Editing Process - 19/01/12

In today's lesson, our teacher began to introduce us into the world of editing. We discussed the mail elements that needed to be within our trailers, which were transitions, sound, cutting and image. All four of these elements need to work in harmony together for the trailers to work perfectly. In consideration to sound, Daniel has emailed the record label that handles Placebo so that we may gain permission to use their song "Running up that Hill" for our trailer. We chose this song because it is slow, progressive, creepy and the lyrics even fit the theme of our film trailer: "so much hate for the ones we love..." Our teacher also told us how important image is to our trailer, for instance, getting the right verisimilitude to suit our genre. Obviously, having lots of bright colours and lights is not the image that we would want for our horror trailer!

We discussed the different transitions that can be used in all trailers, as well as short films as one group in our class is creating a short comedy film. There is the most popular transition, the fade in/out, which would be a useful for a horror trailer like ours, as it gives a supernatural/ghost-like effect and creates a build up of tension. Dissolve is another good transition, however it would not be suitable for our trailer as it doesn't have a scary feel to it. For a comedy trailer, the wipe transition is perfect and preferably used. It would definitely not be suitable for our trailer as it would make it too childish or parodied.

We discussed the different types of cutting techniques that we could used in our trailers/short films. A shot/reverse/shot is a cut used for filming conversations, as it films something, then cuts to another thing, that cuts back to the original 'something' for example, a frame of person A would then cut to person B and then back to person A, to show the audience that they have some form of relationship as they are in conversation with one another. An eyeline match edit is where there is a shot of someone's face in close-up, then it cuts to the thing that the person is looking at, so that the audience can see that they looking at it, and it highlights the objects importance in the scene. For example, a close-up of a persons face, that then cuts to a telephone. Therefore we can assume that the person is about to use the telephone. An action match is similar to this, with the difference that it simply matches the action that happened in the previous scene. A good example of this is when a person is filmed about to open a door, and the scene cuts to the other side of the door, being opened by the very same. Sometimes it can also be that the first scene is of person A about the open the door, and the next scene is action matched by person B walking through the door.

Daniel and I also decided to create a bullet pointed list of what we still need to do. The list looked like this:

• Take photo's for the magazine and poster
• Get footage of mise-en-scene/filler scenes i.e. weapons, the clock etc
• Get some more shots of the magician and finish his filming
• Attempt a different jump cut

Filming the Villain - 18/01/12

Finally, we were able to film our villain today, Scott Isle. We stayed after school so that we could use the natural darkness that winter brings and went back to our victim's set, the room in D.T. Our friend Luke Stubbs joined us on this occasion so that we could use his point of view as an audience member to help us film what we need and what the audience wants. He was the perfect person for this job as he perfectly fits our target audience profile - a teen/young person, male, student. Whilst filming, he did help us to review a scene where the magician closes the big industrial door, explaining how he would expect to see the trailer; for this, we had to change our original storyboard idea. We filmed the way that he directed and it turned out to be better than our original idea. Our original idea was that we would film a close-up/mid shot of Scott simply shutting the door with an angry expression. Luke told us that he would expect that the magician would be busy sharpening his tools, would notice the camera and then slam the door as if the audience are intruding on his work. We shot this three times - an initial film, one where Scott turns his head slowly to look at the camera and one where he quickly turns his head towards the camera. This was so that later, during editing, we could choose the best clip and keep it, deleting the others.

The main scenes we filmed today were, as already explained, the villain closing the door, but also the weapon he uses dripping with blood and the glove dropping on the floor, also covered with blood. For this, I previously purchased a 50ml bottle of "special fx theatre fake blood" and a pair of white magicians gloves. I found some tools in the D.T. area usually used in class and asked the teacher of this department if I was able to pour fake blood onto a hammer so that we could film it dripping. After getting this permission, I did exactly that - I opened the fake blood and poured some onto the hammer, so that when Scott held it at an angle, it would drip to the floor. Daniel filmed this happening from a low angle and poured more blood on it when needed. We shot this twice so that we could take the best one later during editing. We then poured the fake blood onto one of the white gloves, and dripped some on the floor. We then filmed the glove being thrown onto the bloody floor, to give the effect that he has just used his bloody weapon, and is carelessly discarding of his gloves. Later, we will add footsteps into this scene, to give the audience a sense that he is simply walking away from his crime.

After we had finished what we had planned, we still had a little time and so we decided to attempt filming for a 'jump cut' scene. This is a difficult shot to film, which we soon found out. At first, we thought of filming 2 second shots of Scott pulling different emotions that we would put together later. However, we realised that this would take too much time and be difficult to perfect, so we instead filmed constantly on Scott's face whilst he pulled different emotions. We later realised on looking back at the footage that it wasn't good enough, and so had to scrap the idea of a jump cut. Daniel still wanted a jump cut, however, so we decided to think of something else for another day.