When we first started editing we went through all the shots to choose the ones where the acting was best and the angle of the shot was nicest. We also had to go through all the go-pros shots to choose the right sequences. We then marked them as good shot alternative shot or bad shot.
We used crosscutting between Paula setting-up the gun and Ted driving his car to show that these two things are happening simultaneously and to signify to the audience that she is going to try and shoot him. We then used en eye-line match from Paula to Ted to confirm to the audience that she will shoot him. We also did crosscutting between Paula and Simon to signify to the audience that he will stop her from shooting Ted.
It was very difficult to find the right pace because we had many of our sequences were filmed in slow motion. The problem was we wanted our opening sequence not to be to slow so we had to gradually speed-up the pace after the slow motion sequence. We had to re-edit so many of our shots with Simon to make them the right length and place them at the right moment and make them the right length to speed-up the pace after the slow motion shots and to signify that something is going to happen.
We wanted Paula to be the hero of our thriller this is why she is the one with the most camera time. To give her more power we play a foreboding music when she pulls out the sniper. We used Simon as her opponent. They are binary opposites as they look and act in completely different ways. Paula’s sequences are slow and long where as Simon’s sequences are shorter, this presents Paula as a calm and precise character in contrast with Simon who appears to be more chaotic.
Finding the right sounds was extremely long and tedious. I am a perfectionist and having spent so much time working on this opening sequence I wanted the sounds to be as close to perfection as possible. We had trouble finding the right sound for the car driving past, as there wasn’t sound on all of the go-pro shots of the car so we had to go through many different go-pro shots of the car to find the right sound. We also wanted to use music to create rising tension so Diana created a beat on her I-Pad and we then added other sounds from, soundtrack pro, to give it different tones to make it sound more scary and foreboding so that it fit better with the thriller genre.
Using final cut pro was, at first, challenging, however little by little it became easer. The things that at first took ages (e.g. Cutting a scene at the right moment) became almost mechanical. However certain things remained very tedious, it was always rely difficult to place one shot after an other it a way that didn’t make the editing very visible, this was particularly difficult in the first sequence when cutting from the car to Paula walking into the room because the lighting is very different from one sequence to the other. It was also rely difficult to edit the go-pro shots together because the roads had to look more or less similar in each shot.
If I had a chance to go over the thriller and change it I wouldn’t because I’ve already spent so much time working on it that even the idea to have to work on it again would make me go crazy. Also I’m really happy with how it turned out so I rely wouldn’t change anything. There were moments that were very difficult to edit and find sound for. An example of a really hard sound to create is the sound of her coking the sniper; there were no sounds that matched the coking of the sniper so we had to create a new sound by extending loads of handgun coking sounds (found in soundtrack pro) and then editing them together to create the perfect sound. I didn’t find that there were any particular moments that were very difficult to edit.
I loved editing, it is so satisfying to see the opening sequence finished after all that time I spent editing it! There were moments when I just wanted to burst in tears by frustration in front of the computer because I just couldn’t find the perfect cut or sound, but over all I must say that I did enjoy editing.
We were an excellent team, we all got along and worked rely well together. I did a lot of the editing my self but I must say that there rely wasn’t one person who edited more then an other because we almost always edited all together so that we were sure that we all agreed with the decisions made by the others. There some times were moments where we disagreed about something, for example we originally only wanted two go-pro shots at the beginning of the clip, however some of us wanted more go pro shots at the beginning so we tried adding more. It turned out rely nice so we decided to keep them.
It was very different from editing my preliminary task because this time we had to make our choices of when to put each sequence. It was also much harder because in the preliminary task we didn’t have to add extra sound so it was much less complicate to edit. We had to cerate music for our thriller and make sure that the beat matched the pace of the opening sequence. However the result was much more satisfying because this time we knew much more about how to film and edit our shots. We also had much more freedom in choosing how to film and edit them.
Trough this experience in film making I have learnt how long it takes to edit and how difficult it is to find the right sounds. I also learnt how to use sound successfully to create meaning. I’ve never been rely good with computers so it was very challenging at first to use final cut pro but it soon became rely easy to use it. What at first I found really challenging was cutting thee shots at the right length but that became much more simple after a short amount of time spent on it. However the most challenging thing by far was the sound editing. Sound is what makes the difference between a good and a badly edited sequence and it is extremely difficult to find the perfect sounds. I learned how to play around with sounds to make them fit with the action. It wasn’t very hard to make my film appeal to my target audience and to fit in with the genre. It had several guns in it that is a key element in the thriller genre, it also had an attractive actress in it that attracts the target audience to thrillers: men aged 16 to 25. However adding music to it helped create more suspense and adds an up beat feel to it that fits in with the genre.
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