Editing of our short film

We have been editing our short film using Adobe Premier Pro. We are very happy with the opening scene, which includes our time lapse shot of the train station, which cross-cuts constantly to shots of Lucas getting ready to go to his job interview. The train station scene is where Lucas has to make the decision, so we have reinforced the 2 choices by the use of split screen; juxtaposing the 2 choices. The parallel narratives which indicate the two separate lives that Lucas could lead were the part of our film which we were having difficulties with when editing. This is because; first of all we had placed a shot of the successful life, followed by a shot of the family orientated life, hence contrasting the lives. However, when we showed it to some people, they could not understand that it was 2 different lives. We then decided upon changing the successful life to black and white, as in that life Lucas is lonely so this duller tone would relate to that and would also help to make the 2 parallel lives clearer. However, when showing it again for feedback, people still failed to understand. Therefore, we decided to show the flash forward of the successful life, return to reality and then have the flash forward of the family life, yet still incorporating the use of black and white. As we had planned to include a fast rewind at the end of the flash forward, we have now chosen to rewind each life separately before Lucas returns to reality. Additionally, as we have now separated the lives, we decided to cut the opening the card scene from the edit, as it would no longer make sense. We also included slow motion in some areas, for example when Grace bumps into someone at the train station, as we felt it is a pivotal part of our short film, as her bumping into someone is what makes Lucas have to make a decision; whether to ignore her or help her – which changes his life – and is the centre of our film. Towards the end of the film, Lucas looks left and right; contemplating the choices, before it cuts to a shot of his foot taking a step. We decided to slow this part down too, as it attracts the attention of the audience, as they will keep watching to see what decision he makes. We tried out various special effects, as we wanted to make the flash-forward’s look like fantasy and not reality. However, we were not happy with the effects, as they created more ghost like effects rather than the effect we were after. Therefore, we decided that a white flash accompanied by appropriate non-diegetic sound will indicate it’s a flash forward and in between the shots during the flash forwards we employed ‘dip to whites’ as the transition, as this too helps to convey fantasy. We did capture a vast amount of footage; much more than we actually needed, especially for the flash forward scenes. However during the editing process, we only used short clips, as we did not want it to be boring for our demograph and we thought how flash forwards are normally just quick snippets, thus not revealing too much detail. During the flash forwards especially in the family life, at first we did incorporate dialogue; when he said “will you marry me” and during the argument scene. We changed the pitch of the diegetic dialogue, so it had a slight echo affect to it, reiterating how it is fantasy and not real. However, after reviewing it, we felt the argument scene was not needed, so cut that from our edit. We then thought only having dialogue for the proposal scene would be strange, so we decided to remove it, as from the shots it is obvious what is happening and we believe it looks more effective with just non-diegetic music and no dialogue.

Voiceovers

We have decided to include a short voiceover from Lucas’ perspective during the beginning part of our film. This will help to set the context and make it clearer to the audience where our protagonist is going. Also, it will make it understandable to our demograph that our film revolves around the fact Lucas is going to have to make a life changing decision.

Our voiceover for the beginning:
“We make many decisions everyday without a second thought; whether to have tea or coffee, what clothes to wear and what to have for dinner, but I never knew that the small decision I would make later this morning, would have such life changing consequences.”

Additionally, after our demograph recently reviewed an edit of our film, we got the impression that they found the flash forwards slightly boring, as although it was accompanied by relevant non-diegetic music, no dialogue is present in those scenes. Therefore, we have decided to include two voiceovers; one to go with the successful life and one for the family life. We believe this is an improvement to our film, as not only does it add more depth but also helps to make the plot slightly clearer for our audience as differentiates the two parallel lives more. Below is what we have scripted for the 2 voiceovers, but we intend to separate certain lines so they are heard in relation to certain on-screen actions. For example: the line “the perfect women” will accompany the shot of Lucas and Grace kissing and the line “nights at home in front of the telly” will accompany the shot of them watching TV together.

Voiceover for the successful life:
"I had the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect lifestyle. It’s everyones dream to live a successful life like this, but as perfect as it was, I wasn’t happy, I was lonely. Getting on the train that day and getting this job has turned my life around. But money certainly isn’t everything, as what’s a great life when you have no one to share it with?"

Voiceover for the family life:
"I may not have had the perfect job or the perfect house, but I had the perfect woman. I was living the family life everyone dreams of and I couldn’t be happier. It was the little things that I loved the most; from walks on the beach to nights at home in front of the telly. Who would have thought that this woman at the train station would end up being my wife? "

Music for our short film

Regarding non-diegetic music for our short film, we have used Apple’s GarageBand to create the music. First of all we did hope to have a local band or singer do an acoustic version of a song about making decisions hence would relate to the storyline of our film, yet this was proving difficult to organise.

We created 4 different non-diegetic music tracks for our short film. The first piece of music is played during the opening of our film where we cross-cut between the train station time lapse shot and the shots of Lucas getting ready. We believe the music we have created fits well here, as it has the feeling of a new day. The second piece of music accompanies the flash forward of the successful life; here we created a slow piece of piano music in a minor tone. We felt this suited the context of the successful life, as although Lucas has a good career, he is rather lonely and unhappy. In contrast, for the family orientated life, we created a much happier and livelier piece of music, thus reflecting that lifestyle. For the rewinds of both of the flash forwards, we used the same piece of music to keep consistency and this emphasised that what Lucas had just seen was rewinding in his mind. For this we chose quite a fast piece of music that had good momentum, hence reiterating a rewind. We also accompanied the rewinds with the sound of a tape being rewound, as we thought this would help to emphasise what is occurring on screen. The first piece of music is then heard again when we see the footstep, signalling the end of the film and carries on throughout the credits.

We are also using the website www.freesound.org to add further diegetic sounds to our film, for example the sound of waves during the beach scene and bird noises for the scenes outside.

Film Review

We have created our film review for our short film as one of the ancillary tasks. Regarding the writing of our review, I have written it in the style of an ‘Empire’ film review; including the subheadings of: Plot, Review and Verdict. However I have been critical of our short film in the way I have subtly indicated what we believe to be some of the flaws of ‘Intersection’.

Our Film Review

Additional Dialogue Scene

We are currently in the editing process of our short film. We had expected the train station scene to be longer as we had recorded some dialogue between Lucas and Grace which took place on the platform during this scene. However, as we are now using split screen to juxtapose the 2 parallel lives, we have had to cut this dialogue from our film. Instead, we have planned to include a short scene outside the train station where Lucas will have a quick chat to his old friend. Hopefully this will help to make our film more understandable to our demograph, as when scripting this dialogue we tried to make subtle references to a successful career life and a family life, hence implying the parallel lives incorporated in our short film.

Below is the script for this extra scene:

OUTSIDE THE TRAIN STATION – LUCAS RUNS INTO HIS OLD FRIEND.

FRIEND: You alright mate, ain’t seen you in a while, how’s things since the redundancy?  

LUCAS: Yeah not too bad thanks, I’m actually on the way to a job interview now, how’s things been with you?

F: well I’m still looking, haven’t found the right job yet but you know it’s been nice having some time off with the missus and kids.

L: Yeah I’m sure something will come up and I bet your kids have loved having you around, I guess I’m lucky I’ve only got to look after me.

F: Oh I bet it won’t be long till you have your own family, once you’ve met the right girl that is.

L: Yeah I hope so. 

F: Anyway, take care mate, don’t want you to miss your interview.

L: Yeah thanks, mate, cya soon, hope it all works out.

Poster Feedback

We have showed our poster to lots of people to get some audience feedback.

Below is a list of the comments we got about our poster:

Positive:

·       Liked the bench feature – understood the idea of reflecting 2 personalities – 2 different lives

·       Thinks it reflects the plot of our film well – what we wanted

·       Liked the opaque image of the train station in the background – understood it must be an important part of our film

·       Liked how the background wasn’t white or a plain colour – the train station picture makes it interesting.

·       Liked how the bench was at the foreground, stands out, is the focus of the poster

·       Liked the font used for “Intersection”

Negative:

·       The hairline of our actor on the left needed editing as looked poor.

·       Maybe remove the black colouring behind the title.

·       Maybe a divide down the middle to show they are separate lives.

We reviewed the feedback which we got about our poster and have taken what was said it into consideration. We were happy with the positive feedback we received, as we were glad people thought our poster reflected our film well as that is what we had intended. We were also glad that many were interested to find out more about the split narratives, hence our poster was appealing to them and they would be interested in watching our film.

In relation to the negative points, we have adjusted the hairline of the image of our actor on the left within our poster, as many people commented on the fact his hair looked strange. We discussed the other negative points which were made, regarding the black colour behind the title, we felt it was needed due to the black ceiling in the train station picture behind it and also we felt that the black colouring helped the title to stand out more. Also, we tried including a split with the train track before to reiterate the separate lives; however we feel adding something else to our poster will make it more crowded and confusing for our demograph.

Final Poster

Further Poster Progress

We have changed the previous white background of our poster, to a picture of a train; however we changed the opacity of this image, so the picture of our protagonist sitting on the bench is the main focus of the poster.

We also decided to omit the train track positioned in-between “Inter – section”, because we felt it did not look right and looked more like a ladder than a train track. Moreover, we enlarged the writing for the title of our film and put it in a white font with a black background behind it, so this way it is much more noticeable and easier for people to read.

We feel our poster looks much more professional now and we are happy with it. We are going to show it to people to hear their thoughts and opinions on it.

Our film poster