Post-production
After we had finally completed our reshoot of the kitchen scenes and the final scene of Jessica’s dead body, I was ready to put the final edit together. I initially had many troubles importing the footage onto my laptop which caused a delay to starting the edit. Since we had shot all the footage in raw, the total file size amounted to 300GB of footage, which I did not have enough space for on my laptop. We then decided that I could edit off a hard drive and that way the footage would not need to be directly saved onto my laptop, the problem was we didn’t have a hard drive and couldn’t find anyone that was willing to lend us their hard drive for that long. Our producer then decided to invest in one considering that a hard drive will also be useful for future projects and trimesters.
Once I had the hard drive, I was finally able to begin putting together a rough cut for our lecturer to view for the first time, I had put all the clips in order along syncing they’re audio. In class we showcased our rough cut to our lecturer and class mates, which was simply our shots in order of the story. I will admit it was difficult putting the edit together considering that it had many continuity errors due to some lack of shots. After some advice from our lecturer, I went on to put together an updated version of the draft, at which point we were notified of certain things that we would need to reshoot in order for the story to make more sense. Such as changing the dead body of Tom, to the dead body of Jessica. I ended up removing many of the shots and dialogues that we initially had to firstly shorten it because it was too long, as well as remove certain unnecessary shots and dialogues that didn’t add anything extra significant to the story.
Certain dialogues that were there were a little cringe-worthy due to the performances of our actors however our lecturer gave us a great idea to use constant flash-forwards as a theme throughout the short film, and that way we could cut any dialogues that we did not particularly like. During my last two edits, I have been working with the producer on our short film when I am meant to be working with the director, the reason for this is ever since our first shoot was over, how the director has shown little interest in the film.
Due to poor lighting from our shoot overall as well as some noticeable coloring differences between the original shoot and the reshoot, our lecturer advised us to make the entire film in black and white, which also works considering that this is a dark and sad film. I have as of now made the entire film black and white and darkened the blacks, which solved our issues with lighting. I have thus far completed two flash forwards and I have to say it’s been looking leaps and bounds better than the original cuts we had previously, and I’m looking forward to completing it and showing our final product to our lecturer, classmates and present it at the showcase on week 13.
During the final scene where Jessica’s dead body lays on the bed, we cannot really see clearly that there is blood on her hair, especially after having made the film black and white. Our lecturer advised us to get some support from a lecturer that specializes in post production to know how to put it more blood using after effects on Jessica, the walls in the bedroom and everywhere else in that scene to make it much more dramatic. This will be an interesting and important learning experience for myself on how to achieve such things as I am an aspiring video editor and expanding my skills will help me greatly with any future projects.
During my edits, it has been either working by myself and showing my group later, or our producer accompanied me during my edits to give his own input as well and decide what we see works best. Unfortunately our director has yet to even ask about the edit has been going. I have taken any ideas and suggestions given to me and done my best to apply them, we then meet as a group and view the changes I've made and continue on working from there.
Currently, I am in the process of collecting sound effects for the flash forwards and the intense scenes as well as seeing what type of effect and transitions would suit them best to further enhance the storytelling of the film. The goal for us is we want to confuse the audience throughout the entire film to have them wonder what is going on with the main character which would keep their interest peaked throughout, until the final unravel of the fact that he has split personality and is a murderer without himself having ever known it until he found Jessica’s dead body. Flash forwards is the most effective way to achieve this as well as many cuts to close-ups and medium shots of his face to show the audience his confusion as to what is going on, that even he himself doesn’t know.
After a couple of editing sessions, our director had begun to get much more involved in the creative process of the edit, advising on certain areas and suggesting creative ideas which work well. I was very pleased to see him show a sudden great amount of interest into the project.
Right now we are finalizing the final cut which is to be submitted on Thursday December the 13th. I have now included all but one of the flash forwards, and have found the perfect glitch type of sound effect and video effect for it which creates the most dramatic tension. The final flash forward will actually be a quick flashback to the killing of Tom's girlfriend right when he finds her dead body in the bed. The reason being that as the shot gets closer to the body, it becomes very evident that the hair is a wig and that kind of takes away from the dramatic tension, so we want to reduce the close ups of the wig as much as possible.
For the music, another one of our lecturers suggested adding a type of music that fits the narrative, something unusual considering that this is a psychological thriller, rather than going with the cliche and overused suspenseful type of music for the intense scenes. The cut is looking miles better than the original rough cut before of course, and it's actually been my first time editing a film of this length. Seeing the evolution of the cut from what it was to what it is now and what we've been able to salvage makes me feel proud of the effort we put into it.
The lessons we have learned from this studio unit are extremely valuable as we made several mistakes that we do not plan on ever repeating again such as lighting, being more patient with casting so as to get the best actors for our film to achieve great performances, and an overall mindset going into shooting that we can never expect to fix any mistakes in post production and should seek as close to perfection as possible from the very start. I see this studio unit as preparation for the upcoming trimesters even though going in we all wanted to do well from the very start, however sometimes making mistakes at this level is crucial for growth and is better than making them in the future after university.
The showcase for our film is now four days away and I cannot wait for it to be viewed by a small scale audience and our tutors. Of course this is not the best work possible that we expect from ourselves, but that's why we are here, to learn more and also continue to learn from our mistakes, it has been a great trimester with many highs and lows, and both have been extremely beneficial to my own as well as the groups growth.