Editing Task:

We started the first day of editing by all sitting and looking through all of our shots that we had done. We set them all in the right order to get ourselves more organised and easier to when we were going to have to cut our takes. We also marked the takes as good, average and bad, we did this to see which takes were the best and which ones we were going to use in our thriller.

We chose shots with the best visual takes, and the takes which were performed best by the actors; we wanted these to show that our thriller was going to look like a real opening sequence to a Hollywood thriller. The reason to why we picked the takes with the clearest visual affects and the best acting performances was because we wanted the audience to really feel as if they were there in the room with them. We wanted them to feel a cold and off the edge of their chair sensation, we wanted the audience to be fearful of the three Chechnyan terrorists.

We used continuity editing, to bring suspense and tension for the audience, for example by zooming in on the spies face to an eye line match of one of the guns that the terrorist was holding in his hand, showing that he was in power with this dangerous weapon. We also used shot reverse shot with the spy and the head terrorist, with this we could have a high angle shot from the perspective of the terrorist looking at the spy to show that he was more dominant and more in power during this situation of time. With all this we wanted to create the tension and suspense, making the audience feel nervous and concerned for the spies life.

Our thriller was quite slow paced throughout most of the time, because most of it was the terrorists torturing or shouting at the spy, but we did speed up the pace towards the end of the thriller, when the terrorist puts a gun to the spies’ daughters head. We sped up the pace of the editing, with the intension of making the audience feel more on the edge and frightened of what the terrorists were going to do the child.

We wanted to create the perspective that the terrorists were the villains in our thriller because they were torturing the innocent spy. We also wanted the terrorists to appear stronger than the spy, and we showed this by camera work and by them torturing the spy. We used binary opposition for the spy who was weaker in this situation but was still the hero, because he serves his country and tries to save peoples lives. We did this because we wanted to make to broaden the amount of people who would want to see our thriller; it was a mainstream thriller.

We used sound affects, to create a bigger impact of the mood we wanted to set for the audience. For example we used sound affects for when the terrorists were punching the spy or drowning him in water. We also used a sound affect to make the door sound squeaky, just to give that emphasis of a cold feel on the audience. We also used a sound of a generator in the background just to add the affect that it was an abandoned warehouse.

I found final cut pro a bit of a challenge to start with, but when I got the hang of it was rather easy. For example when doing the sound it was too complicated, we just had to listen to the sound that was more clear, and chose that to put in the thriller. The whole process of taking a small scene of one take was difficult to start with, but it was quite easy once you got the hand of it.

There are a few things that I would want to change and re shoot in the thriller, for example I would want to re shoot all the scenes where the terrorist is punching the spy. The reason for this is, is that the punches don’t seem very realistic, and it just makes the thriller seem more of an amateur film, when we want it to look more professional.

I did enjoy my experience with editing, it was a long and complicated process, but I did enjoy it. I especially liked the parts of editing where we had to choose the best takes that we did for the scene. I found it rather interesting how the takes could be so different even though the camera was still in the same place and all the props were the same, it was just sometimes it was more clear on camera on some takes, and others as not as clear.

I enjoyed working as a team; it really helped with the editing, by getting different personal opinions and seeing a different perspective of the thriller. We all did different roles when we edited, we rotated to do different things, so that we all got an experience of the whole process of editing, and we also felt that it would be more efficient this way, to speed up the editing process.

I feel that I’ve learnt a lot about filmmaking from this experience, and I am now appreciative of the people who are behind the scenes in a high concept films, because all the directing, editing, sound and lighting takes a lot of work and effort to set up. We filmed all day for only a two minute sequence, and that is why I now appreciate the people who are behind the camera in a movie, I feel that I now understand how hard and tough the process is of bringing a film to together.