Post 19: Post-Production Report

After filming we straight away moved on to logging, capturing and editing our short film. Even through filming over a number of different days wasn’t ideal it did have it benefits when it came to editing. This was because after we had finished filming a few scenes we then had time to start logging our footage, which in turn became helpful on our last day of filming as we was able to film and finish editing our short film all in one day.

As a group we did experience some problems, our first major problem was after filming the first two scene we realised that the sound hadn’t been recorded meaning we had to then re-film this footage. However after doing these scenes again we was able to start editing. As a group we decided to take it in turns to log, capture and edited, we felt this was a good idea as one person is on the computer while the other sits around. This also worked in our favour has we could individual continue with editing during free periods. The first decided I made was during editing scene 1 and 2. Emily our director has already selected our music and I decided that these first scenes should have two different pieces of music; the first was a mysterious slow piece while the other was a loud rock piece, which repressed her iPod music.  I had never seen this on any previous short films however I feel that it worked really well. I decided to use two contrasting pieces of music; this created a motive throughout our short film and was used to show the different side and personality to our protagonist character. After finishing these scene I then showed it to the group and asked for their opinion, they all agreed and liked the idea of having the two different pieces of music as it added suspense and atmosphere to the scene. 

The music however did cause us many problems, as we had used so many different pieces of music along with atmosphere noise. This meant that the sound levels where off and constantly changing, this was because we had changed them to fade in and out to mix the sounds together. To over come this problem I had to spend a lot of time looking at each individual sound level. I found that moving the sounds dotes wasn’t accurate enough, meaning I had to type in the sound level numbers to make sure they stayed constant throughout the film. 

This shows how I changed the sound levels for the music and how I over lapped the two pieces of music. 

During editing we also came across some other problems such as continuity.  The first problem we found was in the open scene with the shots of the letterbox and the house. When we placed the shots next to each other it was clear that the camera position had been moved slightly however was very noticeable, to over come this problem we decided to add a title in between these two scenes.  We found that during the classroom scene we had problems with the teacher and he positing, for example in one shot his back was toward the white board but in the next he was facing the board. To try and over come this problem we decided to add a fade between the scenes however we didn’t feel this looked correct so after playing around we decided to delete a shot, which resolved the problem.

Just like in our AS project we added dissolves and fades between scenes, which helped the movement between the end shot of one scene and the beginning shot of the next. We also used lighting effects in one of our shot as a shadow had caused the protagonist face to become a lot darker than in the previous scene. This was quickly fixed by increased the lighting and reducing the shadows.  

Above shows the shot where we had to add additional lighting using the light and shadow effects, I think that it was effective and you wouldn't be able to tell we used an effect if you didn't know it was there.

This image shows how we added dissolves between scene as well as additions shots for the credits, we used the same process for the titles at the beginning of the film.  

Overall I think editing was completed quickly for a number of reasons, we all took it in turns, which helped reduce our workload, and we had experience of using the edit suits. I feel that last year our lack of experience on the edit suits slowed us down.  Even through we all took it in turns on the edit suits we always made sure we consulted the group on progress we had made and any ideas we had, this meant we all had our say in what was happening and was all very pleased with the final film. 

Below is our logging sheets that made capturing and editing much easier and quicker, we completed this for even shot we filmed.