Major Project: Rough Cut Update & Result

My last tasks of the Rough Cut and sound editing were to complete clearing up the audio, and to put this pack into the Premiere timeline, ready for colour grading. This process was complete within two days, as seen below...

Day 16 (Finishing Audition Sound Editing Scenes 20-23, & Review)

Day 16 Edit Log

• Continued to use my noise and hiss reduction process throughout scene 20 to 23.

• Finished clearing up all audio in Audition.

• Decided to get a different perspective of the audio by listening to it through headphones instead of speakers, allowing me to notice any further issues such as out of places sounds or rough transitions between clips.

• Made small adjustments with a focus on the above, but realised that I had slightly over-corrected scene 14 and 15's dialogue, making them sound vaguely watery/tinny.

• Conducted research on how to completely undo these past effects and use of tools, or to replace the clips, but found no solution online, and currently had no technical help available.

• Moved on to attempting to repair distorted/clipped audio clips, but found through testing, practising and further research that they were irreparable.

I found a lot of new issues on day 16 within sound editing, and it began to flag up a lot of complications that I didn't have the time in our schedule or sound editing knowledge to handle. Without technical help available I had to step away from the project as I felt there wasn't a way to fix any of the issues that I was finding.

Day 17 (Audition XML Export & Colour Grading Hand-Over)

Day 17 Edit Log

• Sought help from our technical adviser on ways to fix the issues that I'd found on day 16, however we were unable to fix these together.

• We decided to test putting the Audition project back into the original Premiere Pro timeline, but this caused further issues as usually sound editing isn't started until the final cut of the edit is complete - but this isn't possible within a student project, so I had to start the sound editing process much earlier. Usually, the Audition project is completely finalised and mixed before being put back into Premiere, however further work was needed on the sound, so I needed all audio to be placed back with it's original cuts and separated clips to be later cut down with the rest of the film, and later edited again in Audition. This isn't normal practice between the Audition software and Premiere Pro software at all, and we struggled for a very long time to find a way to export the project without all of the clips on each track turning into one long clip, such as below...

• This would make the audio and the film extremely difficult, maybe even impossible to edit into a fine cut and a final cut. So after a lot of testing, research and trial and error, our technical adviser found a way to export the Audition project back into a Premiere Pro project without losing the original cuts and format, as can be seen below...

• Upon reviewing this alone however, I found that all of volume and fade/blending alterations had been lost in the export. So the volume was unbalanced, and each clip was now cut together without any blending. But with our technical adviser no longer available for two weeks, and with the colour grading process already delayed by a day, I had to step away from the project, and find a solution once colour grading was complete and hands-on help was available again.

I found that this part of the Rough Cut and sound editing process contained the largest and most difficult issues of the project so far for me, as I felt like I was unable to fix the issues that kept arising, and no longer had the time left to attempt to fix the issues due to colour grading needing to begin.

Issues & Decision Making

Towards the end of sound editing in the Rough Cut process, the process started to become much more challenging. New issues within the film's audio began to flag up for me, and I realised that I was far too inexperienced to fix them alone. Alongside this, all research that I was conducting to learn how to fix these issues were proving to have no result, and our technical adviser was no longer available for two weeks. And in addition, our colourist was scheduled to begin his work on colour grading the film on my hard drive - as it holds all of my labelled and organised footage and projects, meaning that I wouldn't be able to work on the film at the same time as him.

With all of these issues lining up, I talked the problems over with the crew, and we decided that by the time the colour grading would be finished, and our technical adviser would be back, that it would be too late for me to be learning how to fix large sound issues when I need to be coming the end of the edit. So we agreed to add to our budget and hire a professional sound editor to come in and fine tune the sound before the Fine Cut of the film. This way, an experienced professional would be able to deal with the issues quickly and effectively in a short amount of time, leaving valuable time for finishing the film's overall edit.

It was disappointing to not be able to fine tune the audio myself, but as I'd never sound edited professionally on any software before, I feel that I did a very good job in clearing up all of the hiss and noise from the audio, along with putting a great deal of effort into this process, especially with such damaged audio. If I had a lot more time and help at hand I would have been eager to spend a long time learning how to improve my skills in sound editing, but unfortunately, this project has an extremely quick turn around, and it isn't viable for me to work on this alone and inexperienced.

Results

Although by the end of my time working on the Rough Cut of the film, a lot of issues started to come up within sound editing, I was able to hand over a completed visual Rough Cut of the film to our colourist for him to work smoothly on the project.

The end of this process proved to be the most challenging work that I have ever done, and I felt that in the end I was unable to fix the issues within the audio. But overall, I think that the Rough Cut looks extremely professional and well cut, with at least cleared up audio for the time being. I think that although the sound will need to be professionally worked on, when considering the visuals of the film, it's extremely close to a Fine Cut, and once music, the titles, and closing credits are incorporated in the Fine Cut, it will be an almost finished, and very well presented film.

Once the film's colour grading is completed, reviewed and handed back to me, I will add the finished music compositions to the edit, and begin fine cutting the film with the Director.

Major Project: Rough Cut & Sound Editing Workflow

Continuing straight from the First Assembly Cut of Double Exposure, I began the Rough Cut. Working on this cut across a period of 5 weeks alongside the Director, I continued to keep edit logs so that I could keep track of our day to day progress. Below are logs and screenshots from my work up until before finishing sound editing, along with my approaches to sound editing during this initial time.

Day 7 (Day 1 of Rough Cut Editing - Cutting Down the Film & Scene 4 Sound Replacement)

Day 7 Edit Log

• From starting the Rough Cut, I no longer worked on my own with crew feedback, and began working alongside the Director.

• Added 'Fade to Black' and 'Exponential Fade' transitional effects to the current opening shot and audio clip to get a feel for the opening of the film.

• Began reviewing the film multiple times with the Director to work on cutting the length down from 18 minutes to approximately 14 minutes - allowing for just under a minute of production company logos, opening titles, and closing credits to reach just below 15 minutes in total.

• Decided with the Director to remove scene 8 from the film - consisting of Emily driving in her car and getting out, as it brought nothing to the film and cut down on time. The before and after screenshots can be seen below, showing a clip of scene 8 in the before, and the closed gap and flowing connecting between scenes 7 and 9 in the after shot...

Before Scene 8 Removal

After Scene 8 Removal

• Received Tommy (Dan)'s ADR recordings of him whistling to use as a replacement for his in-scene whistling in scene 4 that didn't cut together. Proceeded to add the best quality and well-matched audio clip of this to the scene and sync it to his mouth's movements.

• Also changed and replaced my previous 'towel' FX sounds in scene 4 to be better matched with his actions.

• By the end of this day we had cut down the film from 18 minutes and 23 seconds to 16 minutes and 6 seconds.

I feel that the Director and I made great progress on the first day of Rough Cut editing and worked very well together to strategically decide which parts of the film needed to be removed in order to cut down time but not lose any quality.

Day 8 (Tutor's First Feedback Changes & Further Cutting Down)

Before beginning further work on the Rough Cut, we had our first group viewing with our tutor to show him the film for the first time, our current progress, and gain his insight and feedback. Below are my notes from his feedback...

Tutor's First Feedback

The feedback consisted of...

• Advising us to find a location and similar car in order for us to film an opening shot using a drone, so that the opening of the film is more cinematic and gives the audience a sense of their surroundings.

• Check for a wide shot in scene 5 to get a feel for the location.

• Potentially Emily's stare in scene 6 is too long, but this could work better with music.

• Cut around characters using doors/entering and leaving, as we don't always need to see this.

• Scenes 12 & 13 were potentially too slow before getting to the next seen and needed cutting down.

• Steph's line in scene 17: "Emily have you done something?" was out of place and unneeded, so I was advised to remove this.

• Noticed that we can see crew members in the house from a distance in a scene 18 shot, so a different take needed to be used in its place.

• Double check that there aren't any extra shots in scene 14 that can be used to highlight the shed in the distance.

• The moments at the end of scene 21 and all of scene 22 need to be a lot faster paced with heavy cutting on sounds to get to scene 23.

• All sounds from scene 19 onward should get louder and louder before scene 23.

• Consider elongating Emily's walk from her car to the door in scene 1 to get a look at the shed.

All of the above feedback was extremely helpful and taken on board as can be seen in my edit log below. Also, our tutor gave feedback on the fact that the audience may not get enough of a sense that Emily is a professional photographer, and that we needed to consider adding something to the film to highlight this. So his feedback on both the drone shot and extra shot prompted us to plan for one more shoot day in order to get the opening shot, and a my proposed shot of camera equipment in the back of Emily's car to insert into scene 1.

Following the viewing and feedback, we began our work on this and further cutting down the film...

Day 8 Edit Log

• Used a wider shot in place of a closer shot in scene 5 to indicate that Emily is alone in the room and that Steph isn't there anymore.

• Corrected slightly out of sync sound that I noticed in a scene 1 clip.

• Cut down unneeded elements of scenes 12 and 13 to get to scene 14 faster.

• Cut out any unneeded door/entering and leaving shots that were unnecessary from scenes that used them.

• Removed the unneeded and out place line of dialogue in scene 17.

• Replaced the scene 18 clip where crew members are visible with one where they are not.

• Zoomed in on and re-positioned a clip of Emily walking through the house in scene 21 so that she can leave the shot, and so that I could cut straight from her leaving the shot to her slamming the bedroom door on us (as her reflection could be seen all the way until the end of the original shot which didn't work or flow).

• Along with cutting this part of scene 21 down, I cut down scene 22 to make it faster paced to get into scene 23.

• Alongside time cuts that occurred when making feedback changes, then cut down the film with the Director from 16 minutes and 6 seconds to 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

I think from taking on our tutor's feedback on day 8, our whole crew worked extremely well to immediately think of a way to fix the issue of Emily not seeming like a photographer by planning an insert shot, and taking action to arrange a shoot day for this and the new opening shot. I'm also glad that I was able to work on the feedback changes while they were still fresh in my mind, and get the Director's perspective as I worked. For one day's work I think these changes drastically improved the pacing and flow of the film.

Day 9 (Cutting Down to Approx. 14 mins & Beginning Sound Editing Process)

Day 9 Edit Log

I found that from day 9 onward in the editing process, my edit logs became slightly shorter as the work that I was taking on became a lot more about communicating with the crew and our technical adviser, research, and large and extensive tasks that sometimes took more than a day to complete. Day 9 consisted of...

• Continuing to cut down the film with the Director, starting with removing the dialogue "We need to deal with this!" "I don't want to!" from scene 15 to cut time without losing quality or continuity.

• Removed a large part of scene 4 and mixed Dan's whistling from this scene into scene 5 to connect them and allow them to flow. I feel very proud of this change as I felt that a lot of scene 4's visuals were too long and unnecessary, so I had the idea to only use the shot of Dan turning off the shower, with his whistling flowing into him entering the kitchen in scene 5. I first tested this with the Director, and the transition worked extremely well, so I then tidied up the audio slightly and tightened up the cut to make this moment seamless.

• Cut down the film from 14 minutes and 55 seconds to 14 minutes and 2 seconds by taking off small parts of scenes throughout the film, reaching our required time span.

• Made last sound changes (lifting dialogue volume in some scenes) in Adobe Premiere Pro (as can be seen below) before beginning my work on the audio in Adobe Audition...

Once all of these tasks were finished, I needed to move all of the film's audio to Adobe Audition for more professional, detailed and clear sound editing, especially as all of our audio recordings had so many noise and distortion issues. Although I had learned of previous students using Audition to edit their sound, I had never used this software or any of it's techniques before, so I was completely new to the process.

To get hands-on help, I asked our technical adviser to guide me on the most common and professional ways to begin using Audition. He was extremely knowledgeable and helpful with this, and allowed me to learn the exact process for exporting audio into Audition from Premiere Pro, and the most organised and professional ways to separate and organise audio clips and tracks within the software. With his help I learned the steps to take and put them into action with my work...

• Use 'Edit in Adobe Audition' to copy all audio into the software with the same cuts, volume, fades/effects and arrangements as my Premiere timeline'.

• Save this as it's own audio-based project.

• Select 'Edit Audio to Video' to see the film so that the audio can still be edited and/or synced to the visuals.

• Initially the project in Audition looked almost exactly the same as their order in Premiere, 3 tracks with lots of mixed audio clips, as can be seen below...

• To begin organising these tracks and clips, I needed to go to 'Multitrack' > 'Add mono track' (for in-scene/normal audio) or 'Add stereo track' (for travelling sounds such as a car entering shot). For each track that I added, they would be renamed in professional conventions, such as DAN 1 (character dialogue), SET SOUND MONO 2 (in-scene sounds), ADR (re-recorded audio) & ATMOS (atmospheric background tracks) etc. In total, my tracks consisted of...

• DAN 1
• EM 1
• EM 2 (any overlapping dialogue etc.)
• STEPH 1
• STEPH 2
• SET MONO 1
• SET MONO 2
• SET STEREO
• FX MONO 1 (sound effects recorded separately and added in post-production)
• FX MONO 2
• ATMOS
• ADR 1
• ADR 2

• By creating these detailed and separate tracks, they would make each and every audio clip easily categorised and identifiable, along with fitting professional sound editing conventions. They also allow for controlled and generalised mixing further into sound editing.

• My last task of the day was to listen to every and all audio clips, and assign and move them to their appropriately named audio tracks, keeping them at the same time frame and in sync while doing so, as can be seen below...

• By the end of the day, I had carefully moved all of the clips from their three unnamed and organised audio tracks, into their appropriate tracks across the Audition project. This was the end result...

Below, my notes from initially learning to use Adobe Audition's organisational methods can also be seen...

I feel that I made brilliant progress on this day, having cut down the film to it's required length with the Director, and instantly moving on to setting up the film's audio in a software that I had never used before. This was a very clear and organised way to prepare working on the sound, and I had already learned a lot about the software from this.

Day 10 (Recutting, Adding Space for New Shot & Sound Editing Restart)

Day 10 Edit Log

• On day 10 I realised that I wanted to create an empty space on the Premiere timeline using temporary audio, to make room for the new opening shot that was to be filmed, so I returned back to Premiere and completed this task, adding approximately 10 seconds to the film.

• I also decided to make guidelines for myself based on audio db's, such as very low key sounds peaking between -42db and -36db, so I tweaked all audio in Premiere to meet these guidelines (as can be seen in the Edit Log image above), and to try to achieve balanced audio.

• I then started over with my Audition project using the altered timeline and audio, creating all new named tracks and sorting the audio into their assigned tracks again. However this time I needed no assistance and was able to complete the task in a much quicker but still thorough way.

This day was more of a tweaking day, realising that I wanted to make some further changes before moving on to Audition. I ended the day by finishing organising the audio in Audition again, but with improved audio and a move exact time scale for the film's length.

Day 11 (Test Shot Addition & Andrea Kapos Feedback Changes)

Day 11 Edit Log

• As the Director and DOP recently found a suitable location for the new opening shot, they did a test shoot with the car and the drone. So I temporarily added one of the best shots into the Premiere timeline to get a feel for how the opening of the film would look, and as a crew we all agreed that it had a much stronger start to the film than the original shot.

• Following this, I had the idea to add a scene 8 shot (Emily's hands on the car wheel as she drives), with the intention of pairing this with the photography insert shot that was soon to be filmed, so I temporary added this after the drone shot within the Premiere timeline.

• Director Andrea Kapos reviewed the current cut of the film and provided her insight and feedback. With similar advice to our tutor, she felt that certain scenes such as scenes 1 and 2 should potentially be shortened to get to the more key scenes a bit sooner and to keep the film exciting. So alongside the Director, we proceeded to remove a shot from scene 1 and the very start of scene 2.

• Andrea also advised that we make Steph's whistling in scene 3 start a bit later so that it's more shocking for Emily's character, so I moved the audio track of this a few frames down the timeline, and synced it with her lip movements.

Although this day temporarily halted my sound editing work, it was very helpful to get a professional Director's insight into the film, and work off of her advice, I feel that by cutting down the slower and simpler scenes, the film will have a very flowing pace.

Day 12 (Start of Audition Sound Editing)

Day 12 Edit Log

• Before going back to working in Audition, I wanted to explore any usable information on correcting faulty and distorted audio, as all of our audio was recorded on faulty equipment and wasn't clean and clear enough. I learned a small amount of useful information on noise reduction techniques and tools from two websites: No Film School and The Adobe Help Website. However, I found that this was far more unspecific, less detailed and much more time consuming than seeking help and advice from our technical adviser, as I feel that hands-on learning is much more effective and specific to my own work.

• My main job for sound editing was to reduce the overpowering hiss sounds in hundreds of audio clips in order to clean them up and have them sound much more professional. Our technical adviser pointed me in the right direction for the right tools to use within the software and areas to focus on, especially for removing high and low frequencies that occurred in certain scenes' audio clips.

• Using a professional sound board and speakers, and starting from scene 1 onward, I began lowering the hiss within each audio clip, without making any dialogue and in-scene sounds become too quiet or have a watery/tinny sound. For this I tested using a number of tools on my own, and discovered the 'Hiss Reduction' tool, allowing me to reduce the 'Noise Floor' as much as each clip needed. As I became familiar with each clip's intensity of sound distortion, I made presets within Hiss Reduction to apply to each clip to keep them at similar tones and volumes without the effect becoming too strong or weak. The Hiss Reduction tool with an example preset called 'HISS 2' (the second weakest version) can be seen below...

• Alongside this, whenever an audio clip contained a high frequency (a ringing-in-the-ear type of sound) or a low frequency (a low buzz or hum), I was taught by our tech adviser to open the clip in the 'Spectral Frequency Display' - this shows consist lines of high or low frequency in a clip as well as general hiss and noise. I was then able to simple drag and select the frequency from the clip and delete it, I did this for every clip that contained such as frequency.

• Also in line with my other tasks, still within the Spectral Frequency display, I used a tool called 'Spot Healer' that allowed me to almost remove an unwanted sound, without losing any other key sounds within a clip, such as the sounds of unwanted birds in the background of a clip.

• So in total, my first three techniques for cleaning up all of the audio in Audition were Hiss Reduction, removing frequencies, and using the Spot Healing tool.
• I also found that in order to listen to just one track at a time (such as DAN 1), I was able to hit the 'Solo' button, muting all other tracks, as can be seen below...

• As I worked my way through each clip, I also listened out for where more detailed fade effects needed to be added between each clip in order to transition and blend them together more seamlessly, and where volume levels needed improving. So I proceeded to adjust these areas of the clips as I worked.

By using a small amount of online research, gaining very helpful guidance from our tech adviser, and practising using the software on my own by exploring and testing different tools, I was able to become more familiar with sound editing, noise reduction and the Audition software on day 12. I was also seeing very good results in how much clearer each clip was becoming from using these effects.

Day 13 (Audition Sound Editing Scenes 1 - 15)

Day 13 Edit Log

• Continued work on noise and hiss reduction using my three techniques from day 12.

• Also began adjusting volume more so based on movements and location, such as footsteps coming closer or becoming heavier, as can be seen below...

• In scene 11 when Emily pulls out a stray hair, no sound can be heard. So I used my initiative to record a snap-like sound by clicking my knuckles at a distance, I then added this track to the scene 11 clip and it sounded very effective and realistic. The Director approved of this and the audio clip has remained in the film.

• Continued to work on each 'Solo' track to focus in each individual clip's audio.

• Scene 14 had the biggest issue with high frequencies, so I made sure before using Hiss Reduction and Spot Healing on each of the scene's clips, to remove the high frequencies first so that they were still visible for me before removal. Below are screenshot of one of the scene's audio clips before any changes, after the removal of the high frequency being silenced, and after using Hiss Reduction, we can see that the sound issues are drastically lowered...

Original - Before any changes

After high frequency removal - if we look closely we can see that the frequency has been cut out

After hiss reduction - we can see that the hiss (coloured red above) is almost completely removed

• Similarly, I often had to use internal camera audio for very loud sounds within the film, as they became too distorted on the external mic's audio. The camera's audio however always contains a low frequency hum/buzz that needed to be removed. But as this was low instead of high, it needed to be cut around the loud noises or dialogue in the clip, so that they weren't effected...

Low hum/buzz-like frequency removed in a scene 15 internal audio clip

• As I continued to work, I found that often parts of the scenes were too quiet, so I added looped atmos tracks to these scenes to create a more realistic atmosphere.

• Lastly, I found that the dialogue of the film - especially in scenes 14 and 15 were very quiet and contained a lot of hiss, so I was unable to remove this using my current tools without drastically losing the volume of the dialogue. I decided the the dialogue would need detailed, individual work separately from the non-dialogue clips.

Finishing my day's work at the end of scene 15, I made great progress with clearing up over half of the film's sound. I found that I was able to get into a routine and rhythm for my own ways of using and applying tools and effects to the sound, and was seeing more and more results.

Day 14 (Last Extra Shoot & Recording Day, Adding New Footage & Audio, and Audition Dialogue Sound Editing Scenes 5, 14 & 15)

Day 14 Edit Log

• After finishing our crew's morning and afternoon of filming the new opening drone shot, the photography car interior insert shot, and one piece of extra sound FX, I reviewed, organised and labelled all video and audio from the day in preparation for adding them to Premiere and Audition.

• I then selected the best opening drone shot with the Director and DOP, and cut the shot into the current timeline. I then realised however that my plan of pairing this with the scene 8 car shot and the photography insert shot wasn't going to work as they simply didn't cut together. So the Director and DOP went out on the same day with the same props and reshot the photography insert shot, this time with my new idea of adding the shot to scene 1, when Emily leaves the car and slams the door. I suggested someone slamming the car door with the photography equipment in the backseat, in order for it to look as if it was recorded at the exact same time as the original scene.

• I then quickly received the new photography shot and selected the best one with the Director, I rearranged some clips in scene 1, and replaced part of one shot with the new insert shot, synced with the sound of the car door slamming, and we felt that it cut together very well.

• With the new opening shot and insert shot in placed and cut together tightly, I synced up the day's audio and different audio clips from scene 1's original shoot. As this was not linked with the Audition project however, I needed to add markers to the areas of the Premiere timeline that had new, unedited sound clips that would need to be altered at a later date.

• I was then able to add the day's new recorded FX sounds to the Audition timeline (swigs from a beer bottle), as I knew it would help the sound design aspect of scene 15. The FX additions can be seen below...

• I then moved on to improving the film's dialogue in Audition. With help from our tech adviser, I learned to use the 'Noise Reduction' tool to clear the hiss sounds from the dialogue clips, without losing the dialogue's volume. By the end of day 14 I had drastically improved scene 5's dialogue (the first line of the film), and improved scene 14 and 15's dialogue.

This was a very productive day consisting of three separate shoots followed by incorporating extremely effective shots and audio to the film. I think from this day alone all of the film's visuals and audio had really started to tie together.

Day 15 (Tutor Viewing & Audition Sound Editing Scene 16-19)

Day 15 Edit Log

• Our tutor had his second viewing of the film, and was very pleased with the previous feedback changes that were made to the rough cut, along with the new opening shot and insert shot. He provided extremely helpful feedback on further changes, however as these could not be made while the audio was still in Audition, I needed to make them after this process and the soon approaching colour grading process were complete.

• Picking up from scene 16 onward, I began simultaneously working on noise & hiss reduction of all clips, as well as separately clearing up dialogue-based audio clips with the Noise Reduction tool. I felt confident in completing both of these tasks after becoming familiar with the methods on day 14.

• Also started to adjust the volume in scene 16 to slowly get louder to build to the intense moment of scene 17, along with raising the volume of scene 18 and 19 to heighten the drama.

• Continued to remove unneeded sounds such as birds or extra movement-based noises, alongside hiss and noise reduction, frequency removals, and using fade effects to blend the clips together. Below we can see the noise reduction tool used on dialogue clips, and a before an after of this process, where we can see how drastically the waveform of the hiss have dropped in volume and intensity...

Noise Reduction Process

Before Noise Reduction

After Noise Reduction

This day took slightly longer based on the extremely large amount of varied audio clips and dialogue across scenes 16 - 19, but I feel that I made great progress within sound editing the film, and was getting to grips with using the software.

Up to day 15, the film had drastically changed since the First Assembly Cut, the film was 4 minutes shorter, much tighter cut together, smoother, better paced, the opening of the film was more cinematic, Emily's career became more clear with an insert shot, and the sound editing process was in full swing. I think that by this point, the Director and I were very pleased with our progress, and I was feeling confident with how much I'd learned about using Audition, and how drastically I'd managed to improve the professional feel to the film. The next steps before finishing the Rough Cut and handing it over the our Colourist/DOP, were for me to finish the current sound editing process and place it back within the Premiere Pro timeline.

Major Project: Genre Conventions Research

Before beginning post-production on Double Exposure, I wanted to go further in depth into learning about our film's genre of a psychological thriller. This included learning about the film genre overall, the typical themes and conventions that can be found, and finding editing techniques, tips and examples that play to the strengths of the themes. I also went into a wide search for information on conventions of short films, however I was only able to find a small amount of effective information on the best ways to approach working on a short film. This collective research prior to my work was very helpful in deciding how to approach editing our film.

Psychological Thrillers

The 'thriller' genre is commonly known in film, with examples such as Taken, Inception, & Panic Room. However there are a lot of subgenres within the thriller genre itself, including psychological thrillers, such as Psycho, Black Swan, & Gone Girl. Below is an accurate description of a psychological thriller:

"a psychological thriller is a thriller subgenre that focuses on the unstable emotional or mental states of the characters, often in combination with elements of mystery, suspense or psychological horror" [1]

- Overall, we can gather from the definition of this genre that its main focuses are emotion, a character's mental state, and often incorporating mystery and suspense that puts the audience on edge to differ these elements to the drama genre. This a very accurate way of describing Double Exposure, a film with a seemingly unstable/mysterious main character, a lot of emotion, and an element of mystery before the story's dramatic plot twist. Therefore our film can definitely be defined as a psychological thriller.

Themes & Conventions

Within my research, I explored the most common conventions & themes within the subgenre, allowing me to understand the strongest and key parts of a psychological thriller that I would need to draw the most attention to and make the most entertaining and dramatic in post-production. Below are my findings on the common themes of the subgenre:

"There are two overarching themes that tend to pop up: guilt and obsession. Sometimes, each of these themes can generally stand alone as the core of a film, but oftentimes, they are combined with a context of ambiguity regarding what is real and what is imagined." [2]

- Guilt, obsession, and ambiguity about real life and imagination. This is a fantastic relation to Double Exposure's story. Focusing on guilt and obsession, our main character is obsessively compulsive in her day-to-day seemingly perfected life, and eventually, we understand that she is feeling overpowering guilt for her actions in the plot twist of her accidentally killing her boyfriend. Lastly, one of the largest themes of our film is the mystery of what was real within the story and what wasn't, as we find out that our character has been in denial and creating her own reality in her mind. Learning from this, I knew that I needed to maintain a large focus on these three themes in the film.

"Psychological and emotional stress are the engine of this subgenre." [1]

- This a more generalised description of a psychological thriller's themes, but it's extremely accurate in explaining that for a story to fit into this subgenre, the core of the plot needs to focus on emotion and psychological stress. Again, this is evident in Double Exposure throughout the film, as in moments we see emotion peak through the character's vacant expression, and her emotion becomes more overpowering as we get further into the story. I planned to hold on a lot of expression/emotion based shots in the film to really highlight this.

"In a classic thriller we have good guys vs. bad guys, with quite clear distinctions and the corresponding actions. And even when the antagonist is obscure or unknown, we never doubt that the protagonist is the good guy. In a psychological thriller, however, the nature of the protagonist it is often questioned, and sometimes good or benign characters become or are revealed to be monstrous." [1]

- This informative piece highlights the differences between a psychological thriller and a classic thriller, as within the subgenre, we are much more likely as an audience to question the intentions and mental state of the main character. This was very helpful in determining for me whether Double Exposure was a thriller or a psychological thriller, and as there are no clear antagonists and protagonists within the film (at least until the end), and we question who really is the 'good guy' in the film, the character types of Double Exposure are clearly that of a psychological thriller. I noted that I needed to toy with the audience in the edit, allowing them to decide for themselves part of the way through the film who they think was the bad guy and the good guy through specific angles, shot types and lengths, and pacing.


From the information above, I gathered that the generalised most common themes of the subgenre are suspense, emotion, and psychological drama. So I decided to research tips on editing to each themes' strengths.

Suspense
When learning about the best ways to edit a film to highlight the suspenseful moments and draw the audience into this, I found a great article that provided tips on this:

"Tip #1: Give You Character Breathing Room

For deeply suspenseful editing, try giving your characters a few extra seconds of screen time. Create a slow, methodical pacing in your scene, showcasing close-ups.

If you are in the process of revealing an important plot element, or simply establishing the anxious nature of the character surrounding their situation, allow the shot to linger before cutting away. The longer you hold on your character, the more anxious the audience will become when the stakes get high." [3]

- This was very insightful for me, and was kept fresh in my mind for post-production. Within the script, I envisioned that a lot of suspenseful moments would linger, but I wanted to make sure that that would come across in the visuals of the film, so I planned to hold for as long as necessary on the most uncomfortable and suspenseful moments.

"Tip #2: Time Your Reveal

Suspense in film is based around the anticipation of an upcoming event, and how the story unfolds in the attempt to get there. As you decide where to place your reveal, allow your cuts to build without becoming too hasty." [3]

- Attached to this tip, the article provided an example of slow suspense scenes that are well timed with music to provide intensity, along with making the 'reveal' moments to be even more shocking, in The Dark Knight:

- We can see from this that the visuals start at a slow, uncomfortable pace, and in-line with the music track picking up it's intensity and pacing, the cuts of the scene speed up and intensify with it. Allowing for the audience to become more unconformable and nervous before the reveal moment of the character's shockingly disfigured face.

Although there aren't any moments within Double Exposure that are as visually shocking, this was great advice for me in remembering to let a scene build to a revealing moment - such as scene 19's death scene, starting slow and building to an argument that cuts faster and faster (without missing out on any content), before a jolting, shocking moment where Dan falls and hits his head with a WHACK!.

Drama & Emotion

As the dramatics and emotion of a story-line often tie in together, I researched the best ways to heighten the emotion within our film in post-production:

"The most dramatic and enlightening moments often happen very quickly, which means that if we leave them at their original tempo in our timeline, they probably won't have as much of an impact on the audience as they should. 

That's where temporal decompression comes into play. Once you've identified the most emotional moments in your scene, you can artificially add time between spoken phrases in order to make every word more impactful. Essentially, you're creating dramatic pauses to amplify each and every word, which gives the audience time to digest and ponder what is being said, automatically giving it more dramatic power." [4]

- This differs largely to suspenseful moments, as typically suspense either stays at a slow, uneasy pacing, or slowly picks up the pace. But the tip above states that to heighten emotion and drama, the pacing needs to have a continuous flow but allowing for a character's reactive moments. This had me making large considerations of which moments needed to heighten the most suspense (a lingering shot: "what's he going to do?!") and the most emotion (flowing, expressive cuts: "everything he's saying is clearly hurting her more with each word").

Learning about these themes and the ways to play to their strengths was extremely helpful for incorporating into my own editing techniques, and since conducting this research, I have made sure to incorporate all of these tips and considerations to really strengthen the film.

Short Film Editing Tips

As Double Exposure is a low budget short film, I found it to be helpful to conduct extra research into editing tips within these types of productions as well as just psychological thriller editing tips.

In the first article that I found, professional Editor Misha Tenenbaum answers 'Do short films require a specific approach to editing?'

A: "Efficiency, efficiency,  efficiency.

When editing a short film constantly remind yourself that you’ve only got between 5 and 10 minutes before your movie needs to be over. If the scene, shot, moment, isn’t great, get it OUT.

Another form of efficiency is the story arc. Make sure that every story line pays off, meaning if you suggest something it needs to come back again sometime during the film in a changed way." [5]

- This advice definitely highlights how important it is to only use the strongest scenes, moments, and shots of the film, as the length of the film is much shorter than a feature. So I made sure to remember that although I wanted to linger on suspense and highlight each powerful moment, I couldn't allow any scenes to drag within such a short time frame. This also flags up how important it is for the Editor to be quite brutal with removing parts of a film, as the Director may be very attached to certain scenes or shots. But if they don't work for the film, then I need to take them out and help the Director to understand why that strengthens the overall film.


Lastly, I found a guide on helpful considerations to make when editing a short film:

• "Start strong

• Simplify your message

• Add drama and predictability

• Repetition increases impact

• Experiment with background and movement

• Effects can be fun, but be careful

• Match imagery with music

• Utilize local sounds

• Audio can speak for itself

• Create original title cards

• Incorporate humor

• But don't overdo the humor

• Don't over-rely on voiceovers

• Work with external footage" [6]

- I was aware that each of these tips would apply to individual, specific scenes and moments of the film, but I made sure to keep them in mind when approaching all aspects of post-production.

This research was very effective in helping me to define and further understand Psychological Thrillers and their themes and conventions, as well as understanding just how heavily the subgenre and it's typical content conventions connect and relate to Double Exposure. Along with gathering up a lot of extremely helpful editing tips to strengthen the film that have been very useful during post-production and are making the film more and more professional and exciting.

References

1. Creeping Up On Psychological Thrillers

2. Common Themes in Psychological Thrillers

3. 5 Tips for Building Better Cinematic Suspense

4. A Simple Editing Trick to Inject Drama Into Your Films

5. Tips on Editing Short Films

6. 34 tips and examples for creating short films - directing, shooting, editing!

Major Project: First Assembly Result

After the extra shoot and sound day, I completed the last day of First Assembly Editing in-line with my deadline, ready to begin the Rough Cut.

Day 6 (Extra Footage, Recorded Audio & ADR Additions)

Day 6 Edit Log

The final day of First Assembly editing consisted of the following...

• Asking our Producer to make contact with our two main actors, and requesting that they record ADR for us and send it over as soon as possible, due to continuity and distortion issues.

• Receiving Rosie (Emily)'s ADR recordings on the same day, reviewing them, and using them to replace quiet and distorted audio. This was one recording of her crying to use in the shed in scene 18, where I found her crying to be too inconsistent and quiet, and the other was a recording of her scream in scene 19 after Dan's death, as her in-scene screams were too distorted and unfix-able. The ADR replacement had much better results.

• Adding the previously labelled and organised footage from our extra shoot day. This involved adding the scene 7 shot of Emily's make-up being placed down in order for the clips to cut together, the shot of her car pulling up in scene 8 for these clips to cut together, the transition shot of the shed, pulling focus to the house to connect scenes 18 and 19, and the shot of the bedroom door being slammed on us to effectively finish scene 21.

• Adding the previously labelled and organised audio recordings from our extra shoot day to the sequence. This included adding SFX such as the sounds of a corkscrew being used and placed down in scene 3, a towel and clothing being used in scene 4, an alarm clock sounding in scene 7, the use of a laptop in scene 13, the sounds of Emily moving dinnerware in scene 23, and multiple replacement atmos tracks. An example of complete sound replacement where there were continuity issues in scene 4 can be seen below...

• Using 'Exponential Fade' effects to blend the new and original audio together.

Results

Overall, the workflow, process, and result of the First Assembly cut was very good, with it already transitioning into a rough cut during my time working on it. The development and improvements since my initial work on the dailies of the film had come very far. By the end of First Assembly, the film was much more tightly cut together, had all audio replaced and synced with external audio and replacement ADR where needed, and had sound design-based SFX added - both of which had drastically improved the actual flow and realism of the film so far, pick-up shots added, J and L cuts were incorporated for a smoother flow of each scene, and everything was well prepared for beginning a proper Rough Cut.

Some areas of the First Assembly were challenging, such as syncing audio that had very minor peaks in their waveform, or having to source and sync up audio with sound from other clips and scenes where the correct audio wasn't recorded. But I feel that I handled it well, and sought help from our technical adviser and crew at appropriate times, as well as working with the crew to plan the extra shots and audio that were needed to make the film work.

With the film currently sitting at approximately 18 minutes, my next steps were to begin the Rough Cut, working with the director to cut down the film's length to an eventual 14 minutes and to tidy up and heighten the quality of the film. Along with our tutor's first viewing, and working off of his feedback to further improve the current cut.