When beginning the editing process for my drama piece, I started by placing all of my clips into Bin's and I titled them based on the shot type. This helped me during editing as it was an easy way for me to find the different clips that I wanted and it kept the workspace tidy.
At the start of the video we had to add in a title of the video's name, which is 'Rebecca Bennett Directs Pretty Little Liars'. I decided to choose a nice and simple font for the first part of the title and then I took an image, of the actual title of the show, from google images and added it to my title. I did this because I thought it was a nice effect and it's clear as to which TV series I have chosen. I had to experiment with the different background colours as I wasn't sure if the title worked better on a white background with black writing or the other way round. I eventually decided that it looked better on a black background with white writing as it stood out well and it's quite clear.
The sound design of our projects is one of the key elements for this unit, so I decided to spend quite a bit of time experimenting with the sounds. Due to the first scene being set in a living room, it's quite hard to create a realistic atmosphere without being too artificial with the sound effects. I added a dog bark at the beginning of the scene to make it sound like it was coming from outside the house. I added this to my video due to the creepy and quite intense atmosphere that I wanted to try and create. I also added this to the end of the video as the end of the scene is quite sad and tense and I felt that the dog bark adds a little bit of mystery to the scene.
Due to the atmosphere of the living room being quite boring on it's own, I decided to add some instrumental music in the background. The music I chose is quite intense and adds a sense of mystery which is something I wanted to create in the scene, mainly through the sound design. When looking for royalty free music I found quite a few different types that all add tension. There was one that I liked but it was a bit too dramatic to use for the whole scene. So instead I decided to cut an intense part of the soundtrack out and add it into parts of the scene that I felt needed to be a bit more dramatic. I decreased the volume of both soundtracks so they weren't too prominent and so they didn't take the attention away from the dialogue being spoken by the actresses.
Some other sound effects I added was the pulling of the cloth from the box. Originally I wasn't going to add it, but I decided that it would add to the scene and make it seem more natural. After the filming was over, I decided to record myself saying the lines of dialogue that come from the dolls. In the editing process, I added the audio to the sequence and added the 'AUPitch' effect to it. I then adjusted the levels to make it higher and less natural than my normal voice. I think these pieces of dialogue work well as they sound like they were to come from a doll and not a person, which is the effect I was after.
For the outside scene I had a different sound design planned. I added outside ambience to make it seem natural, and I also added some birds chirping in the background to make it more realistic. Due to having the dog barking in the last scene I thought about adding it into the second scene just to carry the atmosphere through both scenes. I added it to see what effect it put on the video, and overall I thought it worked and sounded natural along with the outside ambience. I made sure to adjust the volume when the camera is inside the summer house to add the realism. After adding the effects I didn't think it needed a soundtrack in the background so instead I added the dramatic piece of music that featured in the previous scenes, and I placed it near the part where the doll is being introduced to add tension.
After creating the sound design I moved on to colouring the footage and making it look realistic. The lighting in the first scene is quite over exposed and it's very clear in the original footage. This meant that I had to experiment with the different video effects in order to reduce the exposer and make the colour more natural. The first effect I used was the three way corrector as the footage is quite yellow and orange and I needed to add a blue/green undertone. With this effect I also adjusted the lighting and made it slightly darker while keeping the colour clear. I changed the saturation in some of the clips to either make it more saturated or less saturated to balance the over exposed area of the shot. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast of the image, and the levels were adjusted to make the image darker and less bright.
With the outside scene I didn't have to make too much of an adjustment to the colour, but I did want to continue with the blue/green undertone. For this I used the three way corrector. In the scene, the character walks into the summer house, and you can't really see her face. This meant that I had to adjust some of the levels and duplicated the original image then change the blend mode in order to get some light onto the characters face.
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