Editing Day Three

Our movie trailer has now finally started to come together. We have completed editing the first five scenes of the trailer and added music underneath. We chose some music that has a ghostly feel to it, to give the impression that the characters are being watched. We added the establishing shot to the start of the trailer. We decided against using the motionless wide/long shot and instead, we used, the shot that was filmed on the Dutch tilt and then tilted up to reveal the trees surrounding the school. We used this because in many horror films they set their films in or around a forest; it also gives the impression that the school is isolated and that even if you do get out, there is not where for you to escape to.

For the rest of the lesson, I edited the reminder of the trailer together. For the slower scenes where we build up tension; I added a heartbeat sound effect that has increased bass effect applied to it. This was used to give these scenes a more of a professional edge and make the audience wonder whose heart is beating. In addition, for the scene where we see the killer walking down a corridor, I added a bang sound effect as the camera reaches the doors and we have a polarisation. I used this again to add a more professional edge to the scene and also make the audience jump at this sudden loud noise. I then added some polarisations after and in between some scenes that were in slow motion. I chose to do this because; we needed to incorporate some more of the typical conventions that can be found in a high school horror trailer.

The main problem that we faced today was that we had to change the character of Gene Taylor (the teacher) to a woman (now called Jean Taylor). The reason for this drastic change is because we did not have the time to find a male actor to portray this character, meaning we had to use our friend Cory to play this part. However, we decided not film her face; this was because during the scenes that involve Jean, she is not the main focus of the shot. It’s actually her book. So by cutting her face off, it draws attention towards the book and makes the audience question why this book is so important? Moreover, the sex of this key character is not important the audience will still be able to speculate that Jean is the killer as we never see the killers face and create a level of mystery about her.

Editing/ Filming Day Four

Today, Sarah and I decided that before we edited our trailer anymore, we would watch with music what we had so far. Once we had done that, we then watched some trailers for other high school horror films and compared ours to them. We looked at the trailers for the films 'Scream' and 'Prom Night’. After viewing both, we came to the conclusion that we needed to add more scenes, towards the end of the trailer that showed the panic and fear of the characters. Furthermore, we also concluded that we needed to add more bloody scenes and scenes that were more mysterious to give the trailer that dark and almost deadly feel to it. Moreover, we felt that we needed to start our trailer with an establishing shot of the school; this convention is used in almost every trailer regardless of genre. We added this so the audience would not be confused to where our story is set, even thought it does become clear after the written text appears on the screen.
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So after we had decided how to improve our trailer, we went back to filming. We started with the establishing shot. For this shot, we did a long establishing shot on a Dutch tilt and tilted the camera upwards to allow the audience to see the black branches next to the school. We then filmed an additional ending to our trailer. For this, we decided that it would be more effective and even scarier if we use jump-cuts to show Mary-Alice being thrown against a wall, and then cut to her crawling along the floor and finally cutting to her having her leg grabbed as she tries to escape. We hoped that we could achieve this effect during the editing process. Moreover, to add another layer of eeriness to this ending, I would edit her screaming as her leg is grabbed and then cut to the title screen and have the scream fade away as the titles do. (UPDATE: 11^th February 2010: We decided to remove this scene from the final edit. This was because we thought that the trailer had moved to far away from our original ending. In addition, we believed that it left the audience with the feel of ‘What was that?’ rather than ‘that looks interesting!’)
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After that, we then filmed the character Robin, also being thrown against a wall. After we watched it back, we realised that you could not see Sarah's face, so we decided that we could also film Sarah falling down some stairs, as the audience will be oblivious to the fact that it is played by the same person. After that we went looking to find a classroom where we could create our mysterious lighting effects. For this, we decided that we needed to find a door that included windows so we could show the light coming from outside the room shining into it. After we found one, we had this idea of the two main characters (Mary-Alice and Robin) walking into the classroom and asking for "Kevin," but filmed three times from three different lengths away from the door. The first take would be filmed from the other side of the classroom, the second would be halfway between the door and the end of the classroom and the third would be close up to the door.

Editing Day One

Today, I uploaded all the footage that we had filmed, onto the computer editing program: Adobe Premier Elements. I started simply by putting the scenes into chronological order. Afterwards, I went back through the footage and edited out all the takes that included mistakes. After I had completed this, I started to add some techniques to our trailer; I did this by inverting a shot of the killer walking towards the camera and cutting this against a zoom in normal shot of the killer behind a tree. As I did this, Sarah looked on the website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ for sound effects and pieces of music that we felt caused tension and also an eerie atmosphere to play underneath our trailer.

,..Once we had decided on a piece of music, I then placed it underneath the first scenes of the trailer. When I watched it back, the inverted shot of the killer walking towards the camera cut together with the mid-shot of him behind the tree. Created a very effective match on action shot between this and the music.

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To further our trailer, I think that we should add more scenes showing the main characters personalities and the closeness of their friendships, as this is one of the focal conventions we are incorporating from other trailers of this genre. Also, I feel we need to add more scenes showing more students being killed. I believe that by adding more of these scenes will be able to create within the audience the sense that nobody is going to get out of this school alive nor is anybody coming to help will effectively be able to hook our target audience into watching our feature film.