Editing and Audio

Now that all my footage is complete and filmed, I made sure that I had a wide range of camera angles to enhance my opening. I had imported all the footage from the first day of the shoot into Adobe Premiere Pro, using the razor tool I had cropped the footage into suitable lengths.  I used the scaling tool to straighten any footage and for it to be a suitable size, using the rotation tool too to make the angles perfect.  I wanted the footage to run smoothly and to show cross-cutting to the other location - but to place in abrupt stops where different footage would appear to suggest the irregular feel of the film. This way the thriller genre is depicted through the long footage that is still to create suspense such as the scenes in the bathtub that are prolonged create tension. Scenes are built up slowly from the beginning such as with the tap dripping, the empty bath and the pan down under the water. The strong emphasis on water is a link to the lake that is later seen, being rained on. Bath footage is extremely long but fast abrupt scenes such as the running were cropped really short to represent flash backs whilst she is in the bath tub - making the audience intrigued. Footage alternates to suggest the present state in the bath and shorter footage that is at the lake present the flashbacks. Close up shots of Zeina's eyes would quickly be followed by shots of the lake, being fast and effective. 

Editing the scale, rotation and audio volume. 

Footage of the telephone ringing had been cropped in certain areas where a different angle would shown. Before the phone is ringing, I placed a long footage of it to build the suspense, followed by a shorter clip of the phone screen being zoomed in on. I then placed in footage of my actress in the bath as a reminder that she is awaiting that phone call - yet she lies still. I then edited in the footage of the ringing, showing my actress and her not responding, placing the audio of the ringing phone over, which I thought was a really effective way in suggesting that is engulfed in her imaginary world and thoughts to be aware of reality. A flashback of a spiralling pan of the forwarding from her perspective like she is looking upwards - it seems thy the flow of the camera isn't fixed again shadowing her disrupted thoughts. These then come to show an abrupt stop to the blank telephone. A final tap dripping is shown being effective, whilst we then see Zeina descend underwater to a white fade-out after forest footage. This editing for the ending is effective in suggesting that she has come to and abrupt end as she goes down with many connotations to this such as lie ending, entering an unnatural world etc. After adding the production ident, I used a black cross dissolve from the 'illusion productions' titling to fade into the first scene that adds effect well.

Horror Movie Ambience

I had found some effective, copyright free horror ambient sounds to place over from soundbible (click). I liked the idea of contrasting the sounds to the abrupt silences which bring us back to see the quiet nature of the character. Importing the audio, I fixed the levels of the tap making them louder, in the extreme close-up shots. I also made the telephone ringing audio seem louder. The ambient sounds are pretty scary as they slowly build suspense with a low bass sound which work really well. I placed it over after adding a static tv noise (copyright free website) to the ident - it fading out as the ambient sounds come in. I increase the volume and in some areas I would stop it abruptly; to enhance silence, slowly bringing the audio into focus again with a higher volume. The diegetic sound (tap, telephone and rain - which I also increased volume) was louder to enhance the footage.. And the non-diegetic audio slowly built suspense in the background.