Editing and Post Production Notes

Now that me and Conor have collected all our footage, and cut it down choosing exactly the footage that we want to use in our final cut, we are ready to start editing our footage, this will require us using Final Cut Express, a piece of software which we both did some research into before we started this project, but me and Conor will still be using online tutorials to pick up some much more advanced techniques.

Smoke Effect:
When the central protagonist is in the camp-site he is distracted from looking into the tent from the dead body because he hears the sound of a crow, making him look up and notice black smoke rising from a house, this alarms him to move on.
I need to work out how to create this black smoke onto Final Cut Express, to do this I searched through the Internet. I found a website called Detention Films, which sells effects for Final Cut but also gives some away for free. On the website I managed to find a free effect for black smoke. I have downloaded the video:




I have found a video on youtube which teaches me how to import this into final cut express and remove the green background so that it just looks like there was an explosion in the background, behind the woodland that will distract the central protagonist.

Sound of a Crow:
When the central protagonist is at the camp-site and as he is about to pick up the dead body by the farmhouse, he hears the sound of a crow which distracts him from what he was doing and makes him run away. I have been searching the Internet and have managed to find a website which gives away free sound effects that are also copyright-free. (http://www.ilovewavs.com/Effects/Birds/Birds.htm)
I then just need to import the sound clip into Final Cut and add it over the clip where the central protagonist looks up. I may need to cut down the clip a little as it lasts about 10 seconds, and this is far too long.

Lighting Adjustments:
I have noticed wile watching all of my clips that the lighting is quite variable and changes a lot in scenes, to avoid confusion of time to the audience, and to create a more horror feel to the film I will need to darken down some of the clips. The final cut website tells me how I can do this, so I am going to use the video tutorial placed on there to help me learn how to adjust he lighting levels.

Voice Over:

Me and Conor have decided that when we had our Final Cut, we needed to add in a voice over of a radio station to help anchor the preferred reading of our text. We will record a voice of a news reporter using our own voices, there is now a voice recorder in the media department we can use to record this. We will record the news report, choosing the words carefully to anchor our preferred reading, we will then add this over our soundtrack and add in the sound of radio frequency waves to signify it is a news report.