Editing of 'Lost but Found'

After we had finished all of our filming and felt like we had filmed enough we then decided to upload all of the shots and pictures onto the computer which at first was a very difficult as at the start of trying to upload all of the media onto the computer it wouldn't work. Which worried all of the group as we didn't know what to do as we thought that all the our work and filming had been lost or possibly deleted. After this we then decided to back up the media on to one of our laptops just in case we lost or deleted the filming by mistake. When we eventually was able to upload our media we firstly went through it all and gave each of the shots a name, we did this so that we would find it easier to put them in order when we imported them onto the editing programme. After this step we watch all of the clips we had filmed and deleted the worse one out of them as we didn't just film one of each of the shots just in case we didn't like the end filming of it. When the media was imported onto the programme we then put each of the shots into the order so that we could easily see what worked and which didn't and we then recognised that some shots didn't follow after each other so from that we started from the start of the sequence and made sure that the sequence was able to flow. At this point Laura-Jo was in control of the editing programme with input from me and Chloe giving pointers and suggestions throughout. 

At this point we had already organised the shots in the order we had arranged and we had sorted that they all flowed onto one and another. After this we decided that we would work from the beginning to the end as we thought that would be the most efficient and quickest way. So at the start Laura-Jo decided to do the first part of the sequence so she started of my cutting one sequence in half and overlapping another one on top after I suggested to do so as we had 2 shots of the same but in one of them the start was better and on the other the ending was better quality, which in the end this idea paid off and worked out really well after ending it with a fade, which at the start we had troubles with as we thought that the fade was too slow as it didn't fade quick enough onto the next shot so we could still see the one before. Finally we sorted it by speeding up the fade. We then moved onto the puddle shot which involved the little girl running through it, which in fact we wanted a shot of the puddle which showed a reflection of a face or the 'demon' but when we was filming this was another problem we came across as we was unable to get the shot done as the camera was always shown in the reflection. We then worked on from this and decided we would simply just do a quick shot of a further close up of the young girl which Chloe took her turn on the editing programme which worked out really well. When it came to my turn editing on the programme I didn't feel that it was as difficult compared to how I found it when I used it on the prelim task. I really enjoyed editing the footsteps sequence as I was able to alter the speed and colours to be able to fit into the other sequences. At first not all of the pictures we took of the footsteps was as good quality as I thought they would have been so I had to go through the pictures with my group and delete the images which wasn't as good quality as they needed to be. So from that we had to re arrange the images to make sure they went in order to show the footsteps of the 'demon'. I decided to involve a dissolve into the footsteps so it didn't look to jumpy and fake as that wasn't the look we was going for. At the end of the sequence one of the shots is when the change happens to the character which we took a photo of the little girls face which I edited into a demon-alike figure but unfortunately we found that it was too jumpy as we put it in the sequence so we concluding to having a black out first then print screening the previous take and editing that which in the end worked much better. I used Photoshop to edit the image by using the liqidfy tool which emphasised the eyes and I also changed the colour of the eyes into a darker colour. 

Later on after we had put all the clips together sir Chloe suggested that we should also show a quick glimpse of the young girl when she was normal showing the change and hinting that something inside her is trying to take over her. Which we thought was a great idea so we worked on this and played around with the effects and thought that a quick flash of the girl in her normal state would be a great ending to the opening sequence as it leaves the audience on a great cliff-hanger which would make the audience want to carry on watching as they're interested. After we was happy with all of the sequence we decided to chose the music and titles we wanted to use in the sequence. As we planned to use a nursery rhyme we attempted to look for one over the internet which we could use but we found this quite hard so we then decided that we could use the Alton Tower 'Thirteen 'theme song. We didn't want this the whole way through it as we thought that it would seem more like a trailer so we avoided this option. We decided to put this music in as the children had just finished swinging and the young boy gets called to go home by his mum. I found that this worked really well as it fitted in with all the action at the same time. But after we decided this I thought that there was too much speech going on and too little music but Chloe and Laura-Jo didn't think we need music throughout the whole of the opening sequence so we then agreed that we would have it from when the little girl runs to the park. After this we also made other alterations overall. First of all we darkened the lighting at the start and then imported a cross dissolve after Charlie (the young boy) gets off the swing to go home. We did this to show a change so the audience would guess something bad or tragic was going to happen, we also decided that we need a more clearer to show this change so we changed the colour change to black and white.

Finally because of our bad time management we didn't have time to finish the whole of the titles before our first draft hand in so that Chloe volunteered to take control of the title sequences only was able to do our producers titles and the 'Lost but Found' titles. From this I think we will as a team work on our time management more so that our next hand in date our work will be complete and up to high standards as at this point in time I don't think our opening sequence is as good as it should be. Below is our first draft of our opening sequence:



Overall I'm not that impressed with our final draft as for one I don't understand the narrative and I'm guessing other people wouldn't either. When we got our feedback I wasn't surprised that it was good or positive as we had a lot to re-film. I think that we could easily do much better work if we put more effort into it and paid more attention to the narrative and story line of the sequence. I think the end of the sequence is a bit too unexpected and confusing as you only get to see a glimpse of the changed young girl. Also at the end I think that we should re film it and put in a tilt camera shot up to the girls face and instead of having a young boy standing behind her we should have an older adult so that it looks more convincing that it is someone scary or demon like. Another point I find that needs changing is the sound. Although at that point in time we thought the music was perfect we later looked back on it and decided it didn't match up to the filming on bit as we found that it didn't fit into the sequence. So from this we are going to look for another piece of music which is able to play throughout the sequence and another point on the sound is that the dialogue isn't as clear and loud because of the wind. Because of this we will have to re film the speaking parts especially at the beginning between the mum and daughter which could help towards making the storyline more clear.