Film Name Title

Creating the correct font for the title is important. Below is a video of me choosing between my favourite custom fonts I used. Here is also a screen-shot of me creating different colour gradients. I decided to use shades of green in the end as it was the colour that best represented nature, the environment and exploration. In the video, the last title is the one I will use; I find the use of capitals adds to power of the trailer.

First Full Edit Feedback

With several groups of four-or-five people at a time giving me verbal feedback after watching my trailer I have picked up many points to change in my trailer - including title advice.

-Fade to black throughout the slower paced opening scene and display titles here
-Also display film name and release date (with small credits at bottom) at very end
-Start tinnitus sound earlier

Edit Post

Here is the edit after a few tweaks and without titles. View full-screen and turn the resolution up using the 'cog' at the bottom-right of the full-screen display.

Edit Update

The full edit has been made and tweaked many times. After deleting unnecessary/unusable I was left with 76GB of video recordings, of which I only used 2:07 minutes of! The upload has started and will take some hours... Stay tuned.

Too Much Footage Cont. 2

Here is the next edit on the 1:05 scene, with contrast, white point, white balance and unsharp mask effects applied (although they may not be visible due to the poor quality video for blogger). The final edit will be posted on YouTube with a link for good quality.

Opening Scene

The opening scene required a surprising amount of work considering how minimalistic the editing is. I had my crew round an hour ago along with some of my classmates from school who all fit into my target demographic bracket. Tim/Tom, Jack, Harry, Mike, Ollie, Ben, Dave, Luke, Mitch, Tabs, Lawrence, Shent and Tom were involved in this audience feedback (some of these people were identified previously: http://jamieprouta2media.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/audience-profiling.html) although Dave and Ben do not live nearby so they talked to use over a Skype call.
After spontaneous changes including using fewer shots, lowering the general exposure and increases the volume of certain sounds, I ended up with the opening scene...

Too Much Footage, Cont.

Following yesterday's post I have begun cutting the clips down. This section of the video has to be 1:05 minutes long. Here is yesterday's version.

Three 19-year old male locals came to see how the editing is going along with the characters seen in my film. From their feedback I created a list of changes for this section:
-Lengthen the last clip of Jack climbing for fluidity
-Completely delete a few various clips
-Cut the clip of harry turning on the slackline in a balance so we do not see him turn
-Maintain audio synchronisation as the effect is powerful
-Add another nature shot at start

Too Much Wanted Footage - Too Little Time

I have a one-minute gap of sound space where I can create the build-up scene. I have already matched the entire scene with video clips yet I still have twice as much extra footage spare that I previously rated 8, 9 or 10 out of 10. I will go through the footage again, give it a new rating and prioritise the clips from rating 10 downwards. Before I was using footage that had a rating of 7,8,9 or 10 in any order.

Synchronising image to sound

Matching the beginning of bars or specific beats to the video requires patience but is an effective way to cut between two clips without any technical transition. This will only be the case at the beginning of the music as I intend for the video clips to be more frequent and faster paced towards the climax.

End Scene

 The ProcAmp tool was particularly useful here as I could accurately apply different contrast, exposure (black/white gain) values as well as hue/saturation algorithms to this scene to create a more powerful and dynamic video.

To increase suspense and create a more gritty and grungy feel to the diegesis I added artificial noise. To enhance the effect I created large noise particles with small colour ranges to resemble that of old film.

Here is a video of the ending after much attention and editing - it is shown twice: the first time with the effects and the second time without. No credits or titles have been added yet.

(Apologies for Blogger's appalling quality video converter)

Hitting Whites

'Hitting whites' means the pixels with the greatest value (greatest 'brightness') are valued at 255,255,255 (meaning they are completely white). This process is not simple - it requires calibrating your monitor (I use Spyder3Utility as it is well-known and calibrates colour efficiently) using a sensor that is placed on your screen and following many instructions. Once this is done you can read pixel values on Premiere Pro (below) to ensure you are hitting whites and it will actually look correct! Unfortunately I cannot show using screen-shots what major difference this process made!

Identifying Wobbles

Here I have lowered the dubstep drop speed to 25% so I can more easily count how many 'wobbles' there are. Upon discovering that 8 wobbles occur in under two seconds I decided to use four different video clips as a mini-montage (previous posts).

Framerate Drop

I have lowered the framerate in the final clip of the climax to 50% (15fps) to emulate the pre-shock phase humans experience when witnessing extreme trauma. This commonly used technique is very effective and simple to do.

Music Drop, Frame Matching

Here I am synchronising the frames with the elongated drop I used earlier. For every two dubstep 'wobbles' I am showing two frames from the same scene (each frame lasting a 1/30th of a second). This means the image is displayed for 1/15th of a second at a time (0.6 seconds) which is just long enough to recognise what is happening without revealing so much that the suspense of the montage vanishes. The final, elongated 'wobble' will be mentioned in the next post.

Heart-Beat

I am using the heart-beat non-diegetic library sound here to create suspension, help the viewer relate to the characters and allow brief exposures of the clips. For one second at a time a clip is shown at the same time as the heart beat. The time span between heart beats increases to enhance the seriousness of the situation as well as planting questions in the viewers' heads such as "did he survive?".

Car, Tinnitus, Heart

I have used the tinnitus noise in conjunction with a recorded car noise I took the other day (that will also be used at the beginning of my trailer). These sound tracks will be used as a transition between the song drop (the trailer climax) and the following, gripping scene where a Final Cut Pro X library heart-beat sound is used. Only the simple heart-beat sound is used in the short, gripping scene to help enhance the suspense. The car and tinnitus sounds are used as background sounds and represent the kind of trauma our character was going through. This will be clear once I upload the video.

Slowing the Drop

Here I am slowing the 'drop' of the song where an energetic dubstep 'wobble' occurs. By slowing it down it better fits the montage concept I had in mind. I am using a tool to maintain the pitch whilst slowing the drop down to ensure the music still sounds right.

Cutting Song

Cutting the song into appropriate chunks is crucial not only to make best use of the most vibrant and energetic parts but also so the video, when edited around the music, fits the two minute guide

Video Transitions

My most commonly used transition is the basic cut. Other than that I cannot see any use for technical transitions as they do not conform to my genre. Instead I have been using fade to (and from) black transitions between videos and constant gain transitions between audio clips.

Rig in Use

A quick clip of my camera rig in use:

Tinnitus Noise

I have generated a tinnitus noise for a key scene in my trailer using Fruity Loops. Once created I used Adobe Premier Pro's 'Pitch Shifter' tool to create several samples of the audio clip that I can test alongside the key scene video footage.
Here is the audio clip: