Post production - editing

When editing our film, there were a number of specific things that we did other than just cutting and moving the clips that we had filmed. The basic editing that we carried out was changing the timings of the clips so that they smoothly transitioned into one another. As well as this we had to synchronise the sound to some of the clips, for example we separately film the sound of the antagonist stepping on the stick so we needed to ensure that the timings matched up to make it look professional. We changed the timings using the main bar where all of the selected clips collate at the bottom half of the screen, and we were able to specifically remove and cut the clips to make the transitions better.

One if the main things that needed editing was the flash back scenes, both before and after the incident occurs. Along with the feedback from our audience questionnaires we felt that the clips would look more convincing if we removed some of the saturation and colour to give it a feeling that it was from the past. 

We did this by using this adjustment tool bar:

Within this tool bar, are the settings for the saturation levels and the colour levels, and these were what we minimised in order to get the effect that we achieved in our final film opening. 

In order to fulfil audience pleasure with tension and suspense, we felt that the laughter over the top of the flashback should sound more eerie than just the original audio. As a result of this, we found a few audio effects pre programmed in iMovie that we put over the top of the original audio clip that made it sound more eerie. The effects that we used were 'Pitch Up 1' and 'Large Room' as the first effect helped the audio to sound more scary as children's voices in thriller films are a convention feature to help create fear. The second effect that we used provided the echo that is present in the final film. We also increased the volume on some of the clips to make a specific sound stand out to the audience. For example, when the antagonist stands on the stick, we increased the sound of the stick snapping so that it would have more of an impact on the audience, and instil more tension into the audience. 

A further thing that we edited was the sound score than ran throughout the film opening; along with a second track that we layered over the top. We layered the tracks on top of each other by adding a second tier of sound to the editing bar at the bottom of the page. This allowed us to play both tracks at the same time, and we selected the climax of the second track so that it would portray tension and suspense.