Oliver Trinh - A2 Media Blog: March 2013

This post will discuss and explain the lengthened procedure and the progression of all the stages of editing our film. As I took up the role of main editor I knew this would be a lengthy and persisting process I would need to be focused and enthusiastic about. The editing program we would use is iMovie, this is a professional piece of software that would be extremely suitable in the editing of our clips in order to create a strong and effective film.

As I uploaded our first set of filming, this first stage of editing began with Part 2: scene 1 and scene 2 (chase scene). Inevitably, ordering and watching the footage of the filming sequentially gave no feelings of continuity, consistency or quality so it was time to start editing. By looking at the clips where the two characters are discussing the briefcase - immediately I could trim and delete the unwanted sections - by making the last frame of one clip link with the first frame of the following clip a match-on-action shot and sense of continuity was created (for instance, the opening of the briefcase). I kept on cutting unwanted selections until a flowing scene emerged, which included shot/reverse/shots, match-on-action and point of view shots (which can be seen in Part 2 of the First Cut Filming video post).

The P-O-V shot from the main character leads to him jumping out the window and then the chase scene. As the clip was supposed to present a believable event of the character jumping out the window, this was very hard to achieve for safety reasons - we couldn't just jump out a window with a camera! For this reason we relied on our good friend - editing. Joining the previous P-O-V shot with another P-O-V shot of a jump from a short height onto grass we wondered how this could look in any way slightly believable. Searching and exploring the effects of every transition on iMovie I finally found one that made this clip look surprisingly exciting and interesting. The rest of the chase scene was also trimmed to create continuity.

At this point in progress, I decided I would not worry about the sound until after all the editing of every scene was completed. This was because of the fact that constant unavoidable changes will occur in this editing process of the clips which in result would also change all the sound effects. The next set of clips I focused on was Part 3: the torture scene. Editing this scene seemed to be more of a challenge. Again joining and trimming all the clips gave me an idea of what this scene would look like, however, there was an issue; this being the lighting effects. In this scene we tried to create a flickering light effect (to represent a flickering bulb), however, when replaying these clips there seemed to be no flickering at all, just a light switching off then back on. I knew what I had to do: by splitting and cutting the clips and reducing the blackout times, the clips gave off a sense of a flickering light - quickly and randomly flicking on and off. This scene was now looking very powerful and exciting.

The initial editing of parts 1 and 4 didn't come as a too heavy task. Once again joining and trimming each clip gave an overall template of what the scene would look like. Despite this, the constant revising of each and every part and scene greatly lengthened the editing process, although this was a standard and reasonable measure in order to create a good quality film. After all this basic editing was done, I was now checking for continuity errors. Observing the current unfinished film I made a list of all the shots that needed to be added, and also all the shots that needed to be re-filmed. Once we had finally filmed all our shots they were then uploaded and edited all over again: this time I added all the additional transitions I needed (for example, the fade to black transition when the main character is punched in Part 2).

We had now got every clip we needed, and the edited footage now took the form of a short film. Despite this, it lacked quality, while looking amateur and unprofessional. Observing the film it seemed difficult to understand what was actually happening. This is where our idea of applying a black & white video effect for the 'flashback' occurred. The flashback takes place after the hostage from Part 1 is thought to be shot, this being the following Part 2. We thought by introducing the black & white into this scene the audience would understand that this is not the present, and is in fact a memory purposely portrayed to give the audience an understanding of what events have happened to get him up to this situation of being a hostage. Converting the clips into black & white was fairly simple: by accessing the video settings of each and every clip of this scene I could manually change the brightness, colour and saturation in order to get the right colour contrast intended. Once this was done I was pleased with the outcome, it looked how I expected and achieved the 'flashback' look we needed.

Inspired by how good the black & white effect looked, I wondered if I could make the other scenes of our film look even better by adding a different video effect. Selecting a clip from Part 1, I went to video settings and video effects - to my surprise there was a whole number of effects to choose from! Exploring every video effect I found a particular one that advanced the crime thriller conventions: this effect was called Hard light. Applying it resulted in a number of different changes to the clips. The changes that immediately stood out were the increase and emphasis on shadows as well as the separation and high contrast in colours. This factor worked brilliantly as it suited some of the main genre conventions: shadows and low key lighting. This change made all the filming seem ten times more eerie and created a harrowing atmosphere. This effect worked especially well for the torture scene and made the appearance of the flickering lights substantially better. I also found that by applying this effect it seemed as though the whole appearance and the quality of the film increased and looked much more professional. It was now starting to look like a real film!

Similarly, I looked to see if I could find any more parts of the film to add a video effect and boost the films appearance. I remembered that one particular shot of the film shows the ransom video camera's footage of the terrorists and the hostage - I knew this would be an ideal place for another effect! Selecting the clip and testing all the video effects I found one that was extremely suitable. This shot now looked pixelated, like the audience was looking through the video camera at the terrorists and as the main terrorist orders the bodyguards to go, the audience feel as if they are walking towards them. Frightening! In addition we superimposed a recording symbol as well as a date in order to make this shot look more authentic.

Superimposing the text now led us to insert the beginning credits. These would be the main actors of the film - Alex Rose, Edward Smith and I. We decided we would superimpose the titles into the beginning of Part 2 - this was so that the audience could clearly focus and understand all of Part 1. Looking at where we wanted to insert these titles we found a number of appropriate places - as they were to be presented sequentially we needed three shots that would be suitable. The first shot worked extremely well: this was the pan of the briefcase, as it pans the title appears and flows with the briefcase, then disappears when the hand comes into the shot. For the second and third shot I looked to use open space. This would allow the audience to concentrate on what was happening in the scene while also seeing the titles. I changed the fonts and contrasted all three titles against the backgrounds in order for them to be bold and stand out.

It was finally time to add the sound! This was an annoyingly lengthy stage of the film-making process due to the large amount of editing needed for each clip of sound. On the other hand, by the fortunate perk of having a media teacher that spoke a foreign language, we was in luck! Giving our teacher the script we created a series of voiceovers (acting as the terrorist) where we then uploaded them onto iMovie. I then appropriately split each voiceover so I could apply each sound to the according part of the film when the terrorist speaks. I did this with all of them until there was a fluent and flowing feeling to the film. I also created a voiceover for the torture scene, by using Google Translate I could read the translated text and impersonate a foreign voice. Once I had done this, my voiceover didn't seem as good as the one my teacher created. Despite this, I turned to sound effects! By clicking on the sound clip and selecting audio effects I explored how each effect sounded on the voiceover. I found one that was perfect; this was Pitch down 3 and made the voiceover sound deep and low, creating that daunting and intimidating atmosphere that we was looking to portray.

Alex was in charge of finding external sound effects and therefore acquired the gun shots and flickering lights sounds we needed. We then uploaded these sound effects to iMovie where I could place them in the specific parts of the film. For instance: I placed the one gun shot sound at the point when the main terrorist holds the gun to the hostages head: when this shot is fired the audience think the hostage has been shot and killed. Likewise, I placed the series of gun shots in Part 4 when the terrorist bodyguards are killed. Creating a stable, flowing sound for the flickering lights of the torture scene came to be a challenge. As I only had one clip of a buzzing sound (to represent the sound of the flickering light bulb) I had to copy and paste several of these and apply them at the points where the lights turn off and on. This took many attempts to get the final and finished sound effects of the scene.

To allow the audience to understand what is happening in the scenes we needed to add subtitles to the according foreign language voiceovers. To do this I simply typed the script into the superimposed text boxes and adjusted the duration times to fit how long the voiceovers were. By doing this the audience can understand what the character is saying and understand what is happening in the scene. In addition, this feature was purposely involved to advance the narrative of the film, and also its quality in presenting an alternative foreign themed film. I adjusted the font of the subtitles in order for them to stand out while being easily readable for the viewer.

Our film was almost finished and it was time to add the title of our film. This was again fairly simple. By adding a blank clip and changing its background colour to black we could add the film title 'The Dominant Commodity'. This gave a basic, yet effective, opening title - giving no hints or clues towards the following content about to be viewed! We also included an informative post letting the audience know that there should not be any viewer discretion needed, and that no offence should be taken by the foreign theme of the film.

Last but not least, it was time to add one of the key features for the film - the soundtrack. As Alex has found the music we would be using in our film we could upload them and add them to our film. Adding the music to the right scenes was pretty easy: decreasing the volume gave a background soundtrack that consistently flowed. This quiet background music raised the levels of tension in each scene. By splitting and combining different parts of the music to the film we could achieve a range of new combined music, for instance in Part 2. I increased the volume of the music in the chase scene - this created a loud and powerful fast-beat atmosphere which raises the suspense and intensity of the scene.

The editing was finally finished and observing our film we could see it looked extremely successful and professional. We are all greatly happy with the outcome!

Now that I had finished my research it was time to start creating our film's poster. As many of the posters I researched mainly included a portraiture subject, I believed this created a more powerful and effective poster design, and therefore, inspired me to use a similar technique using this portraiture design for our film poster. As each existing film poster included a shot of a character in the film and are also pictured with an object or doing something that relates to the events of the film narrative I wanted to include similar features.

Looking back through our film I wanted to capture a moment that would give a hint of the narrative to the viewer. Immediately the shot of the hostages bloodied face intrigued me; by having this shot as the main subject of the poster I could achieve the portrait design I wanted. I selected and print screened this shot.

I now wondered what to do with this image in order to make a poster with a good quality appearance. Looking at the blood on the hostage's face a unique idea sparked to mind; I wanted to re-create this image by forming the face of the hostage through blood splatters. I knew this idea was very complex, however, I believed that it would be an extremely effective and powerful poster once finished. The only way I could think of producing this design was by manually painting the face and blood splatters.

To paint this image I used the materials of black water colour and black Indian drawing ink on A3 paper. By using black water colour I could lightly paint a basic image of the hostage's face - only applying the mid-tones and trying to exclude any harsh tones. I then used black Indian drawing ink to apply the deeper harsh tones and blood splatter; using the ink on the areas I wanted to highlight, for instance the features of the face (eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows). I kept on applying the ink to these features and used a straw to blow the liquid for it to spread in an uncontrollable way. This formed the look of splattered blood.

Now that the painting was done I could scan it and produce a digital image. My next step was to edit the picture in order to make the blood splatter stand out more, this could be done by using the tools of Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Opening the picture in this program I could change the settings of the image, adjusting its brightness, contrast and mid-tones. I continued this editing until only the blood splatter and features of the face were prominent, with much of the background and mid-tones blurred out.

It was now time to add the film title. Again looking back at my film poster research I knew it would be more effective to have the font of the text relating to the film narrative. As our film involved foreign terrorists I already had an idea of what font I wanted. I searched the internet for fonts that had an Arabic style to them and found one that was perfect. Using the snipping tool I could select the title in the Arabic font and then open it with Paint. Here I resized the text enough to suit the poster picture. I inserted the title into the picture and placed it at the bottom of the image.

I now needed to change the colours of the image to make the black ink splatters look like blood. Again I could edit the image, this time adjusting the colour to bright red, then adjusting the contrast and brightness until I successfully achieved the gorey red colour I wanted. This was the planned finishing point poster, and despite it looking extremely strong and impressive I knew there was something missing.

From here my poster research greatly helped me; I wanted to involve the narrative of the story a bit more in my poster in order to give the viewer a slight hint of what the film is about. I was now inspired to introduce an object - I looked at the props we used in our film and examined the effectiveness of each (these included the gun, bloodied bag, tools and briefcase). Suddenly it became clear to me that the most effective prop to use would be the briefcase as it would allow me to convey a clue of what the film is based around. I had to combine these two elements, my poster and the briefcase. I printed off my poster onto A3 paper where I could then place the briefcase on top of the hardcopy and take a picture of it. It took me a number of times to get the image I wanted, placing the briefcase in a variety of different positions to get the right composition. When I had achieved the image, it was clear I needed to go back to the editing board one more time.

Returning to Picture Manager I needed to give the poster more quality and make the image look sharper. Once again, editing the image's brightness, contrast and mid-tones gave a precise and detailed appearance. The last stage was to add the credits, this was easily done by choosing a appropriate font and inserting text boxes onto the poster in the specific places. I added the production credits and positioned them beneath the film title. I also added the two main cast of the film (Alex Rose and Ed Smith) and positioned them in a larger font either side of the title. My film poster was finally finished! Looking at my final poster I could see it would look extremely powerful and intriguing to the viewer. I believe this poster would extremely effective in attracting audiences to watch our film.