Editing Reflection task

 

Last Thursday, we began editing our Opening Title Sequence. In order to do this, on the first day, we looked through all of our rushes. As we looked at them, we organized them and dragged them onto the timeline in order. Since we had re-shot a few key scenes multiple times, we made sure to pick out what we believed was the best iteration of the shots and put them on the timeline. Since there was a sequence of events, we made sure to color code and organize our shots into 3 main sections, the initial inserts, and Liv walking into the elevator, the dialogue, and the fight sequence which leads to her murdering him.  

We put in extra time further on in the day to really edit those shots down and consolidate them into the particular moments they required. While the editing wasn't seamless, this allowed us a much easier transition into fine-tuning our cuts and shot duration the next day. Soon, we had finished editing our shots, which was great, because it meant we had them all in order and sequenced. Then, we fitted them into an "elevator frame", essentially, making the shots fill the screen correctly when transferred and played on full-screen television, cinema, etc. This meant we had to fiddle a little with the spacing and composition of the shots. We were sure to use the rule of thirds on-screen to create a compact on-screen dynamic. We wanted our shots to feel cramped, and so we ensured to look at the way composition offered this feeling.

When editing the fight sequence, it was difficult to make the action look seamless and realistic, while still allowing the audience to follow along. In order to do this, we sped up our shots from 100 to 120 in order to create a more action-packed feeling but still allowing for coherent fight choreography that the audience could follow and understand. This provided difficulties later on because the audio was also sped up, which meant we needed to sync the original audio tracks to the action scenes, but we ended up being able to do this, which made the final product even more rewarding.

My favorite part of the editing was editing the titles. I think that was when I really began to see the Opening sequence come together. It was interesting to really look at the composition of them, and try to measure the amount of time they should be onscreen. Our group would edit them on the timeline, choose the font and positioning, then say it out loud 3 times before having it disappear. We made sure to crossfade all of our titles in and out of frame, some more quickly than others. It was a challenge to get our last title, the title "Going Down" correct. We wanted it to appear as the elevator doors were closing on the dead body. While we played around with having it slide along with the doors, we found it gave a strange, almost comical connotation, as if the title was animated, and opted not to.

We didn't remove any shots, but there were some we ended up getting rid of purely for effect. In one of the shots, we decided to augment the speed and make it slow-motion, this held real impact and was very effective. The issue was, our mid-shot didn't quite align, so we cut it out of that moment, and chose instead to have that shot, which I believe was the right decision, because not that shot carried so much more impact than before.

The sound was challenging because we had set our piece in a noisy environment. Elevators make a lot of sounds, and we needed to align the whirring, whooshing, and dinging of the elevator into the scene. We ended up having three full audio tracks. The first was dialouge, for which we increased the volume, and ensured we had a clean, clear sound. The second was ambient noise and sound effects, which we had pre-recorded, and edited according to the opening and closing of doors, pressing buttons, and moving of the lift onscreen. We opted not to have any non-diegetic sound within our scene, and rather, wanted our soundtrack to be contrapuntal, using elevator music as surrounding sound for a brutal fight and death. In the end, I think this worked really effectively because we were able to add this menacing tone to the undertones of our film. The challenging part, however, was finding the correct track. Since this elevator music was non-diegetic, I would be playing in the speakers of the elevator, which means the quality would've been awful. In order to do this, the track required an effect, and we brought the volume very low. The issue was, in order to do this, we needed sound that could sustain this augmentation. Any sort of Base, or deep string would be nearly inaudible, which meant most jazz or "elevator music" wasn't right. We ended up finding a track that used the correct sort of tone, and we were able to create the effect we initially aimed for.

In the end, we were able to fully create the effect we aimed for, and our concept didn't really change, the editing really created this piece, and brought it to life.