LO3: evidence of editing

 This post is a merge document containing the;

- Evidence of editing

- Control and manipulation of audio

- Application of visual effects and transitions 

The first thing I did when beginning the editing of my horror short film was adjusting the length of every clip. This was because when filming I purposefully made each shot last slightly long so that I could create the perfect cutoff. An example of this is the reaction shot in the first scene when Quinn hears the bedroom door close. I made it so that as soon as the noise is heard, the shot quickly cuts so that we can see our protagonists reaction. I did this using the razor tool, allowing me to precisely choose where exactly the clip will cut.

Some of the clips I recorded were too short, resulting in the shot ending abruptly and causing the scene to move much quicker than intended. To make these shots last longer, I right clicked on them and slowed down the clip by selecting 'speed/duration' and setting the number lower, allowing me to adjust how much slower they're going to make the clip the perfect length. I mainly did this for the shots that didn't have my character in them as slowing down a clip of a person would be very noticeable and pull viewers out of the immersion, ruining the tension. An example of this is the shot of the now open fridge, the slowed down clip wasn't noticeable for audiences and allowed my scene to be much better paced. 

Digitally editing my visuals

The cinematography of my short film isn't just enhanced by the camerawork and set design I used in production, but also the digital editing. This is useful as some of my shots didn't turn out how initially planned, so the digital editing allowed me to go back and fix some of my previous mistakes. 

An example of digital editing allowing me to fix/enhance my cinematography is this shot, which appeared much darker than initially intended. This was an issue as only a slight bit of the foreground could be seen in the shot; seeing the background here is important for the audiences understanding of how the scene plays out, as it lets us know that there's something in the room with my protagonist. 

I fixed this issue by accessing the properties of the clip and balancing the whites, highlights, shadows and exposure of the clip to make an overall better looking shot. This allowed the audience to be able to see the fact that the door was opening by itself in the darkness. It also made the scene much more satisfying to watch as a movie being too dark is a highly regarded criticism in modern horror movies that I wanted to combat in my production, whilst still creating a fear of the unknown with my monster hiding in the shadows.  

Another way I fixed an issue with my recorded shots with digital editing was improving the continuity of the scenes, as well as just giving the movie more of a visual style that helps make it stand out. An example of a continuity issue with how some scenes were filmed is that the lighting drastically changes in between the shots that are supposed to be taking place one after the other. Here is an example below:

In the first shot we can clearly see that our antagonist is being hit with a dim orange light in the room where they are stood, but when the shot changes that allows s to see in to the room, the lighting is not only much more high-key, but also much whiter/yellow. This makes the room appear much brighter, which is an issue as it completely pulls the audience out of the immersion of the film for what is supposed to be an otherwise shocking and important scene. 

And here is the updated scene after adjusting the properties: increasing the exposure in the first clip and increasing the temperature and shadows in the second. These changes make the scenes look as if they're are taking place immediately after one another and help to give more depth and meaning to the film; the orange initially intended making the scene feel hot with tension as we reach the 'boiling point' of the film. As well as this it helps to improve the cinematography by making the shots feel more stylistically distinct from the standard white/pale lighting.

This was a change I made to most of my scenes also, correcting the lighting and giving the film more visual flare so that the audience stay invested in my film. 

I also enhanced my cinematography with digital editing to conform to the conventions of my horror genre. In this example of my protagonist Quinn's phone light scanning over the environment, I edited the temperature, exposure and blacks/whites. This caused the light to be much more concentrated and made the surroundings darker. This made it so that I could directly control what the audience were allowed to see within the light, putting them in my protagonists shoes and allowing me to appeal to genre conventions of horror by creating a creepy atmosphere to keep the audience engaged and on edge.

Special Effects

As part of my project it's important to apply visual effects in post production so that I can make the short film as closely accurate to my vision of what I want the film to look like as possible. In the production of short films, especially horror, special effects are the way to do this. 

As I have not only a budgeting constraint but also a talent constraint for the application of practical effects, it resulted in an issue of me not being able to find a way to create an effective dead body to communicate to the audience the twist of the movie. I came up with the idea of a close up shot of the hand, that way I can also solve the enigma of where the car keys were by having them be in the dead body of the mothers hand. I added a minor practical effect of fake blood (as seen below) but it still didn't feel worthy enough of a shot to reveal that the mother is dead, especially with the extreme lack of blood on the hand. This causes the audience not to be satisfied with the reveal as their audience expectations of what they expect to see in a modern day horror film is a lot of blood and gore. 

(the shot before any application of Digital Effects)

This is why I decided I wanted to apply a digital effect to the shot to make the scene feel more 'gore-y'. Although I still had a digital effect talent constraint being that I couldn't create fake blood/gashes on the hand, it didn't mean I couldn't make the scene feel more gorey. I decided it would narratively make sense if I made it seem as if blood was dripping down the camera lens instead, implying to the audience that the death was so brutal that blood splatted everywhere, even on to the camera itself. 

The first thing I did to create this effect was duplicate my clip and layer them on top of each other. I did this by holding down the option key and then dragging he clip a layer higher, duplicating it on top of the other.

I then searched for the 'tint' and 'gaussian blur' effects in the project window and added them to the duplicated clip.

I opened the added effects settings and mapped the black to a dark red and white to a lighter red on the tint effect. For the Gaussian Blur effect I just increased the blurriness to make the screen look like we (the camera) were looking through blood, causing the screen to be blurry. 

I then clicked the 'new item' button in the project window and layered a black 'colour matte' on top of my clips. I then put the 'VR fractal noise' effect onto this new colour matte. 

I edited the 'VR Fractal Noise' effect by adjusting the contrast and brightness to create a white stained fog like screen. This white fog would become my blood. 

I did this by adding the effect 'track matte key' to my previous duplicate clip, accessing its settings and then changing the 'matte' to 'video 3' and changing the composite to 'matte luma'.

This made it so that the blood red overlay replaced the white and black of the fog-looking matte. I then further started playing around with the settings of each effect (mainly the contrast, brightness and opacity of the clips) as well as increasing the size of the matte overlay so that there wasn't excess blood on the screen and making the blood larger.  

The finishing touch I added to this effect was editing the 'evolution' setting on the 'VR fractal noise' effect. I enabled the animation for the setting and created key frames at the start and end of the clip. The starting keyframe being set to 75 degrees and ending keyframe -13. This made it so that the blood moved on the screen slightly, as if its dripping down the lens.

Audio control/manipulation 

In my short film it's important to make sure my audience don't have their suspension of disbelief broken by being pulled out of the immersion and narrative by visual or audio errors. As part of the narrative of my short film my protagonist is talking over the phone to her mother throughout the movie. I recorded these lines separately and added them in post production instead of having my actress actually speak over the phone. This is because I didn't want to run into any issues with the microphone picking up the phone audio, as well as having overall audio quality to be unclear/distorted. This meant that in post production it was important for me to edit the audio to make sure it feels authentic, as if the characters are actually talking over the phone. 

I did this by accessing the effects window and searching for the effect 'highpass' which is used to make audio sound more as if it's coming from an electronic device.

 I then dragged and dropped it on to each audio clip which applied the effect.

 After then listening to the sound, I noticed that the effect made the audio much quieter, so I right clicked on it, went to 'Audio Gain' and then increased audio gain by 15. This made the audio much easier to hear. 

In this specific scene our character is on the phone further away from the camera than in most scenes. To make it sound like the phone is further away I also added the effect 'lowpass' to these specific audio clips through the same application of effects method. 

Another important effect I added to almost all clips that greatly improved my short film was the DeNoise effect. Whilst editing my colour grading of each clip I noticed that in most clips there was background noise that often pulled the viewer right out of the immersion of the scene as a loud distracting buzzing noise could be heard, however I wasn't aware of how I would be able to fix this issue. This was especially distracting in scenes which switched between shots with low buzzing and high buzzing noises. After gathering audience feedback via survey a peer said that to fix this I should apply the 'DeNoise' effect which reduced the audio of that background noise so that my audience wouldn't be distracted. This also allowed me to conform to my horror genre conventions as the completely silent atmosphere in the house now created with this effect means that the audience hang on every sound that happens, waiting for something to break the silence and tension felt in the air of the agonisingly drawn out shots. 

Now that the clips and dialogue were edited together effectively, I used the site free sound.org to gather my sound effects for the short. Although I recorded some (screaming sounds), I still needed to add non-diegetic sound effects that would be difficult to create myself. These sound effects are important to help me follow conventions of typical horror films. 

For example a static sound effect was important for hiding my dialogue but wouldn't be able to be captured naturally