Editing: Day Ten

In this editing session we were applying the final touches to the film.

One of the final touches we needed to do was to create credits which showed who done what in our film and to give recognition to our actors.

The way of doing credits was similar to the title however we created an effect to make it scrolling credits.

We put the credits at the end of the timeline to close out the film.

We also changed the name of our film to something more appropriate to the film as we got feedback saying the name 'Eventide' did not go along with our film. We decided to name it 'Shutter' however we did not have the time to create the same effect that we did for Eventide.

Editing: Day Nine

During this editing session we also done another effect we wanted to do since the beginning of our filming. As our film was heavily based on cameras, we wanted to be able to create a shutter effect when our actor is taking pictures as part of the film. However it was not as simple as creating an effect so we had to find a way to do it which took us a while as we had complications finding a good solution.


Eventually we came up with a solution which was to click on the clip and use the 'Motion' video tab. We then used the crop section on this. In the crop section we had to create intervals and control the top half and bottom half of the screen. For the top and bottom we created the same intervals in order to make the shutter symmetrical and meet in the middle at the same point and immediately going back to normal just like a camera. We done a few of these shutters to show our actor taking pictures. Pictures showing us doing this will be below along with a video to show how it looks in the film.

Editing: Day Eight - Effects

In our editing session today, we wanted to focus on effects for our film.

One of the effects we wanted to create in our film from the start was for the 'researching' scene in our film. We wanted to have a clip of where our actors face was shown even whilst he was researching so that our audience could see his facial expressions and reactions to what is happening in the film.

To do this we overlapped the two scenes we wanted to put together, one on top and one of bottom, we then proceeded to changing the opacity of one of the scenes to create a 'transparent' effect in which you could see his face even though he was on the laptop.

We also done other effects during this session such as some video filters. We used video filters mainly when the 'mysterious' figure is shown up in which the screen would go blurry and the colour would distort a bit. Although it is not apparent in the picture I will show below, it will be clearly evident in our final showing of the video.

Another effect we used was video transitions. We mainly used this during action cuts in our film to move our character from one place to another. We found it to be effective as it would shorten certain parts of our film which would have been too long if we were to leave it as they were.

Editing: Day Seven

During this editing session we focused on making our scenes shorter, we got constructive criticism for this during our rough cut presentation so we listened and decided to cut it down in term of narrative so that the scenes would be more suitable, especially at the beginning of the film where our characters 'getting ready' scene is too long.

Firstly we were cutting by just simply shortening the clips by dragging it in however during this session we came across a good tool called the 'Razor Blade Tool' which was accessible from the Final Cut Pro toolbar.

The process of using this tool was to hover over the section you wanted to cut, a line was drawn by the editing software here to show where it would cut off. From here when you click a red mark was created which split the clip into different sections, from here you would just click on one of them and highlight it and press 'Delete' on the keyboard as shown below.

By doing this I was able to get more precise cuts for the film as instead of dragging it I could align it with the suitable time where I wanted to cut it. It was also more convenient as it would move everything following to still be continuous with the clip.

Editing: Day Six

During this editing session we decided to focus on music and sound. This was a point we needed to address from the feedback we had gotten from the class so we decided to do now to give our film more suspense.

As I now got copyright clearance from The Secession, I was able to freely use their content in my videos as long as I provided credit in the video description. Also I used copyright free music we downloaded from YouTube using a converter into Final Cut Pro. This allowed us to use the music in the editing software.

During the editing of the music, we found out that sometimes the music would not match the scene as it would just go into the clip with high volume out of nowhere, so we needed to find a way to fade in the music so that it would slowly go into the scene.

There was a technique we learned with the help of tutorials to achieve this effect. To do this, we used the 'Pen Tool' which could be selected from the Final Cut Pro toolbar. We would then use this pen tool on the red line that goes across every clip and create these dots which allowed us to adjust the decibels of the sound (the lower the decibels the lower the sound). The process of me doing this is shown below.

We also saw that this could be applied to our actual camera footage so we did end up lowering some background sound from our actual footage such as when we said 'action' at the beginning of a scene and haven't cut it out properly and ambient sound that was too loud.

Permission to use copyright music [GRANTED]

After I sent an email to 'The Secession' in order to use their content, they have replied back allowing me to use their soundtracks as long as I add their credits to my video.

Music Copyright Permission

We will be mainly using soundtracks from a good studio called 'The Secession'. They provide soundtracks that can be used in trailers, films and commercials which would be more than suitable for our film.
However, their music was copyrighted. In order to use their music, I would have to contact them personally and ask for permission.

Firstly I went on their YouTube then clicked on their 'About' section and found their. website

 I then clicked on the 'Licensing' button and sent them a message here so that they could grant me a license to use their music.

I also clicked on 'Contact' which allowed me to send them a message to grant me usage of the music.