Analysis of an opening sequence
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Thursday 31 March 2011
Friday 25 March 2011
Account of post production
Editing this practical task is a very different experience to editing my preliminary task earlier on in the year which was a far more basic, straight cut based approach. Now I am currently developing my skills in more complex aspects of Final Cut such as sound bridges, titles, transitions and sound levelling. For instance, the shot which pulls in from a close up of the evidence photos on the table to an entire establishing shot of the interrogation room using the genie lift included the sound of the genie lift itself within the shot. Therefore I had to take the sound from one of the shots that was filmed from a different still angle and edit the levels of this so that the sounds of things such as the evidence photos being laid out on the desk was in sync with the video footage from the initial shot.
Many of our chosen shots within the sequence are cut at a slow pace so as to indicate the slow passing of time within the interview room and indirectly bringing forth the sense that there is no way out of this situation for our victimised girl (Kate). This is also evident through the use of the cross dissolve. We are currently in the process of experimenting with faster cuts in order to suggest intensity within the scene. Combined with the slower cuts I believe this could be highly effective.
The very first shot of the sequence is from the diarised ‘youtube’ confession of Alex attempting to explain his reasoning behind his actions. Cutting back and forth from this within the sequence would allow us to progressively reveal Kate’s potential involvement in the situation as Alex mentions her more often as the sequence progresses. However, later on in the process of editing it became apparent that this technique was not beneficial to the flow of the plot within the opening sequence and may be difficult to comprehend when not within the context of the film as a whole. We therefore decided to cut the diarised video confession of Alex from the sequence apart from the very beginning in order to establish his involvement in the events leading up to that of the film itself.
The key idea however is to give Kate the majority of the screen time in order to show that this story is based around her and not Alex who has previously committed the crime which leads us to her situation, later to be followed up throughout the film. This sense of the fact that it is Kate’s story we are following is shown by the fact that the opening sequence ends with her in the on set camera saying ‘let me tell you what really happened’. This sets us up to cut between her diarised version of events within the interview room and the other events that would follow later in the film.
As well as video editing, our knowledge of photoshop proved to be useful in terms of creating the title card for the film. Using regular font seemed to be highly unimpressive in visual terms so we came up with the idea of adjusting a conventional typewriter style font in order to make it unique to our film. This was done by taking certain letters from the word ‘AFTERMATH’ in this font and dropping or raising them slightly in order to convey a sense of disorder within the word itself. The theme of the film being based around a school shooting, we felt it was appropriate to place the letters as if they were on a blackboard. This blackboard is both stained and scratched, including over and around the text. This fits in well with the overall demeanour of the film which is meant to address both tarnished and dark concepts behind the tragic events at the school. We used the ‘bad TV’ effect on final cut, flicking on and off during the time that the title card is on screen so as not to just have a static image on screen which may have been potentially mundane to watch.
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