Editing and Post Production

Editing was one of the most vital stages of the production. The short jumbled clips we had would make no sense and would look quite boring to someone who didn’t know the story board. We were relying on smooth continuity and a fast paced sound track. We were using Final Cut Pro and Garage Band on the Macs at school to produce the final film. We had the basic skills of editing from our preliminary task but we still wanted to explore, an example would be the slow motion close up of Martins face (1.18) and the reverse speeded up entrance to the wooded area (0.05). The slow motion was a good effect and slowed the pace of the film down before the final moment. The reverse shot was filmed out the back of a pickup, played backwards and then speeded up. We felt this could represent the isolation of the area we were filming, the route the jogger had taken or even just create a sense of mystery and add some confusion to the audience.

During the editing we found we had a very large amount of footage and plenty of shots that were left on the cutting room floor due to the time limit of the final film and to keep the overall story line appear simpler. As the wood had poor lighting we felt we should not make any changes to the colour of any of the shots, however, we also found that due to being in a dark location we did not have as crisp a finish to those groups who were filming in the light. Despite using HD cameras the actually quality of our shots were lacking. Although this was not planned it could be used to our advantage as an addition to the dark mysterious almost confusing scenes in our film.

During our media lessons we learnt that quicker cuts raised a person’s heartbeat and created excitement. We looked at music videos to see just how fast cuts can be, we looked at the Prodigy’s remix of Pendulums Voodoo People. In the first 1.05 there were 59 cuts. That’s nearly 1 a second, our cuts wouldn’t be this quick but this was a good example of how faster cuts can be used to create excitement.

After the clip was nearly finished we started on a soundtrack made using garage band. We created about 3 separate soundtracks the next one better than the last, it was important that the sound was well synchronized with the cuts in the clip, if the track didn’t match the film then it was worthless no matter how good the actual track was. It needed to fit perfectly, we spent time adjusting sections, adding parts in and taking parts out. It was very important to get the soundtrack right as it was what would give our film the edge of the seat reaction from the audience by helping to create tension and suspense. Two of the most effective parts of the soundtrack would be the heartbeat coupled with the slow cuts at the beginning; this slows the pace down before the running scene. Secondly, the loud sound used when changing cuts to keep the audience at attention and loud sounds followed by a quieter section were used as we felt it helped to build tension.
Our final task before the film was completely finished was the titles, they needed to be subtle, not interrupt the film but still be noticed and read. We chose a maroon colour so it would not stand out but neither would it be lost in the dark background. A font was chosen that was simple but not boring, we chose not to list jobs as such when showing names just the names of the characters in the actual shots and then my name with a “job title” as I was not appearing in the film. Finally, the end title of the film was shown in a large font in bright red so this time it did stand out against the black background, could clearly be read and in what we felt was an appropriate font.