Editing: Credits.

When we were adding our credits to our trailer, as I said before in a previous blog, we tried a font and changed the colour of it to fit the trailer colour scheme throughout.

Although this did have the effect that we wanted our credits to have as they also didn't seem to fit in with the handwritten border that the credits were based on which we wanted to keep so that it tied in with the rest of the trailer as the killer's book is like this and is used throughout.

Instead we used the stop motion pictures for our credits. I uploaded the images from dropbox to our event on Final Cut Pro. From here I dragged them onto the timeline of our trailer and used the blade tool to cut a very small part of the image.





Due to the files being pictures and not footage it didn't matter what part I used as long as they were all the same length so that they would all appear for the same amount of time. To do this I would drag the next images underneath one which I had already cut and line up the blade with the end of the image so that they were the same length, I zoomed in to make sure it was precise.



After this I would drag it to the end of the images so that they were in the correct order. When I reached the last image for each credit I made the length that it would appear a bit longer than the others so that the credit would stay up for a length of time at the end for the audience to read. After I had completed each credit I highlighted all of the images and moved it among the footage to where we wanted the credit to appear.


When we played the trailer with all of the credits in place I did have to make some of the last images a bit longer so that they could be seen properly but on a whole they worked really well in our teaser trailer as they kept the momentum of it going and so these will be our credits for our final teaser trailer.

Creating time lapses

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. We decided to use time lapses in our film tailer as it is a good way to establish the location. We wanted to have some time lapse shots of some icnonic London locations so that the audeince can easily tell the setting for example we have a time lapse shoton the Golden Jubilee bridge with the houses of paliment and the river thames in the background. To create time lapses you have to film in one location for a long period of time and then speed it up during the editing.



Initially we sped up the footage x8 but we found that this made the people waling along the bridge go by to fast and this made our footage look quite jumpy and not very smooth which looked not professional. Instead we conformed the speed and kept reducigng it gradually at each side so that it would speed up slowly and we could therefore decide which was the fastest we could make it to see the people walking past without it looking jumpy. We then cut the footage so that we used the best parts to create the shots and not include any unitentional shaky-ness.

For the sound we were not able to use the original sounds which the camera recorded beceause you could hear the camera auto-foucusing so we had to silence the footage and then find sound effects od a crowd which we could lay over our footage to make it look realistic.

Dreamlike editing

Many psychological thrillers have a quite dream-like feel to them, this is often portrayed through the editing and the choice of music, this is easily seen in the trailers of these films.

Stoker

The dreamlike qualities are shown throughout the trailer but they start in the opening scene with there being a blur around the edge of the shots and the use of soft colours which conveys the idea of nostalgia. The voice over at the beginning is also quite chilling as Nicole Kidmans' voice is very soft and it therefore sounds like she is close to the audience. This is quickly contrasted with the harsh words that she says to her daughter which contradicts the earlier idea of nostalgia. The sudden change of pace creates a quite aggressive tone and conveys the psychological element of the film and it could also be seen as to be quite nightmare-ish. The monotonous tone of the metronome conveys the idea of a differentiation between the surreal and reality. The continuos movement of the camera also creates a dream like atmosphere this is also enhanced by the slow motion shot in the shower which is quite surreal. The choice of colour also is quite dream like as it is very soft and there are not any bright colours. The continuous use of extreme close ups is quite surreal and disorientating.

Side effects



Like stoker the choice of colours in Side Effects are very light and neutral which creates a very calm tone. Some of the shots also utilise the depth of field by focusing on the characters whilst leaving the background behind them quite blurry which is quite dream like. The cross fades between each shot also give the trailer a very fluid and surreal tone added to by the non-diegetic piano music. The blurryness and the sudden change in pace in the trailer portray a disorientation from reality. The fast pase of the edits also build tension as the the non-diegetic sound is building, which is quite effective.The constant close up shots also create a distorted view of the narrative of the film. The tone of the trailer changes quite quickly from dreamlike to quite frantic through the building of the non-diegetic singing and the pace of the shots, this is quite effective as it hooks the audience into the narrative.