Sunday, 28 February 2010

EDITING: Monday 1st February to Friday 12th February 2010 (main)

The editing process was filled with difficulties and brilliance. We had to change the original ideas we had as the editing techniques weren't as wide n iMovie as they are in Final Cut Pro. Helpfully, we had made a conscious effort to ‘Film for Edit’ whereby we constantly thought about how we wanted to edit the material. This made putting the piece together much easier than it would have been if we hadn't. After labelling all clips and separating the bloopers from the usable takes, we started editing. We found that some of the takes, although looking good by themselves or on the camera, didn’t work well in the final cut. Some of these shots include the tracking shot that circles the table (specified in the story board) as it was too shaky (due to our lack of dolly) and we found that the lighting picked up some other lighting stands in the background. This was unavoidable as we had to light the whole table, not just a part of it. We also had to cut a lot of the story as we found it made the piece too long. These included some birds eye view shots and the beginning was changed. Some of these decisions were made during the filming process either because we couldn't get the shot we were looking for with the equipment we have (e.g. the birds eye view shots; essential ones had to be changed to high angle shots) or we realised they would not make much sense so we changed them (e.g. the opening shot of everyone coming to the table).
Within the editing process we had trouble with the angel and devil scene. We decided that the whole tilt and pan shot was too long for the rhythm of the scene (we wanted short shots for this scene as it is a fragile and unnatural atmosphere). Therefore had to cut it up. We also found that some of the shots had varying performance qualities (some had Sonia being brilliant with me being bad/falling out of frame and visa versa), or the lighting varied (on the shot of Sonia and Matt’s hand). So we had to try and match the shots to create a continuous sequence. We tried inserting fades instead of straight cut but found it made the piece seem too much like a trailer. We finally decided to keep straight cuts (with Jack cutting two different takes together seamlessly) and add a ‘ghost trail’ effect to further the idea of the angel and devil being unnatural. The final product also has different effects and grains added to the picture. We lowered the saturation levels to take the peachy colour out of the picture and applied a ‘peep hole’ to the picture to soften the edges around the frame. We applied these effects to everything in the opening except the angel and devil scene as we decided to keep their pictures as different as possible from the other shots to signify that they weren’t actually in the room. A ‘black and white’ effect was also applied to the title sequence to suggest that it was a title sequence.
The credits were done using a ‘typewriter’ effect in 'Impact' font. We did not originally want to use this effect but found it was the only style that would allow us to move the credits around the picture and not have them constantly centred. We did not at first want to use the idea of pausing the picture, applying a ‘black and white’ effect and having the names appear for credits (as used in films such as Train Spotting) but decided it was the better option for the film. We did this by screen shot-ing a still of each character, inserting it for a few seconds, changing the colours to black and white and adding the names. A problem that occurred during adding the title was that when trying to add the Movie Title, 'Poker's Advocate' to the end of the film, the software wouldn't allow it as it needed more film time to apply the effect. Therefore, we had to trick the software by adding about six minutes of blackness to the end of the film (it demanded at least six minutes more time onto the film), then added the titles, then went back and deleted the blackness from the end of the film. This trick took six of us to figure out...
Music was applied during editing. We decided to use Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ as the main track as it captured the rhythm and atmosphere wanted. Whilst the narration played, we decided that having Hendrix’s lyrics beneath would be distracting so took the opening instrumental and looped it. We were advised after a session of audience feedback to let the track carry on throughout the piece as it is such a famous song that viewers would expect the rest of the song. We decided to fade Hendrix and use a different tune for the angel and devil scene as ‘Hey Joe’ had the wrong vibe for this part of the piece. We decided to use the theme from the movie Sin City and ‘Warrior’s Dance’ by The Prodigy. We planned to use only one of these tracks, but found that merging the two and lowering the ‘Warrior’s Dance’ line compared to the theme tune line created the perfect track that suggested creepy and unstable. Finally Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ for the title sequence as it captured the feel we wanted for the rest of the film – fast paced and unstable. We cut all the music and faded them in and out depending on when one finished and when there was no talking.

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