Editing - 1st Draft

Like the filming the editing took me 3 days. Within these three days I edited both my preliminary task and the first version my main thriller opening sequence. Once again, I focused on editing in three parts like I filmed in 3 parts. To do things in chronological order, I started with the running sequence.

I changed the order of the shots from my storyboards to create better continuity throughout the sequence. Some of the shots put together did not look as though they fitted together and that Heather had all of a sudden jumped from part of the wood to the other, so I took a lot of time to make sure that the shots that I placed together looked as though she was literally just running a route. Sometimes it was difficult to make this happen as she would be running along a path then it would have suddenly turned to foliage, so I put in more of the shots looking up at her face so it gave time in which she could have changed her path. One of my favourite parts is where Heather is running then looks over her right shoulder, it then cuts to a shot looking up at her face as she is looking over her right shoulder, creating great continuity between the two shots. 

The red square indicates how the shot has been cropped
with the bag in the red circle cropped out

After finishing editing the shots together there were a few extra details I had to change and make right. Some of the shots looked brighter than the others, so on a few I added a 50% black and white filter over the top to dull down the colours, so that they had the same dull effect of the others, adding to the atmosphere.
There were also a couple of shots where I had accidentally got the tripod bag in the corner, so I cropped these shots and made sure the shot was still the same size as the rest. Also, after watching it through I noticed the sound was louder in some shots than others. To rectify this, I added in sounds of extra footsteps running over leaves to some shots, so there was constantly sound like this throughout. On some of the existing shots with footsteps I lowered to sound slightly to make it fit in with the others. The sound effect I used was of footsteps running away so in some cases I used it as it was, some I reversed it so they are running towards the camera and in others I used tiny sections of them. I was very carefully when placing them as I had to make sure that they fitted with the speed that Heather was running and matched every time her foot hit the ground. This involved sometimes speeding the clip up or slowing it down. Heather cannot scream, so I had to record myself screaming and then place it over the top of her miming the scream. To do this I first attempted to use my PG57 microphone straight into the computer. However, the sound off this came with a lot of crackling possibly to do with the lead connecting the two, so I opted to use the video camera to record the scream. 

I then added on the music to my completed running sequence. The music was a bit short, so I had to edit the music to make it longer repeating some sections. I also had to move the clips about slightly to make them change on the beat of the music so that everything fitted together, including Heather's jump at the same time as the music changing in intensity and speed. 

The second part of the editing was of the news report. The main part of this was adding in the graphics. It took me a couple of hours to get these right. First I created the "BREAKING NEWS" banner, using the BBC news channel to model the font and colour on. The second part was the "LOCAL NEWS" part which was done in the same way at the previous. Finally I did the running stories banner. This involved using running credits effects. This part cause me the most trouble to try and get it in the right place and scrolling at the correct speed, but I finally managed to make it work and look as authentic as possible. I then rendered this as a loop section alone, in order to put it onto a memory stick to play off the telly for the scene with the abductor watching it. 

The final part did not take too much time for editing because it was so short. The trickiest part was getting the sound for the news item to line up with the pictures as I decided to use the sound from the real clip of the item rather than the sound that was recorded on the camera a the time. I made a separate audio track for this to make sure there was no confusion. This meant I could also put an effect on the sound to make it sound like it was coming from the TV.



 Also, at the end I re-recorded the sound of the 'shush' to make it sound more demanding. I put it on the 'sound effects' track that also has the additional footsteps on from the chase sequence.