Film School Session - Editing

In today’s session of film school, Kate Coggins, a film editor who has been in the business for quite some time and has worked with many production companies including Vertigo Films, visited us to help us with our trailers. She has also edited ‘Tower Block’ 2012. Former E4 ‘Skins’ editor Simon Brasse also attended the session. They both spoke to us and gave us great advice on how to edit our trailers.  Kate suggested adding some after affects, to make our trailers more effective. She also said that it would be best if we did a bit more filming to make viewers more aware of the background story. It was a really helpful session and will put into action all the advice given.

Filming Day 2

Today we went out to shoot the interior scenes involved in our trailer. Using news paper clippings and photographs, I was able to create a board of "evidence" on our kills bedroom wall. We then went on to highlight and cross out sections, to emphasise it is being used by the killer to track down the gang. We experimented with several shot types but decided over the shoulder and close ups was most suiting. We shot from these angles as we did not want to reveal much about our killer. You can only see his back in the shot and his hoody. This creates suspense to the viewers. We also practised the in and out of focus technique we learnt prior production.

Filming Day 1

My group and I went out to  shoot at the near by estate. We had shots of him walking through the estate from different angles such as over head, mid shot. close up etc. However, due to filming in the day time the lighting was way to bright to convey the slasher horror feel we were hoping to accomplish. During the editing process we might be able to play around with the saturation and contrast to create this atmosphere.

We plan to re shoot some of the shots due to not using a tripod when shooting. Some of the clips were very shaky and not usable for our trailer.

Magazine Front Cover

Using Photoshop I was able to create a magazine cover from scratch. I gained inspiration from "Empire Magazine" one of the most popular movie magazines in the country. I downloaded several fronts from dafont.com. I made sure that there was a variety within text size, making the most important aspects of the cover larger. The cover features the standard conventions and connotations such a the masthead, anchorage text, strap line etc.

The target audience for this version of our cover are the older generation who have an high interest in movie magazines. The text is plain, but gets the messages across. I then went on to take a photograph of our main character. He is seen wearing his signature mask that he uses to hide his identity when killing. During the editing process I simply lowered the saturation and increased the contrast to create a eerie tone.

Shot Ideas

1.     Protagonist sitting in interview room with police officer

2.     Hand shaking as she moves it towards the cup

3.     Tracking shot from cup to mouth

4.     Police officer pushing record button

5.      Mid shot of police officer

6.     Establishing shot of grave yard – from an outsiders view looking through gates

7.     Over the shoulder shot of her placing flowers onto grave

8.     Mid shot of her in the interview room

9.     Establishing shot of her and her ex boyfriend holding hands (the happy times)

10. Her talking to a work colleague as he walks her home to her door

11.  Close up of