Editing (Preliminary)

In order to edit our final shots together, to complete our preliminary sequence, we used Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Using this software allowed us to add diegetic and non-diegetic sound/music within our sequence, improve our continuity and bring the whole preliminary sequence together. Chris and David had much more experience using this programme compared to me and Stephanie, therefore Chris and David enabled me and Stephanie to edit a moderate amount of the sequence in order to allow us to gain more knowledge about the editing software. However, Chris and David still had an equal amount of editing time. 

We found editing to be harder than filming therefore whenever we came across a difficulty we asked each other for help, when this attempt was unsuccessful we asked the teacher to help us whilst we paid close attention so we don’t miss anything. If one of us knew had to edit a certain part of the sequence but another group member(s) didn’t, we would share our knowledge with each other. For example, when Stephanie didn’t know how to make a certain part of the sequence slow down, I shared my knowledge and showed her how. 

A large obstacle that we stumbled across was, once we had added the non-diegetic music (with the intention of creating a suspenseful atmosphere); we could not hear one of the character’s dialogue. Instead of removing the non-diegetic music altogether, we worked as a team and overcame this problem by increasing the volume of the character’s dialogue. Although we found this tricky at first, we all found this as a useful piece of experience for the future as it allowed us to gain knowledge on how to prevent this dilemma, if it ever occurs in our own Thrillers. This also enabled us to gain an understanding of how amplified an actor’s voice should be as well as allowing us to decrease the chances of the non-diegetic music overpowering the actor’s voice (in the future). 

We worked very effectively and efficiently as a group as we incorporated everyone’s ideas within the editing process and took turns to watch and listen to the final sequence and discussed together if anything needed altering or changing, this enabled us to work better as a team and ensure that everyone was happy with the sequence. We worked very effectively as a team and even though there were dilemmas throughout the filming process we overcame those problems as a team which enabled us to complete the preliminary task successfully.