Sunday 16 February 2014

Post-production: Editing the Trailer

Since editing in AS I had worked on a project with Northern Stars: a Documentary Academy. This was held during the Summer, we used the software FinalCut Pro. So when I came back to edit our A2 Trailer, it took me a while to get used to using Adobe Premiere Elements again.

One of the first things we did for editing was finding royalty-free music to accompany the visuals of our trailer. A convention of trailers is that they always have some sort of music running through them. We had begun editing footage as it was filmed, so it was not a major task at the end.

At the start of editing we switched from using Adobe Premiere Elements 9 on a PC to using Adobe Premiere Elements 11 on an Apple Mac. The PC was older and struggled to handle the software, frequently crashing and resulting in a loss of work. But, the Mac could cope with the software, and although we had to start again from scratch, this meant we could proceed quicker with our editing. At first we had problems with finding the files and so we had to go back and organise the sourcing of the video files. After organising files the editing ran smoothly, but we had to export some separate clips from the PC version as some of the video effects were no longer available that we had wanted to use. Admittedly it was very hard to edit properly until we had all of our footage. Our trailer underwent a complete transformation once we had incorporated the last of our video files. We ended up rearranging our trailer in a new order.

There came a time during editing when we began losing confidence in some of the soundtrack. We had previously striven to find royalty-free tracks to use in our trailer. Slowing down the second half of the music (using time-lapse), to make it sound deeper and more serious. It was the second part of the music which took from the middle of the trailer to the climax that we felt didn't match the feel of the trailer. So, eventually I found some music that matched the pace we wanted. It was not royalty-free, but it is a convention of Hollywood companies to use music from other films (made by their studio) and mix them for the trailer because the soundtrack for the film has not been finalised. Not having a fully-fledged orchestra or sound mixer on hand we had to make-do. While me and Lizzie were happy with the new second-half of the soundtrack, Daniel took some convincing. The Music track itself was too long for the trailer, so we had to tweak it and cut bits out and fade areas into one another in order for it to be in sync. We particularly liked the loud thump at the end, because we had changed the last shot to the one of Haden throwing Michael to the ground- as we believed it had the most impact.

The first part of our soundtrack was taken from here:




The in-between area of our soundtrack, part of the intro (to go with the location shots):





Our original second part of our soundtrack:



The new second part of our soundtrack:



As you will have seen from our storyboards, we intended on having a countdown towards the end of the trailer, we had downloaded some royalty free electronic sounding countdowns. We tried all of them, but we found that they seemed to be distracting from the visuals and the soundtrack underneath. So, we left out the countdown at the end. We also switched from having the thunder sound clip from the release date copy, to the institution Logo, as we thought it went better with the logo and the start of the trailer.

Even though we had dialogue, our trailer did not seem to make sense, even as insiders who knew the plot. So, we went back to look at our influences to see what was missing, then we realized, our trailer had no copy! So, we added in the copy to give the audience a greater idea of the story. This made the whole trailer work together so much better.

Then, we rearranged some of the shots, rather than sticking to the storyboard. We decided to use as little shots as possible per scene (in the right order) so as to not have a short film, but a trailer. As trailers have a non-linear plot we gave ours a non-linear plot as well. With things happening in a different order, but the story was still obvious. We had arranged it in a way so that the trailer was slowly and constantly building up to the climax. The music helped greatly, it started relatively calmly and then built up to a quickened pace and then started to slow down. We cut and edited the music so it faded out, then Haden said the line "Find them" and then the music came rushing back in.

Then the music got progressively dramatic until the final thump and that was synchronised with the fall of Michael and the appearance of the title "Time". We added in the release date and the institutional credits which was accompanied by a low and quiet juddering sound which seemed to match as well.

Parts of the audio/dialogue on the trailer was difficult to hear and unpleasant. Particularly the "Find them" it was difficult to hear over the sound of running water in the stream. Also, the "watch them die" audio was not clear due to the sound of wind interfering with the microphone. Below, is a video of Clare and myself trying to recreate the tones we used when filming to use as dubbing:


After re-watching our trailer, me and Lizzie thought that the trailer did not need the "goodnight" sequence in order to make sense as a narrative. Although Daniel was dubious, we cut it out and asked other people whether it still made sense and they agreed. But, we would not definitely exclude it until we had done our audience survey.

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