Skills Audit: Editing

The editing process of any film is extremely important - especially a thriller film. The quick editing pace in thrillers is important in creating suspense and keeping the audience engaged.

When editing, we were given the advice to bring the clip in at the last possible moment, and cut the clip at the first possible moment. This is to make sure sure that the audience only sees the important parts of the plot.

To cut down the clips that we have filmed, we used the 'razor cut' tool. This helped us to make the most accurate cut possible and is made at the exact point that we want to cut the clip. This makes the whole sequence flow together cleanly and makes the editing pace quicker. This ensures that the audience only sees the important parts of the plot.

This screen grab shows us applying an effect to the clip. We applied a glowing effect to this point of view shot, as we wanted to emphasise that this is what someone is seeing. By changing the glow and combining this shot with a heavy breathing sound clip, the audience gets the impression that the character is panicking. This helps the audience to empathise with the character. This creates more suspense, as the audience actually feels what the character feels.

Health and Safety Tutorial

Before we could film and use the cameras we had to have a lesson on health and safety tutorial where we looked at a slide show where it taught us how to use all of the equipment. we watched the slide show and had this lesson so we know how to use the equipment properly and also so we would not brake or damage them or anyone with them, the equipment we learnt how to use was:
- Tripod
- Memory Card
- Battery
- Video Camera
- Video Drive.

In this lesson we learnt how to use the video camera properly and how to use all the different functions on the video camera for example how to zoom in and out to get shots like a crash zoom which would be used for effect, we also learnt what mode to put the camera in when you are shooting. we also learnt where to place the memory cards when we are shooting our thriller title sequence because we would need to save it on to the memory cards and then transfer it on to a card reader and then onto the hard drive where each group would be given their own one where we will save all our work like the film, soundtrack, live type and final cut pro.

While we was in this lesson we learnt rules we have to stick to when filming our opening title sequence for our thrillers such as if it rains we should take umbrellas to cover the camera because if the camera was to get wet it would break and we would not be able to film. when we film we should not touch the lens otherwise you could get fingerprints on the lens which means it will ruin the quality of our film as fingerprints will be over the screen and also finally we should close the lens we are finished and make sure it is turned off otherwise the battery will run out.

Art of The Title Sequence

This title sequence really stood out for me because it was different and what really stood out for me was the actual titles and the colour and animation behind the titles for instance the colour of the titles is red and red is meant to represent blood which is affected and it sets up the film as being a thriller and as my film is a thriller it gave me ideas for my thriller as to make the colour of the writing to be significance to the story. However with the transition of the titles and how they move around of the blood running down the screen is really abstract and i like the idea of using abstract title sequence as it is different and if it goes with the story like this title sequence i think it could really impress the examiner.

what I also liked about this title sequence is how it is not just titles it has action in it as well and shows part of the film or the story which is a really good idea because even though it is only a title sequence which is seen as a rest period before the film begins it captures the audience straight away and gets them into the film which is one of my key aims in making my title sequence. As it is not just title sequence which are usually boring as nothing really happen in them I found this one exciting and it caught my attention and this was one of the only ones where I found myself after looking to watch the film and make it carry on which is a good way not just to make a good title sequence but to make a good movie.

As this title sequence is very abstract with the writing but also with the types of shots used for examples in this title sequence there is an establishing shot of loads of people in a room which is black and white which in itself is an interesting shot as you want to find out why its old and who are those people but there is also closeups of main characters, which gave me an idea to use in mine as i want to show the story as well i think it is important that show who my main characters are and the best way to do so is close ups. there is a many variety's of shots in this title sequence that make it interesting such as extreme close ups and many different cuts in black and white which make it a very interesting title sequence.

there are many things that appeal to me about this title sequence such as the cuts used and how it is edited to news affairs and how that is in black and white and the close ups of people with blood on them which correspond with the actual titles as they are red which represent blood and Gore and the audience can expect blood as they are told in a subtle way which is a clever idea. this title sequence gave me many ideas for my thriller title sequence in to show action and to make it abstract in the edits and the actual titles to make it different and to help me impress the examiner.

Skills Audit - Editing the Speed of a Clip

This is an experiment that we decided to do to manipulate the speed of a clip. We intend to do this in the real version of our title sequence, so we thought we should practise slowing down and speeding up clips accurately. We did this in Final Cut Pro, using the razor cut tool to pinpoint the frames that we wanted to manipulate the speed of.

Similarities....

After simply browsing YouTube for thriller movies I came across a trailer for the film "Devils Racecourse". The plot for the movie caught my attention, " On an annual hiking trip, a group of college students find themselves caught in the middle of a government conspiracy. Now they are stalked by those determined to keep this secret from ever getting out." As did the location of the trailer because both are very similar to what we chose for our final title sequence.

Skills Audit - Filming

When we were on location, we decided to take some photos of ourselves setting up the equipment and filming.

We always kept the tripod balanced evenly by checking the 'balance level' on the tripod. We made sure that the tripod was evenly level to ensure that we achieved the best possible capture of each shot.

This is the 'mechanism' we used to keep the briefcase shut when George was running with it. We wanted to have the briefcase slightly open so we could capture lots of paper with our titles on flying around in the air. Sadly, it was not possible to capture this paper, as we could not get it to leave the briefcase in the correct way during filming.

This is the opening shot being filmed. The title sequence starts with George walking down the road towards an unknown location. However, on the other side of the road, a female agent is surreptitiously watching him and calls her associate to proceed and follow him.

This is a still photo of the closing shot to the title sequence.The piece of paper has the working title 'The Briefcase' written on it. This comes from the idea of showing our titles entirely on the paper in the briefcase. However, we changed the name of the film and did not include the paper in the air sequence, so it would not make sense to show the close-up we originally had of the paper. This is why we decided to show the paper with the red tie and briefcase clearly in view.

This is George and Rico on location in between shooting takes.

This is Kirsty and Sam on location

Location Shots:

Prior to filming, we were required to pick a suitable location for the setting of our opening title sequence.
As majority of the sequence takes place in a forest/ woodland, we required exactly that or something similar too, and so we chose Oakwood, Enfield as our location for filming. Parts of our sequence required a residential area; surrounding the woodland is a residential area, something that attracted us further to this location.