Evaluation Question 7

With our preliminary task, we were very much experimenting with our use of sound and effects. We used one of the schools tracks as our sound, simply placing it into the time line, on top of our footage without too much thought. However, in our final piece I went to a studio, recorded my own sounds and mixed it so it would fit our final edit exactly. I recorded myself singing, laughing and screaming as well as making sound effects such as scratching metal and screwing up paper.

The software I used to do this was 'Pro Tools', this is a professional software that allowed me to be creative with my mixing. I spent two days in the studio to come out with the final product, I feel that the way I used sound and edited improved dramatically from the preliminary task. After recording each sound, I took the front seat in cutting each track down and then placing it appropriately on the time line. I had to make sure I cut each track precisely so it matched the video exactly. This job was made harder by using montage editing as the cutting rate was so fast.

In our preliminary task we played with the effects that we may want to use in our final piece. After looking at opening sequences such as 'Vertigo'(Alfred Hitchcock,1958), we thought that a colour wash of red on our piece might work. To create with wash we used an effect called 'Channel Mixer'. The use of red brought strong iconography from our chosen genre and gave a more sinister look to our footage.

After doing more research we decided to choose a black and white colour scheme. We liked the idea of our footage looking old and distressed. We wanted to use symbolism of red though. The text in our opening sequence is blood red and we used an effect called 'Colour Pass' in some of our footage; this allowed us to pick out the colour red whilst still having the majority of the image in black and white.

For our preliminary task we used continuity editing. We experimented with a mixture of angles and shot sizes to achieve a variety of perspectives in our piece to make it more interesting. We found that when editing our footage, each clip had to be cut at exactly the right point so that the line of action in each clip did not overlap. Pauses between cuts had to be removed to give the illusion that are queues were one continuous dialogue. Because of errors in using the camera incorrectly (not pressing record!) and a vast amount of wardrobe changes across a few days, we had to re-shoot some of our footage. Everything in each shot had to match up to the next e.g. the background, the hair, the costume.

Whilst researching film openings, we found 'Se7en'(David Fincher, 1995). We loved the use of montage editing and the use of close ups in the piece. We wanted to use our opening sequence as a window into our character's twisted mind; we thought montage editing would help us achieve this. With montage editing we had to do considerably more storyboarding. Our preliminary task was around a minute long with very little different shots when compared with our final piece. Because we used montage editing our cutting rate was fast. This meant we had to draw several pages of storyboards. Our storyboards were much more detailed the second time round. Not all of our initial ideas could be used in our final piece though. One of our original ideas was to show a mirror smashing on the floor; for safety reasons this was not possible.