Construction Work

Adobe Premiere Screenshots

#1After inserting our camera’s memory card we were able to view our shots individually via the Mac’s ‘Finder’. Each shot we filmed was named with a bundle of letters and numbers for example MV1_7119.MOV.

So in order to categorize our shots with ease and understand what each shot is, we renamed each of them with suitable titles; such as ‘Window Close up.mov.’

#2After renaming each of our

shots with suitable titles, we began to colour code them.

o Red meaning there is a problem with the shot.

o Orange meaning its not the best, but we could use it if needed.

o Green meaning it’s a good shot that will be included in the sequence.

This system was extremely helpful when it came to structuring the

rough cut of our sequence.

We put all of the shots in groups followings its colour, so when it came to importing our clips into

premiere it was very simple.

After importing our shots we began to try structure the narrative, following from our storyboard. Unfortunately, a lot of shots did not follow within the narrative and also a lot of mistakes were made when filming, with the exposure being off and the tripod not being used properly.

After making light of the mistakes we quickly scheduled a re-shoot.

We filmed on 22nd of November and reshot after 2 media lessons, on the 5th December.

This shot was clearly too dark and was positioned badly for a character introduction.

Our location shots were not in-focus and did not have smooth movement when panning.

We re-shot almost everything from the previous shoot, producing many location shots and new character introductions.

This time we focused almost entirely on the image and how it looks, for example setting the white balance and exposure correctly and making sure every shot is in focus and has decent lighting for the details being shot. Me and Harrison (the editors) helped the Director and Cameraman with these settings.

We waited till the evening to re-shoot our sequence following a typical convention of thriller movies always being shot at night, as it creates an unpredictable atmosphere and criminal behavior is more likely to happen at this time.

After the re-shoot we began structuring our sequence once again with all the new and re-done clips. To support the narrative and the general storyline of our sequence we

needed non diagetic audio…

Before we initially filmed for our sequence we planned that the narrative of the OTS will be portrayed through non-diagetic audio. We agreed on radio transmissions of reporters and presenters discussing the murders and crime around the area - which we would record ourselves. We also agreed to record a conversation between the two detectives, making the release of an important character evident to the audience.

So each of us wrote out a short script for ourselves and we booked a time to use the recording room in the edit suite.

I was in charge of the initial recording working with the actual voice recorder which the mic was plugged into. I made sure the person being recorded was ready before I clicked record and I wrote down the number of each of our recordings, making it easier to find our files when importing from the recorders memory card.

When recording this audio we also gathered sound effects and music online which would suit with our sequence.

The music had to be non-copyrighted and create the mysterious atmosphere we planned for, incompetech.com was perfect for this.

The music we downloaded was named ‘The House of Leaves’ and it defiantly catches the attention of our audience with its long high notes and deep dark bass hits.

The sound effects we gathered were from the colleges SFX folder.Each sound effect emphasized the genre and narrative within the sequence - with radio transmissions, police sirens, phone dial tones and static noise.

We also downloaded SFX to overlap the diagetic audio from certain clips, to make it obvious what is happening. For example audio of footsteps, a door being unlocked, seagulls by the sea and the waves crashing against the pier.

We did this by merely placing the audio directly below the running clip and moving it in place to sync with the motion of walking/key turning.

With audio recordings of us (slide 7) and the remaining SFX, I imported them to my personal memory stick and edited them together at home.I used Logic 9 Pro to do this.

This was very simple to do with the effects and recordings ready, it was merely about collating and layering them together.

I first imported all the audio I had to work with, creating many audio slots.

It was then the case of finalizing it..

I cut and pasted the beginnings of many files and put then together to create a quick 120bpm stutter, as if there was trouble with the radio signal. I then inserted some fades, which is evident from the picture above with the orange and white ramps upon the audio files. The orange ramps represent a slow down fade creating that effect of an error in the radio once again, and the white ramps indicate your standard fade out – this was needed when voices weren't clear due to being over layered.

I layered all the audio fairly quickly and removed audio files that did not seem to work.

To finish the edit I added additional effects to certain clips making it obvious that its a radio transmission and reporters talking.

A quick EQ gave audio clips that tinny fuzzy effect heard from radios, this was done by simply removing all the bass developed in the voices, and a slight boost of reverb created

emphasis on clips that needed it for example ‘breaking news!’ and ‘do not approach!’

The radio edit (audio 3) I produced was only 30seconds long and we decided we wanted it through out the entire sequence. In order to do this I cut it up and placed it around the whole timeline, to fill gaps that weren't already filled by the music I inserted sound effects that we had ready incase they were needed. Such as more radio tuning and heavy thunder recordings.

All of audio clips/SFX/music worked well with each other after we inserted crossfades, to make the audio of the entire sequence flow and seem more professional. To do this I typed in ‘fade’ in to the effects window and dragged the fade effect of ‘crossfade’ to the end of which clip needed it.

The crossfades are seen at the end of clips as a purple tinted box (seen below)

*Gaps filled with extra sound effect files.

Radio edit

At this point we had, more or less, created our rough cut. All what was left to do was the title frames, grading of our shots

and add special effects.

We waited to do this last, particularly grading and adding special effects as it slows down the college computers and we

didn’t want our work to freeze and get lost.

We got our sequence reviewed by three teachers, our two media teachers and the technician. They all agreed that it needed grading and titles included but they also stated how the narrative isn't particularly clear. Our teacher Jeremy suggested to have extreme close ups of the character who is being released spread along the timeline, creating a mysterious introduction and a build up to the characters full identity. It would also help extend the duration of our work as apparently ours was shorter the required time. We agreed to do this and got filming immediately in the lesson in an empty room.

I filmed Harry several times focusing on his eyes and him fidgeting, hoping to present his characters mental illness and follow the convention of thriller being introduced all in a dodgy, spooky manner.

Unfortunately some group members didn’t like the shots we produced so they went and shot it again with Tom taking the role of Harry’s.

We inserted the memory card from the camera and imported the clips we filmed into Premiere, then spread them out around the timeline just how our teacher suggested.

When editing this frame I took snippets from each of the close ups we filmed of tom, cut the duration to roughly a second each and then altered the speed of each clip. Which concluded with a fast paced, panicky and slightly dodgy introduction of the character, which is what we wanted – to make it obvious that the character suffers from some sort of mental illness and needs to locked behind a secure door.

When creating this we wanted the still frame to have some sort of filter or effect when displaying the title, after a quick mess around with the ‘fast colour corrector’ effect we landed a gruesome dark green filter. We decided to keep this filter among the first few opening clips, on the stills and moving clips. It portrays the unpredictable elements throughout our narrative and also follows the genre of psychological thriller with visuals that the audience are not used to.

We had the idea to have our first title shots as still frames from the moving clip before. Very common in action films where a close up of a character would freeze and their name would be displayed.

In order to create the initial freeze frame it was as simple as right clicking on the clip you wanted to hold and selecting ‘Frame Hold Options’. A window appears and selecting ‘Hold on’ will make the entire clip a freeze frame from where the timeline header was when selecting Frame hold option.We copy and pasted the original clip and placed it before and after the freeze frame. So its portrayed as a freeze frame.

To add a title its as simple as selecting ‘Title’ upon the top toolbar and clicking ‘Default still’.

This brings up a new window allowing you to type out what you want, edit it the font and style of it and place it where-ever around the frame.

The font we used was called ‘Disturbia’ and we downloaded this from www.dafont.com We wanted a distorted and slightly grungy font as it follows with the exterior of the sequence as a whole and we liked how it was used in the sequence for ‘Se7en’.

Our title inserts were presented in three ways…Layered over a freeze frame (slide 17)Inserted simply with a black surfacePlaced over a running shot.

These didn’t take much technical knowledge, to have a title layer over a running clip its done by simply placing the title frame above the clip.

I graded every clip in the timeline using the ‘Fast Color Corrector’ effect.

This was the same effect I used to create the green tinting on our opening title shots, but we focused on altering the lighting and contrast with the remaining clips.

To give each shot a gloomy contrast but keeping the details visible, me and harry only altered the input and output levels of the greys, whites and blacks.

Taking inspiration from Se7en’s OTS once again, I wanted to create a quick distorted effect among certain clips, creating that thrill seen in thriller movies indicating the genre of our OTS.I first did this here…

I began this effect with extreme close ups of Tom, where I edited short clips of him and sped up the duration of each (slide 16). I went back to this effect of tom and inserted bizarre, vivid effects upon any random short clip in the middle of the collation. I then edited some more by zooming in closer to Toms face. The end result was a glitchy, grungy introduction to our character, looking similar to when old TV’s receive bad reception with the picture lagging and losing imagery.

I then continued this effect the second time with a simple location shot…The location shot was included in our sequence but it seemed fairly plain and boring for the audience so I thought editing it would be the right thing.

I copied and pasted many versions of the original location shot and cut them all down to extremely short sizing, just how I did it with Tom’s close ups. I then placed them all together and edited random selections in the middle of the grouping. I edited it with a blue tinting following the same effect we were familiar with; ‘fast color corrector’, this was done simply by clicking over the colour blue on the effect’s colour wheel and exceeding the black colouring of the clip.

To finish and successfully portray the glitchy effect, I included another effect among random sections called ‘Skrew’. After finding it in the ‘Distortion’ folder in Premiere’s effects panel. This allowed me to mirror the shot by the bottom right corner, creating a bizarre, distorted and gloomy image.

The Skrew effect

When working with the timeline and collating our shots I realized how easy some effects were to produce. By placing one shot on the layer above so that each clip overlap each other and then merely selecting a blend under the ‘Opacity’ option, the two clips merge with each other. This creates some artistic imagery. I used this twice in our sequence and it worked great! I selected the ‘Overlay’ option, as this worked best.

Original footage

Titles

Different footage (blending with original)

In our sequence we used the standard fade in and out too many times, it was effective but it needed something more quicker and artistic. Our teacher suggested a ‘Film Burn’ effect. I had a rough idea what this effect looked like as I had seen it used in films before, where the imagery would be overcrowded by bright blurs and distorted slightly as it transitions to the next shot/scene. I made a quick Google search of ‘free film burns’ and the first search result was perfect.

The link lead me to a YouTube video displaying the effect and it was decent, I knew it would fit well within our sequence. The video also had the download link in its description, so after a quick download and import into premiere, I was structuring the transition between our clips.

We exported our finished sequence to Vimeo, YouTube and to a DVD format.