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This was our first project as a group. I think that this is a prime example to show how much we have grown and how we've gotten better at doing things more efficiently as well as our skills improving. This project was significant to me because it made me realize not only how much work has to be put into a project, but also how fun it can be. It was great that it was all of our first time shooting a project and was definitely a learning experience.

ReEdit: Final Changes

Finally, we are nearing the end. We have now inserted the final clips. We have re-edited how the titles appear on the screen. Meaning the order and which clips they arrive in. We noticed more show up at the beginning of the film. And that we could spread them out and make it evenly throughout the film. With the new clip that we edited in, we added a jumpcut transition. This one clip adds the timing to be the correct length for the film. Also, the transition goes smoothly with what is happening in the scenes and doesn't affect the time. The new clip. has also the main title of the movie.
This re-edit has been difficult, however. The pandemic of the coronavirus has limited us. We cannot see each other in class or at all because we are all stuck at home. Thankfully we already had all of the clips on my personal computer and using different software. Also, we were lucky enough to be pretty much done with the project and only need the final touches. Since this is a group projected we have texted about what we are doing to our movie and giving updates on what we need to do as a group. Thankfully, we all pretty much agree and it was already coming to a close. Our project is finally done being edited and the scenes blend together. As a group, we finished reviewing and making final changes and exported it.

ReEdit: Changing the Sound

 

During the start of re-editing, we wanted to work on the sound of our film. We knew that we had to cut or mute the sound to hear the dialogue. As well as make the dialogue louder. These steps wouldn't really overall effect what we already did to the film. And collectively we wanted the music to fade in. As well as keep the music soft so that it's not "overpowering" our scenes. We think that the background music adds suspense since its a slower song. The song also is very sad and talks about losing someone so I think it fits perfectly with the theme. The song fades in from after the first scene where the two friends fight. From there it continues till the end and doesn't fade or stop.
For making our sound stop and not overlap we had to think to previous lessons. I looked through the notes I took at the beginning of the year on editing. It showed how to overlay sound and cut it to make it not go over another part of the dialogue. The example was on a different editor, but all the steps are the same.  After that, I tested it on my Imovie software. It worked so I started fading it. We decided to fade the sound whenever there's dialogue because we didn't want to just cut it. If sound went in and out whenever someone spoke we felt like that would be awkward. So we faded the sound to be not there when there was dialogue but come back louder as the dialogue ends. This is the main thing we had to fix with re-editing.

Reshoot: Getting it Done

During our reshoot we knew we needed to get a few things done. Such as different angles and listing to our critique. So we got a lower angle and a close up of the “blood” on her hand. This scene adds to the film because it gives a clearer shot of the confusion on her face. As well as shows why it’s concerning and adds to the suspense of the plot. Our plot is clear that it’s suspenseful. But previously the audience didn’t know what was on her hand and why she kept looking at it. Hopefully by adding this shot will clear up confusion and break it down for the audience. This scene will be only a few seconds once it’s cut and traditions are added. However we think these few seconds will influence how the film is received in the end. 

Additionally for our reshoots we re-looked our other shots. Along with our other problem, it started raining during our reshoot. For this we didn’t reshoot any other scene because we didn’t want to mess with the lighting. Especially since most of them were located by the back doors and you would be able to see. Once we looked at the new hand scene you couldn’t tell about the outside setting and that’s it’s different. Our re-shoot wasn’t too complicated due to the critiques. Since the critiques are what influenced what we filmed. After also over looking our guide on what angles needed to be put into the film. We have now completed all of the angles that need to be shown. We know the audience already likes what we’ve done thus far. 

Reshoot: A Problem

After we got our feedback from our peer review we knew we had to fix a few things. The peer review for us was beneficial because we knew we needed to do reshoots. Reshoots help the film become better and you are influenced by the audience's opinion. Reshoots also help because you re-thing your film. We rewatched it in a different way. As in not watching it for pleasure and excited we finished our first draft of our film. But in the view of what do we need to improve on and fix up. We re-analyzed our film and looked at which parts we could insert a new clip in, or if we rather reshoot a scene we already did and fixed it. We needed to add more angles and one critique was to get more shots of the "blood" on the character's hand. We took that into full consideration about which lighting we needed as well as where it would fit into the already filmed scenes. 

There was one problem, however, we didn't seem to find our fake blood. This was an issue because the one thing we needed to fix was to show the fake blood mark on her hand more. We figured we would improvise by taking red pen and marker and making a darker like circle around the palm of the same hand. We figured since the shot is only about 2 seconds of a close up that the change in color and texture wouldn't be noticeable. I like to think of the situation like when Hollywood movies use a stunt double and you can tell it's not the same actor. It makes us feel more comfortable that we know these problems with props happen in real life as well. However, this is the only real filming problem we've had this whole project. We think the improvise is the best we could do and we all tried drawing and smudging marker on her hand. Hopefully, it looks good and the audience can't tell the detail. The first re-shoot was interesting but after we figured out the problem we were on our way with filming again. 

Peer Review

For our peer review, we reviewed a horror film. Something I really enjoyed about the group's film was that the storyline was very easy to follow. The transitions were clean and you could clearly tell when scenes were switching. I really liked their filming style and the different angles they chose. Their storyline was clear and you could tell what was happening. For example, in darker scenes, the lighting was hitting the subject and they were still visible. I liked that the storyline was simple enough to follow, but still had room for details. For example, you could figure out what was going to happen but it still left you in suspense. That it could've been played out in multiple ways and the ending wasn't predictable. I liked that suspense was created by the acting and that it followed the storyline.
One suggestion that I made was to have more sound. There was little dialogue that would be suspected from a horror suspenseful film. But there could be more "planning" involved. Another thing would to maybe fade the background music. Like, make it louder it certain parts compared to others and make it die down at the end. Also in the film, a by standard made a noise, maybe make it like a loud crash to really grasp the audience's attention. The nondiegetic and diegetic sound was natural, however. Nothing was out of place or didn't seem like it shouldn't have "sounded like that". The sound was in sync with the film and lined with the effects. The film overall was really good and I enjoyed watching it.

Editing Blog: Exporting

The final step for our movie has come. We are exporting the first draft of our film. Since adding the titles we tweaked a few details. We looked at the coloring of the video as well as adjusting the audio. We added in our song "Medicine" by daughter and overlapped that with our audio.  For the audio whenever there was dialogue the background music got quieter while the character was talking. Another minor detail we fixed was when the music started. And it starts 8 seconds into the film with a fade-in. We chose to do this because the film starts with characters talking and we figured the light music can fade in as the characters start to fight. This was an important detail to consider because it sets the mood of the film.
After re-watching and correcting details and fixing mistakes we thought it was time to export. Since the export quality wasn't too high this only took a couple minutes.  Exporting the movie is saving it onto my laptop. Since this our first draft and to be safe our film will still be in our editing software. This will ensure our film will reach our audience and can be kept somewhere. Our general audience will be viewing our film on a computer. To get our film to our audience we are sharing it onto a flash drive. Since this will ensure and laptop/ computer can open the file and access the project. We are saving it onto a flash drive to make sure the file is safe and can be accessed on any computer. This was the final step and now the first draft of our project is ready to be viewed by an auidence.