The first montage of shots of a victim being dressed is meant to be an introduction to the film. Since it is not directly involved with the series of events, we wanted to make the shots appear unique. The beginning montage is eerie through the pristine, still, and doll-like presentation of one of the victims. In order to emphasize this, I chose to use lighting effects through editing to make all of the montage shots have a yellow glow to them in order to great an unrealistic and ironically pleasant appearance. By manipulating the lighting, I was able to make all of the shots of the montage look similar in order to portray that they are in the same environment and have the same lighting effects, which was not the case before. Now the shots look cohesive and have the warm yet distant appearance to them that is almost sickly sweet.
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In the mad dash to reduce some of the time in our film, I was able to shorten the kitchen scene. This kitchen scene, prior to editing, was worthless because it included our main character with his beard. However the shot now only cuts to a time frame where he has his back to the audience hiding the beard. Anyways, so with this, I created a beautiful transition between modern time and a flashback. As the killer goes downstairs in the house, the shot changes to when the killer walks around the car to get one of the victims. When the killer opens the car door, it is obvious that a victim is inside the trunk. Instead of showing the killer carry the victim away, the shot flashes forward to the killer in the kitchen removing eggs from the refrigerator. The motion of the car door and the motion of the refrigerator door are similar, allowing the concept of the victim being removed from the car to be implied and the transitions of the flashback to be flawless. After meeting with our director and getting input from the other members of our team, I was able to put the shots in the correct order and include the specific details that enhanced the narration. For one of the shots the killer closes the door in order to walk outside. By closing the door, it draws a connection between the indoor shots and the exterior. Currently the shots are all edited except for the sound and the appropriate transitions. When we watched the rough draft of our film, I noticed that the length of the shots in certain locations were too long. I originally wanted longer shots to create a slow, calm, and apathetic mood that corresponds with our film, but some shots are just too much. After calculating how much time we have of our film, I noticed that we are thirty seconds over time. Perfect! So I slimmed down our film to have quicker shots while still maintaining the looming mood of the film. For the montage shots, I made them one second instead of two and I eliminated some unnecessarily long shots that brought no extra meaning to the film. I am happy with the accomplishments, but we still need to get rid of 8 seconds.
All of the night scenes are now on the timeline. Not well organized, but on the timeline. I was able to create a general trend on how the shots are supposed to be included in the film, but since I was working alone I didn't have the choices that the team made and the shot list is now outdated for reflection on that. When the killer is chasing Alec, however, I made the shots quicker and quicker in order to bring up the tension and anticipation in the film. One of the difficulties in the editing was that in many of the shots, Alec was smiling. So I had to mess with the speed of the shots and choose specific clips in order to limit the smiling. It was impossible. However, the smiling of the escaping character does make sense, but is shows that he is possibly unaware of him being chased by a killer. When in doubt, its art.
The team successfully got together to shoot the night scenes which is fantastic! I didn't go to this shoot because I foresaw much editing misery in my future and I really wouldn't have been much help to them. Anyways, I met up with Jessica to get the SD card so that I can start transferring the files onto the hard drive. I ended up going to the wrong house... Anyways I was able to choose the shots that were the last take of the specific shots or the ones that were better quality. By doing the transfer of files now, I save time later for actual editing at school.
Today was a day of reviewing the shots we have and determining what kind of story we want to portray. Since there was not sufficient footage before, one thing we will need to do is shoot some more. We need something for the ending and we decided to continue with the night shots. Luckily, everyone is available this weekend to work on the footage so that is a definite accomplishment. All of the details of when to shoot and where are all determined so I should have some footage to work with by next Monday.
When reviewing the film, the flashbacks still are not flowing with the film. It is a major source of confusion because it doesn't seem to fit. We have no footage of the killer referencing to an escape and the police scene was cut so the flashbacks have no use at this point. We are reaching a deadline so with a brief discussion with the director, I decided to eliminate the flashbacks from the film. It alters the meaning to the killer being willing to kill himself due to the constant death of the victims. The runaway was an extra variable that would only confuse the audience, especially if there is not enough footage to convey the idea completely. After reviewing, I rendered and exported the footage!
Since the flashback footage is limited, the use of shots to communicate that a victim escaped is not successful. I don't yet have a shot of the killer walking to the car to get the victim out, I can't correspond the walking of the killer in the house to him walking to the victim. It would make a smooth transition into a flashback but I don't have the footage. In order to help express the concept that the shots are flashbacks, I tried to alter the color of the shots. I made the white in the flashbacks a pink color and the black a burgundy color. The red color would articulate that the victim is in danger and it would go against the verisimilitude in the rest of the film, distinguishing it from the present time.
We are done shooting for now so I am able to catch up and polish some of our footage. I cut the shots to the appropriate lengths, added transitions, and altered the order of shots in order to convey meaning. When the killer decides to kill himself, he dresses himself up in the same way he does with the dolls. There is familiar image with the montage of eyes, mouth, hair shoes. When I initially put the footage of the killer preparing himself, I did not pay attention too much to the familiar image. After looking at the footage, I put the sequence of the killer preparing himself in the correct sequence so that it matches the dolls preparation exactly.
I also worked with the sound person in order to improve the quality of the sound. She had researched how to remove some of the white noise so together we put in the denoiser for all of the sound. It was amazing! The only issue lies in the shots where the sound input wasn't loud enough. Since we had to severely increase the volume in premiere, it caused the white noise to be more distinctive. It is still a problem but it is much better than what it was. Other than that, we worked together to sync the sound with the footage correctly. Also, we increased the volume for almost all the shots in order to put the volume at broadcast level. Last night, our cinematographer and director shot footage that did not require editing. So I received many of the close ups and some of the shots near the ending. The ending was a last minute change by the director in order to meet the deadline our teacher gave us. She chose to eliminate the police coming and just include his sadness with the dolls dying and the one doll escaping. That change makes it easier to keep our film within the time parameters. Since the ending was more open ended without sufficient footage. I was able to be creative and organize the video I already had into a montage that conveyed that they all die. The montage includes the faces of the victims, the syringe, and the face of the killer.
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