Diary of Editing Sessions

Session One
We watched all of the footage that we had filmed and whilst doing this we cut the film down into different 'takes'. This was so that it was easier to establish which piece of film belonged to which section. We also deleted the footage which was unfocused or was just 'empty footage'. Then we moved each section of footage to the correct place on the time line.


Session Two
We watched some more footage that we had filmed and then broke that up like we had done in the previous session. We then added the 'Flatline Media' animation to the time line from our previous trailer, although when importing this we had to re-add the text that said 'Flatline' because we had a technical error. We then added the 'beep' sound to the time line so that it fit in time with the heart monitor of the Flatline Media. We did this using Garage band and found the sound in the library; we then exported it using an MP3 Encoder, played the sound through Itunes and then finally imported it to the correct place in the time line


Session Three
In this editing session we decided to edit the very last part of the trailer first because we thought that it would be the hardest part to do but would look really effective. We made the final part of the trailer by layering four different clips of George in the hostage scene on top of each other and then make them all fit a quarter of the screen each. 
We then added a 'timecode generator' to each of the four segments of footage so that it appeared to look like a CCTV screen (we set the times so that they all counted up from the same number).
To finish off this piece of footage we felt that we needed something odd to happen at the end so we made all of the separate sections fuzz out all at once so that it looked like the CCTV screen had been disconnected. We did this by using a video filter named 'bad TV' which adds ripples wavy effects to footage. Straight after this happened we added a Render file named 'Noise' which is a completely pixalated screen which appears when something has lost connection. We felt that this looked really cool and effective so decided to keep this idea and add a crackling sound to play under it from the Garage Band library


Session Four
We did the same effect on four different shots of Becca as we did with George's CCTV part (splitting the screen into four separate parts), we wanted to do this to give George's stalker more of an identity. Although this effect looks great, we are unsure if two of the same types of edits will not work well so will need to decide this later on in the editing stage.


Session Five
During this session we focused on the part where George is leaving the house. To make the match on action edit we needed to find the exact part of the footage where he was opening the door and leaving the house. This didn't take too long to do and it also looks really effective.


Session Six
In this editing session we focused on the montage of different BMX tricks which George was performing. We had too much footage of him doing tricks so we had to drastically cut them down until we found the best ones. We put the final tricks together to make them look fast paced and snappy (with the use of cut editing). We then made the 'snap shot' parts with the tricks. To do this we found the best part of the trick, cut the footage and caught a freeze frame. We then moved the rest of the footage down the time line a little and then added a white rectangle shape which only lasts about half a second to create the 'flash' effect (we did this to tie in with the fact that she is stalking him, and also to signify that he is famous). We then added the freeze frame after this to make it look like this was the picture that had been taken (we put a very small border around the freeze frame to make it appeared more Polaroid like). We then moved the rest of the shot next to the freeze frame to finish the tricks montage.


Session Seven
We added the names of the actor and actress to the footage so that we knew that they appeared in the trailer somewhere. We did this so that the fan base of these actors/actresses knew that they were going to be starring in this new film so that they could create some viral advertisement.


Session Eight
During this session we edited the message, post and email scene. At first we had too much footage for these parts of the trailer e.g. when George was receiving the post we had him flicking through some other post and then reading the 'newspaper', which was unnecessary and  time-consuming. Also it slowed the pace of the trailer right down which is not what we wanted to happen.


Session Nine
This is when we added text to the trailer to give some meaning to what is happening and to act as a narrative. We constantly moved the text around to different places to see where it worked best and the  finally decided on where it is today. We thought that it was important to write the correct things in the text so that people know what the film is going to be about and also to create more tension. We also added the 'Summer 2012' text over the noise because it is important for the audience to know when the film is to be released so that the film company can gain a profit.


Session Ten
During this session we added the 'Life Drop' logo to the trailer. This took more effort than we initially thought because we needed to back up the image of Life Drop onto an external hardrive and then add it into Final Cut Pro. We then layered a white rectangle behind Life Drop so that it didn't look silly. I also think that having a white background makes Life Drop stand out the most during the trailer as it is quite a piercing colour to look at after watching darkish footage. We also added a zoom in effect on the text so that it was brought forward to the audience. We felt that this made this part of the trailer flow more.


Session Eleven
After exporting the trailer and watching it through we noticed that parts of it were missing because frames were being jumped. We thought that this was very odd and tried many different techniques to fix this. We then noticed that when text was layered over footage it didn't jump so over all of the footage we added text, which was just a full stop but with size zero so that it wasn't visible. This stopped the jumping so we were able to search for music that would fit in with our trailer's story line and editing.