Editing of Thriller

Pre-Editing
When editing, we used Final Cut Pro software – this software is fairly easy to use once you get the hang of it. Once we had all our footage filmed we had to load all the film onto the computer – we had to initially digitise our film, transferring the footage from the tape inside the camera onto the computer in order for us to edit. After this, we had to log all our shots – we created a number of different ‘bins’ and then titled each of the shots and put them underneath the relevant headings – each of the bins were titled under the locations we filmed at, as this would then be easier to sort our footage out when editing. We then titled each of our shots and logged them to the correct place.

Continuity Editing
In the beginning we put together the timeline for our very first attempt of editing our opening of our horror film ‘Sold’. However, after a number of hours working on this we realised that this was not really an opening of a film but more like a trailer, although our footage was the correct material the way we had edited and incorporated some titles it just didn’t work. After this, we continued with a number of different attempts – we were so stuck on our ‘trailer sequence’ we found it so hard to move on. Finally, after weeks of attempting to move on – we finally did, we realised we had so much more footage than we originally believed and eventually realised that we should use it – believing that it was good material. We eventually put together a rough cut of what we were now going to work with. Once this timeline was now in place, myself and Millie (the director) spent many hours editing them to make the lengths of the shots and the transitions from one shot to another perfect. For the opening shots of the Christian iconography and the footage of Sophie in the church we used jump shots, but we used quite lengthy shots as we found that if we were cutting them too quick then it was beginning to look more like a film trailer again, a look we were not going for. We also just cut shots in the exterior footage rather than using fades as we felt it worked better, cutting between Sophie on the swing and her father on the phone – it gave a sense of intrigue. During this footage, the sound also changes with the shots – the sound of the swing being prominent in the close up shots of Sophie and then being virtually unrecognizable in the close up shots of her father. Moreover, in the basement footage we continually used jump shots – it created more of an effect which increased the tension. This footage begins quite slow and eerie but then picks up pace with the editing as it jumps quicker between shots of Sophie and the crack in the ceiling and also between Sophie and the ‘Devil’ – this works very effectively.

Still frames from the opening sequence: Crucifix

The Devil

Graphics/Titles
At first we were going to keep our titles very simple, however, in time we thought this probably would not be best. I was watching the TV series ‘Sleeper Cell’ and got some inspiration from their titles – they used a plain legible font but for some letters they used Arabic letters and symbols which looked like English letters to replace – this gave the titles a little twist. Although we didn’t want to use Arabic symbols, we thought that a twist with Greek or Latin symbols and letters could work effectively and tie in with our religious theme. However, we found that just replacing the occasional letter was not really working as successful as we hoped. We began to play around with the lettering, and eventually came up with the idea of writing the credits in English then fading them quickly into Greek lettering which looks similar to the English letters and then rippling out. This worked very well, the transition between the English to Greek was extremely quick so you are not really able to read it and then rippled out – giving an effect like this on a simple font worked very effectively. We used the font ‘STFang’ and also the corresponding Greek letters in this font. We placed each title over different footage usually to the left or right of the screen – each title was legible to read three times over before fading to Greek then rippling off. Our credits begun with our production company on a black screen, then moving on to the actors and actresses names, then all the people involved in the production and then finally our films title. All our credits ran over footage apart from our first credit ‘Little Productions Presents’ and our final credit, our film title ‘Sold’.

Titles before transition to Greek Lettering

Titles once transitioned into Greek lettering

Sounds
Throughout our opening sequence, we used a number of sounds to create an effect. For the opening of the church sequence we mainly used the natural eerie sounds, but we then emphasised them slightly more to make it seem even more eerie – as it is a large open area, also throughout Sophie is saying The Lords Prayer, this is on a very quiet level of sounds throughout and then gets louder and clearer when we cut to the close up footage of her praying rather than just background noise. For the transition from the church scene into the exterior footage of their house, we used a drumming like sound – this created impact which we then faded out to the ambient sound. Sophie was swinging on a swing – this was an old swing which was obviously put up by themselves as it was just a rope and some wood, the rope running against the bark of the tree made a real squeaky noise, we put great emphasis on this. Also by jumping shots between both Sophie -the young girl- and her father, we used sounds to help accentuate the silence versus the squeak of the swing; this also gives the footage more suspense and tension. We used this technique again in the basement sequence, the idea of the quiet, eerie ambient sounds versus the jumpy sound effects we used when the ‘Devil’ was present – this makes the audience more apprehensive, which therefore increases the suspense of the film. We had no soundtrack running throughout, we mainly used different sound effects to emphasise different areas, most of the sounds we used were quite natural, they were there to heighten the horror factor. I feel that our choice of sounds worked very effectively and definitely increased the suspension, which therefore make the opening seem very scary.