Thursday 26/02/2009 and Friday 27/02/2009

During Thursday's lesson, we finished editing the clips onto the timeline. We had a minor complication due to the order of the clips, but once we realised that section would work better than it was if we swapped two of the clips around, we could finish it with relative ease. Adding the titles the hardest part of the editing process on Thursday morning, as Final Cut Pro didn't have the effect we wanted, so we had to use another program (Live Type possibly?). It then took us a long time to decide which of the effects on the new program was better for what we wanted, which font we should use, where the writing should be placed, etc. However, once we were all agreed on a font, placing, effect, etc it was a simple matter of writing the right titles and adding them to the timeline. We ran into a little trouble every now-and-then, as something would go slightly wrong with the title and we'd have to redo it, but it basically worked. Adding the main title of the film was the hardest part, although we did it first. It was more difficult than the other titles, because we added an effect to the background, as it wasn't going to be on top of a clip. This meant the extra added choice of what effect to use. Eventually, we agreed on a smokey "vapour" effect, to accentuate the chilling vibe of thrillers. Completing the editing and titles took us to the end of the lesson; however, we all agreed that we had to do more work on it before Friday in order to insure it's completion by the deadline. Each of us had things to do at lunchtime, so we packed up and left for lunch. After lunch, Fatma, Nicole and I met up again in the editing suite to do more work. Yarohey was in a lesson, so she couldn't join us. I arrived a little later than the others, as I had to talk to someone before joining them. By the time I got there (5-10 minutes after the end of lunch break) Nicole and Fatma were in Soundtrack Pro, and flicking through some of the sound effects. We spent about 30-45 minutes in the editing suite before we (amongst other groups) were asked to give up our computers to let some of the other groups have a chance to do some editing. During this time, we found a particularly good "bone cracking" sound, along with a couple of others. 30-45 minutes after we'd left, we were allowed back into the editing suite to continue; however, about 10 minutes in, Fatma and Nicole both realised they had to go to their lessons, so I was left to continue until 4pm, at which point I had to leave for a previous appointment. During my time in the editing suite, I found two eerie ambient sounds, a crow's call, a sound that was very much like the branch straining under the sudden weight being dropped, some rapid breathing, etc. When I finished at 4pm, it was sounding quite good, but still needed a bit of work.

On Friday, both Nicole and I had morning lessons, however Fatma and Yarohey did not, so they came into college in the morning to work on the sound some more while Nicole and I were in our lessons. I had to miss the lunch hour when they were editing the sound, as I had to attend a meeting of sorts to help orgainse something else; however, I went up as soon as I could and found Nicole, Fatma and Yarohey looking pleased with themselves, editing the sound. They'd added a little more to it, and it was sounding a lot better. Nicole and I stayed on while Fatma and Yarohey went to their afternoon lessons. During our 2-ish hours, Nicole and I added an extra sound effect at the end, a piano sound near the beginning and changed a little of Yarohey's voice-over (just the last line). We watched it through a few times, as we could still hear something "wrong" with it, and discovered that it was the "dreamy" effect that they'd added during the morning/lunch hour. It sounded a little odd because of the way it ended, so we faded it out instead and it sounded much better. By 2:25pm, we had finished it, and were almost glowing with pride. Our teacher, Mary, came to watch it, said it was really good, and told us to save it as a file with our names and "Final" in the title, without rendering it to a video file, as they would compress it and add it to our blog for us. So we saved it, ticked off our group on the "Finished" sheet, and left, having finally completed our coursework to the absolute best of all four of our abilities.