Editing Process

Above is a screen shot image of our footage open and edited together in Premiere Pro. After each filming session we would upload the footage into Premiere Pro and pick out the most suitable shots. We would then drag these down into the work area (the bottom mid panel) and edit them individually, making sure that only the parts of the shot that were needed remained. To begin with we didn't get as much filmed as we had hope, so we didn't have many shots to alter. To use the time between filming sessions efficiently we added lighting and in some instances speed/duration special effects to the shots we had. We did this using the drop down menus on the left hand side of the screen - one effect that we used on the majority of our shots was the brightness and contrast effect. This allowed us to darken down shots, so that they would portray more of an eerie, chilling atmosphere, as is seen in horror films/trailers. We didn't start arranging the shots into the correct order until after our main filming day. On this day, we managed to film the majority of our shots. As it was difficult to get all of our actors/actresses together at any one time, we had to make sure we completed the shots that we desperately needed on this day. To make sure that we covered everything I made a shot list and detailed plan of what order the shots should be arranged in when it came to editing together the trailer. Obviously we followed our group storyboard, however the detailed list came in useful as some alterations had been made between the time the storyboard was completed and when filming took place. After this day we uploaded all of the footage and did as we had before, dragging down the shots we wanted and cutting them down individually. Then using the list we began to order the shots and also uploaded out soundtrack. The shots that were going to be quickly cut together at the end of the trailer (to represent the falling action) were left in a 'random' arrangement until the rest of the shots had been put into a suitable order. We used many black 'still title' slides to add captions throughout. We altered the scale of the text as the slide was played so that the text 'grew'. Once we had the basic structure of our trailer in place it was time to tweak and improve certain shots and sequences. We also had to cut the soundtrack right down as to begin with it was over 3 minutes in length and our trailer would be no longer that 1 minute, 30 seconds. To do this we used the Razor tool (on the right) to mark the sections of the music we would cut out. This was extremely frustrating as it was very difficult to get each section to match up with the previous, without sounding 'out of place', and was just a matter of trial and error most of the time. To help the track to flow I used some of the audio effects (on the left), dragging them on top of the soundtrack where the sections joined. This allowed the different areas to fade into one another. Once the soundtrack was roughly the right length we started to arrange the shots in time with the track, which was often complicated and involved repeating the same section over and over until we were happy with its posistion. We left 2 gaps for 2 shots that we were yet to film. These shots later slotted easily into place. Following this it was simply a case of tweaking areas and adding effects. Towards the final days we also had to completely re-edit the soundtrack as the tempo increased too earlier on in the trailer. To solve this issue we repeated the beginning of the track so that the pace/tempo increased as the trailer reached the point of highest intensity. Doing this meant that shots had to be moved and altered so that they would again play in time with the track. This was difficult and we also had to add small sections of the track to Audio layer 3 to help bridge gaps and joins.