The document summarizes the editing process for a short film based on a script. Scenes of dialogue with a psychiatrist bookended a montage revealing the central character's inner thoughts through 0.3 second clips of his face. Shots were chosen that moved similarly to create seamless cuts. Effects were used to give the film a noir feel and tense atmosphere. Ambient sound from rushes extended across the footage to ensure continuous sound, while tapping was overlaid to build tension. Audio levels were adjusted to be consistent in volume. Rearranging some shots could have clarified the narrative by simplifying transitions between awake and asleep states.

1. 02/03/2016
The Little Things Edit
The Little Things task was to film and edit a 3-5 minute film loosely based upon a script
for a short play.
The creative decision was made to edit this film as a montage to reveal the inner
thoughts of the central character with small scenes of dialogue with his psychiatrist at
either end. To convey this, 0.30-second clips of a close-up of his face, slowly becoming
more sinister, were cut between each shot. Not only did this technique add to the
narrative, it also broke up the montage. Shots were chosen to follow each other that
made similar movements, falling pennies and falling crumbs for example, to create
seamless cuts on action. This made the shots flow more effectively, keeping the
audiences’ attention on the film without causing a jarring effect from lots of differing
movements.
The play’s narrative is very dark and it was decided that this would be kept in the
narrative of the film by giving it a noire feel. This was created using the ProcAMP effect
in Premiere Pro and then adjusting the brightness and contrast of each clip so that the
depth of shadow and light was continuous throughout the film. By editing the footage in
this way a gritty, tense atmosphere was created.
Ambient sound from one of the rushes was extended and placed across the entire
sequence. Doing this ensured continuous sound throughout the film. The sound of the
tapping pen was also overlaid across all of the footage to build tension. The audio also
required leveling in order to gain continuous sound volume throughout the sequence.
This was completed simply using the gain controls on each audio track to change them
all to -14 dB so that they were the same volume. Then some of the tracks were adjusted
further to produce a heightened sound effect to create jump scares. Tension was built
throughout the film using these sudden loud sounds.
The edit could have been improved by rearranging some of the shots, for example the
sleeping shots leaving the montage sequence, to make the narrative clearer. The
character jumps from being awake in the montage to asleep again to awake again after
the dream making the narrative confusing and difficult to follow. This could be
simplified by moving the sleeping shot altogether and using the shattering cup as the
symbol for the ‘wake-up call’ in the sequence. This would make the narrative more
continuous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdToT3pX68w