Editing evaluation of thriller

EDITING EVALUATION

When it was time to do the final touches of my children’s drama, all I had left to do was edit. So I went onto “Premiere Pro”, a piece of editing software, and clicked on new project. It came up with the types of screen sizes we could choose from, from DV-NTSC standard to HVD. I clicked on DV-PAL and chose widescreen 48. It opened up and I got a big screen with a timeline on at the bottom of the screen, a screen at the top right to watch my clips on, and the place to import the clips to on the top left. 

I imported them from the camera memory stick onto the E drive of the computer I was using, but before I could import my clips to premier pro I had to change the format of them. I did this by going onto the folder they were in, and then clicking on “tools” at the top of the screen, and then “folder options”. It came up with a few tabs and I clicked on “view” and then I ticked off “Hide extensions for known file types”. When I did this it then showed the name of the clips followed by “.MOV” I then had to change every clip from “MOV” TO “MPG”. When I did this I went back on to Premier Pro and clicked on “file” and then “import” and imported all my clips into a box on the time corner.

When I had all my clips there and ready to use, I found my first clip that I needed and dragged it on the timeline. I did this with all my clips, putting them in the right order ready to edit, however I left a gap between each clip, in case I decided to re-film something or add something in, and to make it clearer to see all the different clips. I put them on Video 1 and audio 1 on the timeline, I did this because they are my main clips and I needed the sound as well as the picture. I first of all watched all my clips at once to see how badly it needed editing and to see if it flowed properly. Once I had watched it all, I then started to cut down my first clip by using the cut tools in the tools box on the right hand side of the screen. The first clip wasn’t too bad, but the second clip after watching it, I realised it wasn’t necessary so deleted it completely. Another clip a character walks into a room and it jumps a bit from the end of that clip to the next one, so I cut the end of the first clip out, so she is still moving when the second one starts, to make it flow better. Another clip near the end of our thriller was too long, so I cut the clip up into 3 parts, and one part, of where a character is turning the lights off in his car before getting out; I sped up, to save time and boredom of watching it.  During this I found out that it was too long, and decided to get rid of a few unnecessary clips such as a clip in the kitchen scene I found wasn’t needed, so got rid of it. When the end of a scene was over, I would go onto effects at the bottom left of the screen, click on it and type in “cross dissolve”. When it came up I would drag it onto the end of the clip I wanted it to be on, and the beginning of the next, so that It faded up slower than just if it quickly appeared, making it looked formal. I did this to show passing of time. In one of these black gaps, I put the sound of police sirens in to show that something bad had happened previously and to make it flow better.

I did go back later on a shorten a few other clips after feedback from others, such as a cluster of clips in the kitchen scene were too slow, and being an intense fast scene, it didn’t work as well. So I over lapped some audio and cut the clips up, so it was more flashy and suited the atmosphere more
After that, when I was happy with the sequence, there were no black frames in between clips and everything ran as smoothly as it could, I decided to work on a soundtrack, I decided firstly to do the diagetic sounds, which are sounds that are visible to the viewer on the screen or that is implied to be present by the action of the film, for example a knocking at the door, a fire alarm going of, or music being represented by instruments on screen. So the first diagetic sound I had to find was the sound of a baseball bat being hit against a person. I tried different websites that did sound clips, but couldn’t find anything that sounded right. So I had to record a base ball bat being hit against a bag full of coats, to get the right sound. So once I recorded the sound, I imported it onto the computer, then imported it onto premier pro and dragged it onto the timeline and instead of putting it on audio and video 1, I unlinked the clip, by right clicking on the clip and clicking “unlink” and dragged the sound down to audio 2 and deleted the clip as it was just a black screen.  Once I did that I went onto the next scene that needed an audio effect. This was a background noise of a TV that isn’t very noticeable but good more realistic. So I went onto a website called “Free Sound”, where you can download background noises, tunes, any type of sound for free, and found a clip of a TV and downloaded it.  When I downloaded I then imported it straight away and put it in the area I wanted it to, again into audio 2. I cut it down to how I wanted it.
After I had put all the effects on that I needed, I then did the soundtrack, and again I went onto Free Sound and chose a song that I would in the middle of the thriller and another soundtrack for the end. I downloaded and imported them and put them where I wanted them to go. A part of my thriller I need the music to fade up. I needed the audio from audio 1 to be turned down slightly so the music would be louder and be the centre of attention in the scene. I did this by putting a key frame in the beginning and the end of the sound that I wanted to be turned down, and the same with the part of the soundtrack that I needed to turn up. To put a key frame in I simply just went onto the little box that said "Audio 1" first and clicked on the dot that had to arrows either side of it, where I had put the red curser a dot appeared, so then I moved the curser a bit more to the right and clicked again so I got another dot next to it, I then moved the cursor to the part where I wanted the audio to go up again, and clicked on the dot twice again. After than I was able to lower the sound to whatever pitch I wanted during which the music was louder. I used the key frame to turn the music up.

 Once I had done that all I had left to do title and credits, the characters name and the people who helped with the project. To do that I just went to the top of the screen and clicked “title” and then “new title”. It came up with a box and I got to choose a font, colour and type in what I wanted, I did this a few times for the title of my drama and all the names of the people who helped and that was in it. When I did this I dragged them onto the part of the timeline that I wanted them to be on and used the affect “cross dissolve” so that they would fade in and out so they didn’t just disappear tackily. I did the same with the end credits and the “to be continued”
Once my thriller was all ready I then went onto “file” and then clicked on “export” I exported it as a MPG file and it rendered my work together to make it smoother, and created it into one file so that I could watch it on things like “Windows Media Player”

Thriller --> Trust evaluation

Trust thriller Evaluation.

My strengths when doing the thriller project was that I felt that I was quite organised in the pre-production work, I wrote down what everyone did in the group by using meeting sheets, I recorded the date and time my group and I had a meeting, what we discussed and what our plans were. I also wrote down on minute sheets everyone’s roles in the pre-production work, including when they started it with the date and time. I did a variety of pre-production work from the codes of practice and copyright, to the shot list and prop/clothing list. I always turned up and was in time for filming sessions, and met up with others who didn’t know where the set location was, to help them get there, so I was reliable to the other group members.  I felt that I my camera skills were better than in the children’s drama. It was my main role in the production as I was the head camera woman in our thriller. I did most shots in the production and when my camera assistant Jason did some filming I was there telling him where to position the camera and for how long to film. I felt that my camera skills were not too shaky and I had a range of shots. I also have progressed from the children’s drama in editing. I was able to use a few more affects such as changing the colour of the clips so they matched the others or to set the scene, and learnt a bit more about over lapping the audio so it flowed better and staying within the 180 degree line. I feel that I did improve with my weakness I said in my children’s drama evaluation. There were a range of shots in our thriller like over-the- shoulder and I did do more editing, however I didn’t do any of the script this time.

My weaknesses were that I feel I could have done a bit more editing than I did, just to put in that bit more of an effort.  Maybe to do better next time, I should do something bigger on my own, such as writing the script or doing the storyboards.

The main problems we encountered was that before we started filming, we didn’t have a female actress to play the female role which was a main one. Luckily a friend introduced us to some girls in the drama department that he knew, and we got our actress there. Another problem was that we couldn’t find a location, as one group member had used their location in the children’s drama, and other group members couldn’t use their house and didn’t no anywhere we could film. Luckily this got resolved as a different group member offered to let us use their house which worked well as it was an ideal location. We then got another problem due to the other group member who let us film at theirs couldn’t let us film anymore due to family problems, so once again we were stuck on where to film. Luckily the person had asked a different family member, and we were allowed to film there.  It only affected us as we had our location pictures at the first house and by the time we weren’t allowed to film and got this new location, the pre-production work had been handed it and we couldn’t change it. But luckily we had a good location set and were ready to film.  We then had the problem of being able to afford to get there, the first filming session, 2 of our group members never showed up, which was sorted and one of them said it was due to not having much money, luckily there was a deal of group tickets being cheaper, so the next time we went off to film we bought the group tickets which resolved the issue.