BW: Final Edit

Today we finished editing our film opening. Due to Chris going away on a school trip last night, we wanted to make sure that we were all happy with the piece yesterday before Chris went away.

We had already made the following changes and improvements to our opening:

• To make the piece fit to the two minute time restriction, we had a group discussion and decided that a lot of the walking sequence could still be cut.
• We also cut some of the walking to the barn, as there were originally 6 shots of this shot aspect of the opening, which we agreed did not add much to the opening.
• We cut down the door locking sequence considerably, so that it felt more urgent and more dramatic.

Yesterday, we added in the final music piece which Chris had edited from the original Murray Gold track 'Midnight' (see previous post). We added this to the timeline yesterday, and the piece was exactly 2:00 minutes in length, so we were all happy with the length of each shot.

Chris also changed the colours of each clip individually, to make the colouring through the opening more consistent, as well as to maximise their quality and to fit in with the dark and mysterious horror convention which we wanted to fulfill.

Our final edit included the following changes:

• We added in a number of soundtrack layers and added in additional whispers to the ones that Chris had already put into the track. They now overlap and give the central character a more mad persona.
• We added in the final title, 'The Rushes' at the end. We used the basic, Courier New font as this came out well from our audience research and also was consistent with the font on the script within the actual opening.
• A clip which had been slowed down at the very beginning to make it longer was returned to normal speed and extended, as it was too obvious that the shot had been slowed down.

As a group, we are very happy with our final opening. The main area that we feel was not as good as it could have been is the quality of the footage, which was poorer due to us shooting in poor lighting conditions.

Group: The Rushes Film Opening

Here is our final film opening, The Rushes.

BW: Final Music Decisions and Edit

After reviewing Chris's music (see previous post), we took a group decision that not all of the music best fitted with the conventions of a horror film that we were looking to fulfil.

Our initial inspiration for music was a track by Murray Gold from the BBC's Doctor Who Soundtrack, which was called 'Midnight'. Our original plans were to write a new piece of music inspired by this track, but after problems with the music we decided to rethink.

We then decided that the Murray Gold track fitted our piece so well, we would edit the music, adding in new layers to the music and changing existing ones to make it feel like our own, but still inspired by the original track.

Using a music editing programme called 'Cubase', we imported 'Midnight'and began changing it. The changes we made to our soundtrack were as follows:

• The first six seconds are small clips of music which are on repeat and on loop, to slowly build tension but without having the music quiet. The opening of the music track in now different.
• We tried to maintain the volume level where there is a drop in music 10 seconds in. There is still a noticeable change in volume, but it is not the same.
• Between 25-30 seconds, there was a big build up and drop in the original music track. We edited this down and removed the big build up of music, so it feels more consistent with our piece.
• In the same time period, we edited in a series of drum beats to the same rhythm of the original track.
• 38-48 seconds, we added another layer of a knife being sharpened. This was another sound Chris has pre-recorded. We felt that knives were a key part of iconography of horror films, and that the sound of knives added to the horror feel of the track.
• We changed the volume levels over the track to make it fit our opening more accurately.
• We have added a third layer of sound in, with whispers which Chris recorded with his original sound recording. Whispers include 'I don't understand', 'Cross the line', and 'Where are you?'
• The trombone section at the end of the track has been shortened, and faded into a solid violin instrumental, which slowly fades out. This is also an original sound.

We were happy with the final music piece we added to our opening, and feel we have changed it a fair amount to make it more suited and appropriate to the ideas that we were trying to convey in our opening.

CJ Music and general update

Over the past five days, the team has been split in two so that the separate parts can focus on honing a specific area. Ben and Ali have been compiling and editing together the final cut, and I've been handling the sound aspect. We're aiming to complete the sound by tonight, as the last time that the group can all be together before the deadline is on Wednesday due to myself being abroad for the last two days of term.

This means that the final cut will have to be produced by Ben and Ali in order to meet the deadline.

I have been recording and compiling a soundtrack for the opening, using Cubase and a microphone/mixing desk rig I have at home. The main feel we're going for is a tense orchestral sound during periods of drama/action and an acoustic feel in the less narrative-important continuity-based shots. The acoustic areas are recorded live over a mixing desk, and I'm in the process of synthesizing the orchestral part, as unfortunately I do not have an orchestra to hand.

BW: General Updates 04/04/11

After realising on Friday that we would need to still cut back a fair amount of footage, we had a discussion today in class and decided that we could get away with not cutting many shots altogether, but instead shortening many clips so the whole opening feels more fast paced.

We have now managed to get the opening to 1.55, with room at the end to have a title - 'The Rushes'. We are very pleased with how it looks, and especially like the very fast paced locking of the door sequence.

We plan tomorrow to edit in the music, and also edit the colours of each clip individually to make the whole opening look as nice as we possibly can.

BW: Editing Progress

I have spent a couple of hours this afternoon, and have realised that we have a problem with the amount of fooatge we have in the timeline, and am struggling to reduce it. The full rough cut started being 3:51, and the finished piece needs to be 2:00. I found getting it down to 3:00 not too difficult, as I just took out some of the shots that didn't look as good or in which the colours weren't correct. However, cutting it down beyond 3:00 is very difficult, as we either have to take out some of our favourite shots or cut down the story with risk of the narrative making less sense. After editing this afternoon, the footage now stands aat 2:34. I have cut out everything obvious, we're going to have to be brutal with what we take out now. Chris, Ali, do you have any suggestions where we should cut more from? The walking shots which we have discussed are already down to a bare minimum!

Group: Work Update

We are making fairly good progress with the editing, and although we have had a number of issues, we are fairly confident that we will be able to resolve them. We need to work hard now to get the final edit finsihed by the deadline. Our problems and solutions are:

We have shot tooo much footage, so before we have even compiled the footage into the timeline, it comes to over 3 minutes.

This is not a major problem, as we intended to shoot a large amount of footage and just cut it down. It allows us to select the very best shots.

The lighting varies a vast amount between different shots.

This is an issue because we filmed in different lighting conditions. We will use the shots that are most similar in their lighting, and intend to edit the colours of the shot to make them all match.

We have not yet started editing sound.

This is more of a race against time, as we intent to record all of our own sound. We have split the group so that Chris can start working on sound whilst Ben and Ali continue editing.

Our main concern now is finishing the film on time, although at the minute we aren't too worried, as long as we now pick up the pace of our editing.