Our final edit of our thriller film "Psycle"
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Saturday, 28 February 2009
The Deadline
Finally our film opening was complete!
Fatma and Yarohey had arrived earlier and had already begun creating the soundtrack as Carel and I was in lessons. At lunch when I arrived I saw that they had worked through most of it, they had created music, added Yarohey's voiceover and put sound effects in places. We then added in the sound of the footsteps, filled in some of the silences before the flashback and started to adjust the volume on some sound effects so they would fade out but by then lunch had ended and Fatma and Yarohey had to go to their lesson, however Carel had arrived and so we continued on without them. We made a few changes to what they had done, such as changing the sound effect when the title comes up to a more deep pitch sound, fading out the 'dreamy sync' noise because it was a monotone sound, so when it finished it ended suddenly and sounded weird. We also changed the last sentence of Yarohey's voiceover recording with another recording she had done because we thought that her voice sounded more stronger and effective than in the one we originally used. Then to fill in the gap at the beginning where there was silence we added in the sound of a piano playing that was same sound effect Fatma and Yarohey had used in the flashback.
It then felt like we had truly finished, so then we call over the teacher to watch through our opening. Just like us, she was very pleased with it and then told us to save it back in Final Cut Pro with the music added on, as we did this we also put in a small black block of colour before the opening with a addictive dissolve transition on it so when our opening begins, it slowly fades in. Then we saved it on our hard drive so then the teachers would then render it for us and upload it onto the blog. Having put it away and ticked off our group, we then left feeling extremely proud of our great film opening.
Fatma and Yarohey had arrived earlier and had already begun creating the soundtrack as Carel and I was in lessons. At lunch when I arrived I saw that they had worked through most of it, they had created music, added Yarohey's voiceover and put sound effects in places. We then added in the sound of the footsteps, filled in some of the silences before the flashback and started to adjust the volume on some sound effects so they would fade out but by then lunch had ended and Fatma and Yarohey had to go to their lesson, however Carel had arrived and so we continued on without them. We made a few changes to what they had done, such as changing the sound effect when the title comes up to a more deep pitch sound, fading out the 'dreamy sync' noise because it was a monotone sound, so when it finished it ended suddenly and sounded weird. We also changed the last sentence of Yarohey's voiceover recording with another recording she had done because we thought that her voice sounded more stronger and effective than in the one we originally used. Then to fill in the gap at the beginning where there was silence we added in the sound of a piano playing that was same sound effect Fatma and Yarohey had used in the flashback.
It then felt like we had truly finished, so then we call over the teacher to watch through our opening. Just like us, she was very pleased with it and then told us to save it back in Final Cut Pro with the music added on, as we did this we also put in a small black block of colour before the opening with a addictive dissolve transition on it so when our opening begins, it slowly fades in. Then we saved it on our hard drive so then the teachers would then render it for us and upload it onto the blog. Having put it away and ticked off our group, we then left feeling extremely proud of our great film opening.
Thiller Final - The Deadline!
The Deadline
With two days before the deadline we had no time to be indecisive about things. Our mission was to finish putting everything in order on the timeline as quick as we could. And with minor doubts in mind we completed that quite quickly after rearranging some clips too. After this we weren’t sure whether to add in the sound or the credits. We took a few minutes to decide which one to do first, then with the constant reminder of the soon to come deadline, we decided to do the credits/titles. We all agreed on the way the opening credits were going to appear. Then we needed to think of what you would expect from the opening credits rather than the ending one. We also didn’t want to keep repeating our names in the credits to we decided to mention our names in the one area that we specialised in most and of course which was relevant for an opening. Eventually after a very long time on browsing through the text software (separate from Final Cut) we also named our production F.N.C.Y after each of our initials on a play on the word FANCY. Nicole’s creative mind came up with that. We had the text scroll onto the screen from the side and pause, using a basic font to not complicate things. The credits appeared over the “flashback” scene whereas most people created a cut for each credit/title. Because it was over a desaturated clip we added in a flash effect so it was noticeable. The credits were placed in a different section of the screen each time, the only reason for this was so it didn’t overlay or interfere with the clip. But it looked good; there was a pattern to how the text was ordered. The most annoying thing was transferring the text from one software to the other and then redoing them every time we weren’t happy with it. We had to also render the clips before uploading it to Final Cut and then render it again so it worked. The last text added in was our film title “Psycle.” We used a background for this one so all focus was on the title, also as an introduction to the film. We also had issues on agreeing to what the background was actually going to be, but in the end we agreed on a smoky "vapour" effect, to represent the mysterious ways of the thriller genre. We managed to complete the titles by the end of the lesson but never managed to move on to sound. And considering it was our last lesson it was down to us to finish off the opening during our own time. We agreed to meet later that day and the next day just before the deadline. Unfortunately we were never all available at the same time so we all worked on it when we could. I, Carel and Nicole manage to reunite later into the day. We got very little done in this time due to having to switch Macs and being kicked out so the others got a chance to edit. We did manage to add some sound though such as bone cracking and the voice over. I also deleted all the diegetic sound except Nicole’s scream. Everything else was non diegetic. We waited about 40 minutes to access to another Mac but by then me and Nicole had to return to lesson leaving Carel to add sound.
The following day I and Yarohey planned to meet to finish off whatever it was that Carel had done. As she was running late I decided to start alone. I made a few changes to Carels sound and added in a few of my own, Yarohey then walked in and was very happy with the progress. From what Carel had done I added in the sound affect for the title at the end, whooshing noises for the flashback scene and lowered the breathing. While I was with her we tried to add more sound to the silent bits. Nicole soon then walked in and the three of us adjusted the volume control over most of the sounds. We were all browsing the sound to fill empty dull parts and to create more suspense or set a mood to experience the thrill of our film. Carel then walked in and took over, she was proud of us as we were of her. I and Yarohey had to leave to get to lesson but from what Carel has told me, we still manage to finish it before the deadline and they made minor adjustments with an excellent ending result.
With two days before the deadline we had no time to be indecisive about things. Our mission was to finish putting everything in order on the timeline as quick as we could. And with minor doubts in mind we completed that quite quickly after rearranging some clips too. After this we weren’t sure whether to add in the sound or the credits. We took a few minutes to decide which one to do first, then with the constant reminder of the soon to come deadline, we decided to do the credits/titles. We all agreed on the way the opening credits were going to appear. Then we needed to think of what you would expect from the opening credits rather than the ending one. We also didn’t want to keep repeating our names in the credits to we decided to mention our names in the one area that we specialised in most and of course which was relevant for an opening. Eventually after a very long time on browsing through the text software (separate from Final Cut) we also named our production F.N.C.Y after each of our initials on a play on the word FANCY. Nicole’s creative mind came up with that. We had the text scroll onto the screen from the side and pause, using a basic font to not complicate things. The credits appeared over the “flashback” scene whereas most people created a cut for each credit/title. Because it was over a desaturated clip we added in a flash effect so it was noticeable. The credits were placed in a different section of the screen each time, the only reason for this was so it didn’t overlay or interfere with the clip. But it looked good; there was a pattern to how the text was ordered. The most annoying thing was transferring the text from one software to the other and then redoing them every time we weren’t happy with it. We had to also render the clips before uploading it to Final Cut and then render it again so it worked. The last text added in was our film title “Psycle.” We used a background for this one so all focus was on the title, also as an introduction to the film. We also had issues on agreeing to what the background was actually going to be, but in the end we agreed on a smoky "vapour" effect, to represent the mysterious ways of the thriller genre. We managed to complete the titles by the end of the lesson but never managed to move on to sound. And considering it was our last lesson it was down to us to finish off the opening during our own time. We agreed to meet later that day and the next day just before the deadline. Unfortunately we were never all available at the same time so we all worked on it when we could. I, Carel and Nicole manage to reunite later into the day. We got very little done in this time due to having to switch Macs and being kicked out so the others got a chance to edit. We did manage to add some sound though such as bone cracking and the voice over. I also deleted all the diegetic sound except Nicole’s scream. Everything else was non diegetic. We waited about 40 minutes to access to another Mac but by then me and Nicole had to return to lesson leaving Carel to add sound.
The following day I and Yarohey planned to meet to finish off whatever it was that Carel had done. As she was running late I decided to start alone. I made a few changes to Carels sound and added in a few of my own, Yarohey then walked in and was very happy with the progress. From what Carel had done I added in the sound affect for the title at the end, whooshing noises for the flashback scene and lowered the breathing. While I was with her we tried to add more sound to the silent bits. Nicole soon then walked in and the three of us adjusted the volume control over most of the sounds. We were all browsing the sound to fill empty dull parts and to create more suspense or set a mood to experience the thrill of our film. Carel then walked in and took over, she was proud of us as we were of her. I and Yarohey had to leave to get to lesson but from what Carel has told me, we still manage to finish it before the deadline and they made minor adjustments with an excellent ending result.
Editing 3 (adding credits)
This lesson was our last so we set off working straight away. We added in the rest of the clips to the timeline and all was left was to do was to edit the desaturated flashback, we needed to have the amount of saturation we decreased by the same in each clip so there wouldn't be a obvious noticeable change in colour. To do this we added up the total number of clips used in the flashback, divided 100 by that amount and took down the desaturation level by this for each clip. This took some time because we had some problems, at first we clicked onto each clip and changed the levels like we had planned but then halfway through we played through what we had done and realized that when we changed the settings for a clip, it changed the desaturation levels for all the clips we had previously done, so then we had to go through them again changing the settings but this time double clicking on each clip to make sure that it only selected the one at a time. We watched the flashback again but we didn't like it because it changed into colour too fast, so when it came out the flashback there was hardly a colour difference, so then we had to go through each clip again to change the levels. When this was done we moved on to adding the credits.
To add credits we had to use Live Type, we chose the font, colour, size, effects and positioned the credits within the frame, it was important that we done this right so that the credits were noticeable and readable but also didn't attract attention away from what is happening in the shot or block the view. We then created the title frame, this took longer than the credits because we looked through all the backgrounds and we couldn't decide which one was suited to our film opening. At the end of the lesson we finally chose a smokey grey background called 'Vapour', put the same effect on the title 'PHYSCLE' that we used on the credits and then added it to the end of our opening.
Me, Carel and Fatma had a spare hour free after lunch and we re-grouped to start creating sound. We opened Sound Track Pro and began looking through sound effects and was about to get started trying out different sounds when the teacher came in and made all the groups that were working in the room leave to make space other groups who needed to edit too. After 40mins of waiting for them to finish we finally were let into a different room but due to the amount of noise people were making we couldn't hear the sound coming from the Mac's and there wasn't enough headphones holes for the us three to plug in headphones instead, so then we had to move rooms again. When we finally got everything set up and open Sound Track Pro again, Fatma and I had go to our lesson and left Carel to go through sounds by herself.
To add credits we had to use Live Type, we chose the font, colour, size, effects and positioned the credits within the frame, it was important that we done this right so that the credits were noticeable and readable but also didn't attract attention away from what is happening in the shot or block the view. We then created the title frame, this took longer than the credits because we looked through all the backgrounds and we couldn't decide which one was suited to our film opening. At the end of the lesson we finally chose a smokey grey background called 'Vapour', put the same effect on the title 'PHYSCLE' that we used on the credits and then added it to the end of our opening.
Me, Carel and Fatma had a spare hour free after lunch and we re-grouped to start creating sound. We opened Sound Track Pro and began looking through sound effects and was about to get started trying out different sounds when the teacher came in and made all the groups that were working in the room leave to make space other groups who needed to edit too. After 40mins of waiting for them to finish we finally were let into a different room but due to the amount of noise people were making we couldn't hear the sound coming from the Mac's and there wasn't enough headphones holes for the us three to plug in headphones instead, so then we had to move rooms again. When we finally got everything set up and open Sound Track Pro again, Fatma and I had go to our lesson and left Carel to go through sounds by herself.
Last lessons
Next lesson-Monday
We worked on trying to add the clips we logged and captured after half term onto the timeline. The idea was to complete as much as we could, because we only had a few lesson left. We put on transitions between clips to mark the passing of time. we spent the remainder of the lesson trying to put as much on the timeline as possible.
Thursday- On this day we worked out how to apply more effects onto the timeline. We used additive dissolves rather than fades, as we thought it would look better. We used saturation in the flashback to mark how far/close we were in the flashback towards getting back to the future. Also, we cropped areas in a clip that were irrelevant, and only appeared due to mistakes. We spent our 3 hour lesson completing what was left for logging and capturing. Once everything was on the timeline we then started including credits. We used image wire to complete the text on, deciding on size, font, colour, positioning, the background and effect. We finished the credits just before the lesson was finished. Carel, and Fatma used their 1 hour of their 3 hour break to complete more work. They added sound, and the narrative voice over.
Friday- Fatma, and I came in early to complete what was left. We finished off the sound, adding more background sound and footsteps. Nicole and Carel soon joined us at lunch where we completed the rest and finished the opening title sequence. Fatma, and I left for our next lessons, and left the rest of our group to add finishing touches, and present it to the teacher.
We worked on trying to add the clips we logged and captured after half term onto the timeline. The idea was to complete as much as we could, because we only had a few lesson left. We put on transitions between clips to mark the passing of time. we spent the remainder of the lesson trying to put as much on the timeline as possible.
Thursday- On this day we worked out how to apply more effects onto the timeline. We used additive dissolves rather than fades, as we thought it would look better. We used saturation in the flashback to mark how far/close we were in the flashback towards getting back to the future. Also, we cropped areas in a clip that were irrelevant, and only appeared due to mistakes. We spent our 3 hour lesson completing what was left for logging and capturing. Once everything was on the timeline we then started including credits. We used image wire to complete the text on, deciding on size, font, colour, positioning, the background and effect. We finished the credits just before the lesson was finished. Carel, and Fatma used their 1 hour of their 3 hour break to complete more work. They added sound, and the narrative voice over.
Friday- Fatma, and I came in early to complete what was left. We finished off the sound, adding more background sound and footsteps. Nicole and Carel soon joined us at lunch where we completed the rest and finished the opening title sequence. Fatma, and I left for our next lessons, and left the rest of our group to add finishing touches, and present it to the teacher.
Friday, 27 February 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Half Term and 23rd Feb
Me Carel and Yarohey came into workshop during the half term to finish filming. We had half the film to record. We thought its best we got straight to the point, film everything regardless and then edited it letter on. We started off by filming Carels bare feet running down the stairs. I instructed her to gently jog down the steps as it was too difficult to keep in time with her feet, also the tripod had restricted movement. We attempted this shot a few times to make sure we had a variety to choose from when editing. Also to avoid public distractions. We also filmed Carel running up the Canal from many different angels, one of which involved me climbing a tree to get a high angel although it didn’t really look that way. We then decided to give Carel the camera to film a POV shot of her running to the tree and examining it. She took a while to do it, but she got a lot of useful footage that we could work with. The last shot we took was of Carel “climbing” a tree. She needed two people to help her up but as there was only three if us in total we had nobody to film. There was no way we could offered to miss this shot, there were too many that we were forced to leave out because of unexpected circumstances. Our only open was to set the tripod up facing what we wanted to record and press record hoping me and Yarohey weren’t in the shot (which we were). We knew straight away that our continuity was going to be poor because Carel was wearing one shoe and one sock because she couldn’t “climb” barefoot. Once we filmed as much as we could we headed back to college ready to log and capture. We had a few issues doing this so we decided to leave, but in the end we got it all uploaded onto the Macs ready for editing next lesson.
The next lesson (23.02.2009) We got to editing just like we planned. Based on our storyboard we arranged the footage onto the timeline. We also added transitions and found out how adjust the desaturation on each clip. We had a flash transition to show a “flashback” and desaturated clips to show the past slowing moving to the present (full saturation). This had to be done correctly next lesson when we have more time. We realised we had one more lesson to add all the effects, transitions, sound, voice over and credits. Next lesson it going to be much stressed.
The next lesson (23.02.2009) We got to editing just like we planned. Based on our storyboard we arranged the footage onto the timeline. We also added transitions and found out how adjust the desaturation on each clip. We had a flash transition to show a “flashback” and desaturated clips to show the past slowing moving to the present (full saturation). This had to be done correctly next lesson when we have more time. We realised we had one more lesson to add all the effects, transitions, sound, voice over and credits. Next lesson it going to be much stressed.
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