The Big Edit

After four weeks of editing, we have finally finished our Film Noir - Hard Cash! This has been very time consuming and has become our main priority, and so we have not been posting regular blogs. Instead we have decided to make one big post about editing as a whole. Therefore this post will be a write up of our editing process.

Week 1 (20th February - 24th February)

We began by uploading all of our footage from the camera's and watching them all. We sorted out the good  shots from the bad and then put them in order of appearance in our movie. We also made sure that we were capable in using Final Cut on the Mac computers, for example, how to make our clips black and white and how to make scenes fade in and out. However, we found that this came quite naturally because of the previous experience we had acquired while making our Music Video for Example - Change the way you kissed me, at the end of our AS year. 

Although we had started editing, we had some filming left to do. We filmed on the 22nd February in school, for the cafeteria scenes. By this point, we had already edited scene one and two, including music. 

We edited both scenes by carefully watching each shot again, and selecting specific sections from the clips and placing them in the time line. We then had to make sure that the scene flowed together well and was easy to watch, to do this we had to remove some shots that we liked, or change the order of them slightly. For example, in scene two we changed the order of the kissing and the close up of the hand shot. This scene had a lot of different sections and angles, and so probably took us the longest to edit.

As we went along, we made each completed section (apart from the coloured Neo Noir scenes) black and white, which made it easier to see which scenes we had completed when we came back the next day. To make it black and white, we selected the whole scene, went to 'Effects', 'Video Filters', 'Image Control' and then 'Desaturate'.

Because we didn't have the footage for 3 and 4 uploaded, we went on to edit scene 5 straight away. This was complicated because of the various angles we'd filmed, and because of the timeline, it was easily edited to the right order, and we were able to make the scene smooth. We left a gap in the timeline so that scene 3 and 4 could be easily inserted later.

Week 2 (27th February - 2nd March)

We began this week by uploading the shots filmed on the Wednesday 22nd February and then edited scene 3 and 4 (which are set in the Cafeteria). We spent some time looking for music for scene 3, as it needed to build enough tension without seeming inappropriate or over the top. Once we found our music, we had to align it exactly with the fade to black at the end of the scene. This added great tension and made the scene appear more exciting and we think that it creates a more professional feel to the movie. For scene 4, we had some issues because one scene, the lines were said wrong, and where the lines were correct, the camera was shaking. We discussed the options of filming again, however, with the time constraints, this would not have been possible and so we decided to use the shaking shots because the other shots did not make sense. Because the first section of this scene was not to a high enough standard, we spent extra time making the rest of it appear professional, for example using a large range of shots and angles.
We then left another gap for scene 6, and edited scene 7. This was because scene 7 is much shorter, and we only had a limited time left to edit that week. This scene was in colour and so needed even less editing. However, we had to align the gun shot perfectly, which took some time, but however, the outcome was celebrated.

Week 3 (5th March - 9th March)

During this week, we went back to scene 6 to fill in the gap in our timeline. We spent a large amount of time editing due to the fact that these were two of the major scenes in our movie. At this point, we had no music for these scenes but we added them later (see week 4). During these scenes, we tried to use as many angles as possible to link with the Film Noir conventions.
Once we had completed scene 6, we watched our movie from scene 1 to 7 to see if it all flowed so far. Because our Film Noir was already 4 minutes long at this point, we decided to cut down the amount of angles and shots in the scenes we had already edited. Our main cuts were in scene 6, removing pauses and some angles as well as unimportant lines. We also removed quite a few angles from scene 2, which at that point was our longest scene.
Next we edited scene 8.We wanted to use a tilt up from shoes to head of Chloe (Evelyn Harold) as this is a common feature of Film Noir. However, the scene was incredibly long already, and we found that the tilt looked awkward and unprofessional. During this editing session, we removed multiply unimportant lines and it was almost a minute long, and it was quite boring in full. We think removing the unnecessary shots has made the scene much more professional and interesting to watch.
Lastly, we edited scene 9. This is where we had to have a voiceover of both Jack (Harry White) speaking on the phone and of Chloe (Evelyn Harold) speaking to Ben (Jack Chandler). We think this scene is another example of Film Noir conventions and are quite proud of this scene.

Week 4 (12th March - 16th March)

We began this week by filming on the 13th March. We filmed our very last short scenes and celebrated when we realised that our filming was over. We then went back into the editing sweet and uploaded the last scenes.
During week 4, we edited scene 10, our final scene 11 and the scenes we had just filmed. These scenes were quite vital to our movie and so we spend most of the week on just the two  and a half scenes, editing the flow, angles and music. Once these were finished, we concentrated an entire day to editing the music and sound. This is were we edited scene 6 and added a more dramatic undertone to the scene, as without music, it was not as dramatic as a death-scene should be! We sourced all of our music from www.freesound.org, this was really useful, and the music completed the movie.

Lastly, we added text, an intro and moving credits at the end to our movie. During one day of filming, we filmed each character doing a pose for the final credits of the movie. We put these together, and made them black and white to link with conventions. We then added jazz music over the top, which also links to the Film Noir conventions. We found that these final details really made our movie come together, and it made it look like a final, finished product.