Editing Techniques

Editing Techniques

This week we looked at editing techniques, how they are used, why they are used and what kind of message it sends to the audience.

Here are some examples

Cutting Clips

Eye Line Match - Making eyes synchronous for characters and the audience

Graphic Match - Matching the sounds with the visual stimulus

Graphic match is very important as it prevents the audience from becoming nauseated and uncomfortable, it matches the visual. In this example if the sound was off by even a second the audience would be greatly disturbed as their immersion into the film is ruined.

Jump Cut

A transition from scene to scene

More commonly used in Hollywood films jump cuts get rid of any unnecessary and long parts of a scene, and the keep the audience's attention as to alot of people a long and boring shot would make the audience lose their attention toward the visual. 

Cross Cutting

Cutting between two or more scenes

Cross cutting is useful and important because it can show two different scene, usually with atleast one relation with action to keep the audience focused and interested. The audience feel more powerful because they have unrestricted narratives of the plot and use cross cutting to be able to do this. Cross cutting takes a otherwise boring part of a film and fuses it with an action filled part to keep the audience interested.

Parallel Editing

Continuously cutting between two or more scenes

Parallel editing is used at different times from a scene, unlike cross cutting which hapens at the same time. In this example we can see the living oxymoron that is the main character who is being religious but is also killing his rivals, the audience can get a better grasp of the main character's intentions or true nature

Cutaway

Using a character as a reference to move to another scene

In this example the cutaway is used as a comedy gag to entertain the audience and keep them interested. Without these cutaway gags the audience would probably be alot more bored without these small anecdotes.

Super - Imposition

Placing somebody or something that wasnt in the original take, but post production usually by fans

Super - imposition is used to place people into the film so that people will think that they were in the actual take. This gives an opportunity for fans to feel like they are actually talking to a movie star or anything else.

Visual Effects

Special effects

Lightsabers do not actually exist so they need to be made using visual effects so that the audience can immerse themselves in escape of their normal lives. Without visual effects this scene would have just looked strange as they two men waved around randomly and sporadically

Scripting

Cast List

Media Pitch and Focus Group for our media idea

Week 8 reflective blog post

So far we  have developed our idea  about the psychopath and even wrote a Mckee's narrative structure for it and placed it on the blog. Again our idea may be subject to change where we see fit, for example we decided that we don't want to be cramming in lots and lots of conventions into a two minute opening so we decided to dim it down. The main character is no longer a psychopath and is just a normal depressed teenager who wants to take his own life but gets involved with gangs. We're trying to think of new concepts after we realised how out of tangent that we were. Were experimenting with new ideas and new concepts but only have around 3 solid ideas that are worth solid consideration. We want to make it an actual British Social Realism and not whatever we were trying to make before, we also might take away the theme of suicide from our film as we changed our mind about the main character committing suicide in the narrative.

McKee's "classic Narrative Structure"

Week 7 reflective post

I have made my own group to be making our own film opening and currently we have beach combing for inspiration and soon have to make a blog post about it. We already have a plot line that we want to follow but it is open to change as its not own final idea. The items in the Beach-combing for inspiration may no longer be relevant if we decide to change our idea in a later stage. So far our main character is a psychopath and lives an ordinary school life. We wanted an original idea for our opening sequence and thought this concept would be great for a smash mouth opening

Beachcombing for Inspiration

Beachcombing for Inspiration

Tate Langdon from American Horror Story plays a teenager with a very dark and insane double life while trying to seem like a normal teenager. This is how i want my main character to be like. 

Dexter Morgan from Dexter is also a psychopath

who is cunning and deceptive, more traits I want my main character to carry.

My main characters weapon of choice will be a black pistol which he imagines killing people with in the opening of my film.

My character will use a skateboard to get around it will be used to make the opening calm and serene, for     a short while.

My main character
will also have a puppy that makes him look even more normal and likable to the audience and makes it clear that the main character has a double life.

My main character will live in a council flat to make it 

relate to the British Social Realism theme.

We will also use my school as a filming location because most of it will be set in school as the main character tries to be a normal teenager

The main character's morning routine will consist of grabbing everyday items like this notepad to make it seem normal

For the openings I want this kind of typography to be used to connote it to teenage school life because the main character is in secondary school

I want the credits to appear like this, behind and in front of characters. I want to credits to appear behind the everyday items that my main character will grab so it has a good transition













My main character will wear very casual types of clothes with no real set costume but just normal costume.

The first thing that the audiences will see is my character's

bedroom as that's where a lot of the credits will appear in the begging.

 

Me and my group will use natural lighting as that will probably be the only thing that we will have access to

Me and my group will use an establishing shot of a council estate so that the audience will be able to tell that its a British Social Realism drama

My main character will also use strangling wire as he is a killing psycopath.

Whats in the News

What is in the News

One Out of 10 British Men Admit To Using Prostitutes

My group and I used this title to inspire us to have an idea about an 16 year old prostitute, providing for a younger brother. Her parents abandoned Sunny and Kyle which is why they are not in an orphanage. The main plot is that Sunny becomes pregnant and unable to abort her baby. This causes her to be shunned and mocked by the other prostitutes. Her conscience speaks to her continually throughout the movie, being her good will and "good angel" up until the point where she actually has to abort it, her conscience disappears and she is no longer able to hear it. She aborts her baby because her pimp is furious that she is not able to make enough money, and as a result her brother's life Kyle is threatened, so she has the choice of losing her baby of her younger brother who was the reason she had to go into prostitution. Sunny works in Soho in the dark of night working for her clients but lives in a normal counsel estate where she is mocked by the other teenagers. This movie will have the themes of abortion, prostitution, bullies and bildungsroman.

The main theme is prostitution as the main character works as a prostitute in the urban area of Soho littered with crime. The second main theme is corruption as youth as the lead is only 16 and therefore still a child and is paid for sex to support her younger brother. These themes will make it clear that me and my group are doing a British Social Realism movie so that the audience isnt surprised.

Dad's secret drinking obsession gives clues to his death

I would use this title to inspire my group about an idea of a 50 year old man based around in sScotlandwho once had a heart attack because of his drinking obsession. The main character Maurice is a war veteran and drinks to forget his war memories and scars. Maurice managed to raise a family but having lost his wife Merilda he has to look after his two teenagers by himself. Maurice often wakes up to nightmares about the war if he doesn't drink himself to sleep. His children make him stop drinking in order to save him and Maurice agrees but continues to drink but he fails to keep up to this promise. An emotional, heartbreaking and thought provoking film. Some of the audience who drink alcohol may be able to relate to this situation as many people have drank alcohol and even had to do it secretly at some point in their lives.

The main themes of this BSR idea is violence, war, despair and a secret lifestyle

Boy Driven to Suicide By Bullies

I would use this title to inspire my group about an idea of a young 16 year old male called Rhyss in Central London that is bullied in real life and retreats to his house most of the time to escape his bullies and his problems.  However he also has a alcoholic father who is downright cruel person, Rhyss' father believes that to overcome his problems Rhyss needs to confront his bullies even in a fight that he would definitely lose. A popular girl called Vivian comes to the aid of Rhyss and they become deeply connected but it's only a charade that Vivian had to do for a dare. Upon discovery of this Rhyss becomes deeply depressed and unable to do anything with his life and not trust anybody. Rhyss not having anything left to live for in an abuse household and horrible social life where he is threatened and beat up daily decides to kill himself but not before killing his bullies

.

The main themes of this BSR would be suicide, violence, bullying, betrayal, aspiration and escape and depression.

Week 6 Reflective Post

To prepare for making our very own film opening we have begun looking at other film's openings and even started marking out which names and jobs appear and in what order, for example actor's names and executive producers. For an example you can see my blog post about Zombieland's opening credits and timeline of opening credits. For our very own film opening we are starting to think of ideas for a British Social Realism in the newspapers for headlines or small stories that we could take inspiration from.

Institutional Info of an Opening Sequence

Institutional Info of an Opening Sequence

This part of the opening credits give the audience an establishment of comedy within the scene whilst also showing the audience how real situations included in an everyday normal life, such as a parent-son sport activity, it gives the audience a sense of reality within the text so that they are more drawn into it and therefore enjoy the text better.

This scene establishes that its a gory horror film, so the audiences aren't too shocked when it starts developing later on in the text. The red colour of the writing connotes to the anarchy, destruction and death, making it clear that the audience is watching a horror movie as well as an comedy.

The text again adds a comedic affect by attributing a famous scene from Scarface with a mash up of zombies, any members of the audience who have watched Scarface before will be able to understand the joke  and therefore enjoy the movie better, whilst feeling some connection with the text as it reaches out to them.

The use of unsuspecting civilians adds to the effect of mystery as it says that there could be a zombie apocalypse right outside the door and the audience haven't noticed it themselves, slightly advancing through the third wall actually coming out to the viewer. Again using normal everyday experiences for people and attacking it with zombies very strong as the audience begins to feel how real it is for the characters and enjoy the store more.

This scene shows how outnumbered the humans are to zombies adding fear and worry to the audience's emotions as they see how vulnerable the characters really are as they see how effective the zombies are at actually killing humans, adding a real fear factor lets the audience develop feelings for the characters becoming more absorbed into the text and therefore becoming more immersed into the text.

This first scene of the credits again adds the fear of the apocalypse happening all around the world, again showing how vulnerable everyone is making the audience more attached to the characters, developing feelings for them and wanting to keep them safe from the perils that they face.

The main title of the text here is when the movie begins, the audience can see the smashing of a window, connoting to total loss of control and total destruction of society as windows are usually broken during riots and rebellions which makes them significant in this post-apocalypse movie