, there wasn't that much to do, so I wrote down the script of the dialogue ready for the reshoot, and we amended it to make it sound a bit more natural and flow better.
I also tried adding in the sound of footsteps from other shots of Bisma going upstairs as the ones we're using somehow lost the sound, but it's really difficult to get it in synch, so that's something we'll need to work on later - but we don't have much time left!!!

The Script

This is the amended script of the dialogue between the housemate (played by Bisma) and the killer, Emma (played by me).

Bisma: [knocks]
Mia: Come in!
B: Hey! You look dressed up! You’re not going out at this time are you?
M: Um, yeah, I’m just out to see a friend. She’s dying to see me.
B: Okay, well be careful... I’ve just heard some terrible things on the news.
M: Oh, yeah... about all those poor women... I heard. It really scares me...
B: Yeah, me too... Well, I’m gonna go to bed anyway. Goodnight!
M: Okay, night!

Reshoot

We all agreed that we wouldn't have enough time to edit our new footage if we left the shooting until Friday, and we wouldn't have much to do in our alotted editing sessions either, so we've changed our reshoot day to tomorrow (Wednesday). Hopefully everything will go to plan! We have quite a bit of work to do but nothing's been moved in the setting (much to my sister's annoyance) so that should be fine for any continuity and means we won't have to set it up again. We're all really determined to improve our opening as much as possible, because at the moment we're not very happy with it, so I think we'll work really well to get it all done.

First Lesson Back & Review

One of our issues with our production so far is that it's too short, so I suggested having the cutting speed between shots increasing and the shots themselves becoming shorter - real proper 'suddens'. Accompanying this would be that typical creepy sort of music where it's like really dissonant, atonal strings - rising in pitch and tone but not at all in synch, and a crescendo as it gets higher and then it would be like a sudden sort of SLAM of a last shot, like the one of the killer's face at the climax. Then we would cross-cut to the housemate turning off the light and going upstairs. Ok, so I've not really described it particularly well... but if I find the right music it'll be a lot clearer, so that's one of the things we can do.
Also, we have to reshoot my half of the dialogue scene, as the framing is terrible and the eyeline-matching is pretty non-existant! As we have to do this, we're also going to do the knife pan in the drawer and make the bit where the killer picks up the knife work properly. We've decided to shoot on Friday, but I'm worried this won't leave us enough time for editing it, so if we can make it an earlier day we definitely will.

Re-opening :)

We started back at school today and my individual and group blogs are both now officially back 'online'!