Account of Editing Process

After our shoot day we started editing using Final Cut Pro. As we had previously used this software for our prelim task we already had a basic idea of how to use it. Before we started making a sequence of clips, we had to watch each individual one to see what we had caught on film. We labeled our clips different colours, representing different qualities of clips. The clips we liked the most we labeled red, these ones we were more likely to use in our thriller. The orange clips were good but not our favourites. We could use these as back up if the red ones didn't look good together. Lastly, blue were the clips that we didn't think went right on the day and we were not going to use in our thriller. Even though we didn't plan on using these shots, we didn't delete them. We were told to never delete any of our clips, as we could need a shot from one later on.

After we labeled our clips we then began to put them together. We did this roughly at first so we had the basic storyline. Once we had done this we began to add in shots which made the sequence look more interesting such as close ups and focus pulls. We also smoothened it all out so that the clips were cutting at the correct time. We stopped jump cuts from happening. This is when to shots of the same subject, are take from a camera position which varies only slightly. This can confuse the audience and doesn't look correct in a sequence. 

I found the most difficult part of editing was adjusting the audio in the thriller. We had to double up audio so that our thriller would have surround sound. We also added multiple audio face transitions. This was all very difficult and was a long process, however it was very necessary to ensure the audio sounded smooth.

We also imported some sounds from Soundtrack pro, for example a police car siren. We used a sound bridge to link the flat and the outside riots together. We did thisby creating increasing the volume when the scene cut to our main character walking outside.

Once we had sorted out the clips and the audio, we then moved into after affects. In after affects we changed the lighting of the thriller to make it seem darker. We also added the explosion at the end. This was very difficult because we had to use trackers to that it was only the car that blew up. Trackers took a long time to place in the correct position, to ensure we got the best possible outcome. We also tried to make our car look burnt, with glass shattered in Photoshop. We would use this so that after the explosion the car looked like it had actually been affected. Once we tried this out, we came to the conclusion it only made the thriller look less professional. So we decided to cut the explosion half way through so the audience never sees the affect it had on the car.

After this was done, we added our titles in such as the costume designer, the producer, directer. Once this was all finished we looked over our thriller to see if there were any corrections that we needed to make. As we had been looking at our own thriller for so long it would be difficult to notice if we had made any mistakes. So we asked people from other groups to view our thriller as well. This gave us an outlook from other peoples perspectives. We cleaned our thriller up, and then made it HD so that the thriller was in a higher quality. 

Although this was a long and tiring process, i am extremely happy with our thriller and i feel it is noticeable how much i have learnt about editing since the prelim task.