Final Editing

Today after school Molly and I carried on making our soundtrack on GarageBand. It proved harder than we expected to make the music fit with our film opening and it was difficult to make the music quiet and mysterious at the beginning and then tension building towards the end.

Eventually we managed to perfect it and we ended up using 2 layers on GarageBand, one being the orchestra type sound which is what the film starts with after the helicopter aerial scene. The 2nd layer is then a slightly more upbeat intense strumming beat which really works well with the 1st layer.

Making The Music

As a result of not being able to find any music to fit our film opening well I have started to create an instrumental track on GarageBand on my Apple Mac. I have put in all of the sounds and various instruments that I feel will fit well with our film and today Molly and I are going to finish the music and put it into our film.

Creating our music ourselves means that we can make it fit perfectly with our film opening and therefore build tension in all the right places.

Yesterdays Editing

Yesterday, I stayed after school in order to edit the newly shot footage. Based on the feedback from our teacher, I had to think carefully as to how I was going to create tension through the various clips. As a result, I cut up clips in order to make them more jumpy. For example, the clip when our actress was walking down an alley, I cut it up so she would jump from close to a bit further up the alley and so on. This builds tension more effectively and engages the audience more.

I also changed some of the new footage of crowds into black and white with slow motion added in order to create tension and foreshadow the effect of what was going to happen from the bomb drop.

Half-Term Issue

Unfortunately, Molly and I are both skiing over half term meaning we can not edit over half-term. This is not a huge problem as we are planning on finishing this Friday as we are spending all day doing it.

If worst comes to worse, then I will come after school on the day of the deadline and finish the editing; however, it is highly unlikely that we do not finish the film opening before half-term begins.

Editing The New Footage

Today, Molly and I got our re-shot footage onto the Macs in our media room. After getting all of the newly shot footage onto the mac, we then converted the files to .mov format rather than the original format it was in. A few of the clips would not convert as the disk space was full so as a result we deleted some of our previous files and old footage files to free up some space.

Unfortunately, we accidentally deleted the wrong file and then cleared it from the trash can on the Mac. This meant that we had no way of getting the files back, so we thought.

Fortunately, our teacher managed to find the original files on the Mac, however they were not edited. This meant that we could import the footage again but it would all be un-edited. Obviously this will take up even more time.

As a result, I am personally staying after school tomorrow, Thursday and then coming in all day Friday to finish the editing. We feel this should be enough time to get the editing finished.

Police Officer Footage

I had been thinking of lots of different ideas on how to build tension in the re-shoot before I went out and filmed. I had an idea of filming a police officer briefly in slow motion which will engage the audience and relate the the girls objective of dropping a bomb. This is a method of foreshadowing as it is linking in with the story and the fact that the girl is being chased or was being chased before she went to plant the bomb.

As I did not see any police officers around the town, I went to the police station and asked the receptionist if any officers would be willing to do this for us. She came back with a new officer who was more than happy to be involved in the film.

We asked him to walk out of the police station and along the road and I will cut down this footage and put it in slow motion so it builds tension as much as possible.

Re-Shoot

On Saturday, I went out with our actress and re-shot the last few scenes of our film due to the negative feedback our teacher gave us. Unfortunately, the weather was not the same as the first day of shooting meaning if we did not edit the footage, we would have half the opening with overcast skies and half with the sun out.

As a result, I had to make sure the re-shoot was shot carefully so I avoided any major glare from the sun. This proved to be easier than I thought as the market square is fairly shaded from the sun meaning there was never a massive amount of glare on the lens.

I filmed lots of crowds of people in which I will edit to make it slow-motion so it helps build tension. I did not have a problem with people looking at the camera as I managed to position myself well so people couldn't immediately see me. This proved effective as I got a substantial amount of footage to include in the film.

I checked the footage as soon as I got home and all of the footage was perfect. I will need to make sure the clips are edited effectively so they are the same brightness as the previous clips.

Music Situation

I am currently researching into other soundtracks for our film as our teacher said that the music did not build enough tension throughout the film and did not really fit with the footage.


As a result I have been on YouTube a lot trying to find a suitable soundtrack.
I have had no luck with finding a soundtrack that starts off slowly and then builds up.

Teachers Feedback

After receiving some feedback from our teacher after handing in the first edit it is clear that we need to re-shoot the last 20-30 seconds in order to build more tension up the the bag drop. Our teacher has said that it is not entirely clear as to what is in the bag and there is no sign of the bomb doing any damage as there is no footage of people around when Flora drops the bomb. We will then edit the new footage and use jump cuts when Flora is walking so tension is building.


As we do not have a lot of time to re-shoot I am going with Flora to film this Saturday but Molly will be unable to attend this time. This is not a problem as I know what I am doing and we do not need two cameras set up as we only need to do a first person shot of Flora walking into a crowd. 


I can only hope that the weather is similar to the last shoots weather. If not then we will have to spend more time editing to make the weather link in with the other footage earlier on in the film. 

Time Issue

We have just found out that our film is 2 minutes and 6 seconds long. We have just found out that our film cannot be over 2 minutes long. As this is our first edit, we have more time to finalise our opening and make sure we abide by the rules of the course and get the timing right. We obviously do not want to lose marks because our opening goes over the set time of 2 minutes.

As a result we will recieve our teacher's feedback on the timing as well as the song choice and if changes need to be made then this will be done before the 2nd edit deadline.

Music Idea

Last night I watched the first edit again and decided that the music did not do what I wanted it to do. My aim was to create tension through the music and I do not feel the current music was creating enough tension for my liking. The bomb dropping was meant to be quite a hard hitting ending to our opening and I feel that the music we have now does not create enough tension.

As a result I am currently researching into other instrumentals for our film and I am going to find a similar soundtrack to the Jaws soundtrack as I want to use an instrumental that slowly builds up towards our ending and this will create tension.

First Edit Complete

Molly and I have just finished our first edit for our film opening. We uploaded the police voice over to it and cut it down by a few seconds to ensure it fitted perfectly. We decided that making the voice come in seconds before the first shot came in would be more effective as I have seen it done in films such as the Bourne films and Shooter. This engages the audience and briefly sets the scene. We then made sure the voice over went over the first countdown timer footage to create tension and linkthe two parts together better. The voice over is still playing over the first scene where our actress is sitting by the tree and as the voice over is seconds from finsihing, the music starts to play and then takes the dominant position in the shot.


Next we will look at the opening again tomorrow and make sure everything is perfect for the first edit deadline on Friday.