Week 9 + 10

We wanted our opening to be gripping and engaging, and decided to film close ups of the unexplained carnage and cut quickly between them, creating an atmosphere of disorientation and panic within the audience. This is what Roland Barthes calls Enigma Codes, which are an element of the story that is not fully explained, and makes the audience question its meaning or significance. While conceptually our idea was strong, we didn’t anticipate how many shots were needed for this scene and our subsequent lack of footage resulted in an opening that felt disjointed, the indistinct and elongated shots completely destroying the tension I’d had hoped for.

We soon encountered another problem while assembling the film. We had planned our shot types for the dialogue-heavy scenes to be mostly two-shots, with us then cropping and zooming in on the actors faces instead of filming separate reaction shots as it would save time on set. However, while editing we found the quality of the image became grainy and pixelated. Feeling that the assembly cut didn’t match the potential we thought our ideas had, we decided to organise a day of reshoots where we’ll fix these two problems, as well as some more minor issues such as re-filming dialogue that was delivered unclearly.

Once our clips were assembled into a loose structure I began to start tinkering with the smaller aspects. There were instances where some of the shots had glaring errors but because it may have been the only take of a certain shot, I was forced to come up with creative solutions.  Throughout the initial editing process, I became more familiar with the various abilities of the effect palette, something that I feel has improved the final outcome of our film.

For instance, when a light was visible in an exterior shot of Jamie, I had to use the resize tool to crop out and exclude the light’s glare. Another example is the close up of Jamie’s shoe. It begins as blurry and gradually comes into focus, lingering for a while to emphasise his lifeless body. However, the camera then loses focus again as it holds on his foot, rendering the shot useless. To work around this, I found the frame where his shoe was most in-focus, and used the freeze frame tool to extend this frame for the rest of the clip. As there was no movement in the shot, I was able to use this technique without it being noticeable. I also had to use the stabliser on some shots where the camera shakes excessively, although the application of this tool is very straightforward and requires no skill.

By the end of these two weeks, I had a rough cut that acted as a template for our final vision, leaving lots of wriggle room in between edits to give us maximum flexibility and to not confine our options. I struggled to make much progress after this, as the missing chunks of our film we haven’t yet reshot make it impossible to know how certain sequences will fit together. This is especially noticeable for our opening scene, which as it stands is just a montage of stagnant objects that ends with Beth’s piercing screams, as our footage of Jamie’s bloody corpse is unusable for the most part.