Editing Diary

Upon finishing our filming, we had the task of tackling the editing needed to slot our shots together and add effects to give the best possible effect to our audience.
Through many hours contemplating what shots should be in which order we decided what we wanted and how we wanted our production to go.

Once the film had been pieced together we also had to add particular effects to make sure the film was displayed in a way where every shot made perfect sense.
At points we had to be very creative since the shots on their own often looked very amature, but with the editing combined they became far more advanced. An example of this would be the point of view shot where our protagonist is feeling the effects of the drugs the antagonist placed in her pill pot and her sight becomes blurred.

We also played around with the idea of increasing and decreasing the speed of certain shots because we were not sure they looked realistic enough or dramatic enough at their original pace. Shots we considered slowing down were the shots where our protagonist passes out, for a more dramatic effect. Another shot we were thinking about slowing down was the final shot where the bag is placed over the protagonist's head, again for a more dramatised effect.
Shots we considered speeding up were when our protagonist falls from the effects of the drugs, this is because we were unsure if the original speed of the shot was truely enough for someone falling over.

In the end we discarded the ideas for any of our shots being changed in terms of speed because we decided the original speeds added realism, which in the end is one of the main features of a thriller because the more real it seems the more scared the audience can be.

Another idea we had was to use a rewinded shot in the credits. We thought about using a screwed up photo in the credits but as the credits appear the paper would be unfolded to its original condition. This would be done by filming the paper being screwed up and then using a rewind effect during the editing. But, after further consideration we were afraid the shot would look highly amature if it was not done perfectly and was too much of a risk.

Once we had laid out all of our editing ideas the actual editing of the production went very smoothly, we encountered no issues with our choice of effects and our shots seemed to slot together perfectly once the editing was in place.

----

Upon further inspection one problem we came across when editing was that one of the shots showed a reflection of the cameraman in the mirror, we managed to find a way to crop the image so that he couldn’t be seen, but not so much that the shot looked pixelated or the characters looked larger than normal.

Most of the editing was done on two occasions as we had all the footage we needed, other final touches such as music, credits and fades were added once all the shots were in order and had been trimmed down so continuity was kept intact. One shot has been made blurry so the concept of the protagonist being drugged is shown, the camera vaguely shows the dog walking over to her and then her kidnappers feet walking towards her.