Editing Process

 

To complete the editing process we had to ensure that we knew the conventions of editing that were used to create the horror genre. Some examples of this are slow, quick cuts to expand time, and during colour grading the dulled down colours.

We began by making a rough cut where we just layered in our footage and roughly cut each shot to fit together so that we had a basic sequence of what we wanted our opening to look like. after this we zoomed in a bit more and thought about how we were going to expand time and therefore made more defined cuts. This took a couple of hours to complete and after we had done this we started looking for background music to include. But there was one problem, the sequence just wasn't up to scratch. We worked for days individually and as a group working on improving it and making it look more professional. To make sure that we knew what each other had changed we separated the work load so that one person worked on layering all the sounds needed another on cutting shots, another on sequencing etc. As well as this we left post it notes saying any improvements we had and any feedback whether it be good or bad.

This took a couple of weeks and once we were happy with it we decided to relook at music that we wanted to use in the background. To do this we completed research of the stereotypical music used in horror movies so that we could follow the conventions. YouTube and Moby were the sights that we used to do this as they were free and had no issues with copyright.

To create and enhance our sounds effects we set up the recording setting on the cameras and used things such as mud and whacking meat with a hammer to create the necessary sounds which would have a massive impact on the feeling our film had.

We then colour graded our film and letterboxed it. These were the very final stages of the editing process as we had to ensure everything was right before we completed it or it would become out of sync. The letterboxing was relatively easy to do as we just had to change the ratios- we did this to give it a more cinematic feel. Colour grading took a long time to work out how to complete it but once we figured this out we found it relatively easy as well. We decided to dull down the colours and darken the lighting slightly in places so that there was smooth transitions from one shot to another.

 

This is a picture of the colour grading software that we used on final cut pro. The different panels allowed us to change specific colour by either making them more vivid or dull them down. This helps to set the atmosphere that needs to be created so that the genre is accurate. This software was relatively easy to use and after experimenting we worked out what to do.