Unit 8
Final Major Project
My Video Essay:
The Horror Film:
I am going to be editing a short horror film about a farmer, who has alzheimer's and he doesn't realise that he had killed his dog and throughout the film, he finds multiple notes that tell him things that have already happened, such as when the farmer hurts his hand on the nail, there is a note later, stating "nail sharp". After getting all of the footage it was time to start editing an offline edit which is here:
Film Synopsis:
Offline Edit - Write Up:
To make an offline edit of the short horror film, I chucked every shot in order as I wanted and I had cut them each down to have a nice pace throughout the film and I even had separate audio to find, which I cut down by matching the audio with the clapperboard sound and from then, each shot had its matching audio. Throughout the process of editing this version, I included only the best shots of each scene, so any shot that wasn't its best was not included and I went back through the edit at some points, to shorten some shots down for a faster pace to the edit.
Online Edit - Write Up:
In terms of editing the online edit, I was free to add anything in, such as text, background music and other additional features that would enhance my previous offline edit. As you can already see from the thumbnail of the online edit, I had included my own bit of text with a horror font. I made sure to include background music for the shot, where the farmer spots a note, to bring in the horror atmosphere and I then added sound effects to make it feel like the farmer's dog is alive, but it's just in the farmer's head due to his condition. For the blue screen that we had, I started to mask out the window, which would allow me to replace it with some remote scenery.
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Additionally, the nail scene needed to be properly masked out as well, so I went into effect controls and keyed out the positioning of the fake nail and matched the movements with the farmer's. For the ending, I used the initial ending we were going for, rather than the ending we were later going for, but I didn't have the audio for this, so I just thought the initial ending was really good anyway.
Finished Film:
Evaluation:
Finally after editing the short horror film, I can say that it was super challenging and it greatly increased my editing skills - for adobe after effects also. Editing the offline edit was easy enough as I basically just had to cut down each shot together and worry about nothing else, however, in the online edit is where I really struggled and I needed a lot of help with masking things out and artificially adding in a nail onto a door for one of the scenes. Youtube helped me a lot in how to use after effects for shots where I needed to mask out certain objects, but for the nail scene, I had to use the keying tool, where I change the position of the nail each frame:
Yes, this may look easy, but it was a complete disaster and next time, we as a group would not risk a shot like this ever again, where we have to add in a fake object. I had help from Harry, where he keyed out the movements of the nail, in relation to the farmer covering the nail up frame by frame and in the end it was worth it and I gained some more editing skills in keying things. This did take a lot of tries however and I wasn't happy with it on multiple occasions, because it would look really fake, so for my final attempt, me and Harry worked really hard in changing the position of the nail very accurately in relation to when the farmer hits the door.
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Another very difficult thing to do, was masking out the blue screen that we used to replace the window with some remote scenery. I had used after effects as it was the most helpful and resourceful way to do this and I had to first mask out the outline of the window and then mask out the plant; this wasn't too difficult but I did have to learn adobe after effects from complete scratch and after effects doesn't make it easy and I had watched multiple tutorials to gain some skill. After a while, I got used to after effects and I started to finish off masking out everything, so that I could replace the window with some remote scenery. Although I managed to mask out the plant and the window, the big annoyance, was the actor walking into frame, so I had to use the 'Roto brush' tool in after effects and this worked really well at automatically key framing the actor as he walks in front of the fake scenery. When you watch the short horror film, this looks real and anyone I asked didn't think anything of it.
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In conclusion, I found the editing of this short horror film to be very challenging as to the fact that I had to individually key frame some shots as well as masking out some shots. Next time, I will be a lot faster at this as I have now learnt some after effects and I have more skill in Premiere Pro. However, to improve even more, I must watch editing videos more often and make sure to use better shots than shots that would otherwise make it difficult for me to edit.