Editing the New Scenes & Starting the Sound Design | Development

Before adding in any of the new scenes we had previously shot, Nisserin put all of the scene sequences into one sequence. This meant that we could watch all scenes together as one, but also easily edit the scenes in their own individual sequence. Once this was done she started to edit the new scenes, starting with scene 1, 2 & 3.
We used the same set up as before, where we had the shot list, shoot notes & script on different monitors and then the main monitors had the editing software. Nisserin followed the shot list mostly, but there were a few more shots we got on the shoot day, and they worked better than the original shots we had planned.

When seeing the three first scenes, before the title sequence, now edited together roughly and in our main sequence, it makes the whole video feel smoother and more put together. It also gave us an idea as to what our first few scenes will be like and whether they are attractive enough for the audience to want to keep watching. I think scene 3 might be a bit too long, but I don't want to make any drastic editing decisions without all of the scenes being edited.

When Nisserin edited together scene 12, I realised I didn't really like that we cut to the WS and I thought it might work better if we cut to the 'Briar Lodge' shot, that we have used in the beginning of scene 2, and then straight to the 2-S. This is just an idea, and we're going to see what both ideas will look like. Also, when editing Scene 13, Nisserin tried the green screen of the security camera and I really like the way it looks. She gave it a desaturated effect and added a green screen overlay, and I think it looks realistic and works really well. At the end of the scene we couldn't decide whether to cut to the security camera or cut straight to scene 14. Upon watching it cut to the security camera first, I'm not so keen on it but we'll try both ways and see what works best.

After Nisserin had edited together all of the scenes roughly (including scenes 14, 15, 16 & 17), we decided that I would start working on some sound design elements such as sound effects. By having some of these elements in the video, it brings it to life and gives us a good idea as to what it will look like in the final edit.
For scene 1, I added some of the chatting atmosphere we recorded, to make the fake talking look realistic. I also added a music track that sounds like background music that would be played in the background of these type of events. I then added a louder recording of the corkscrew landing in the cup to exaggerate it for our rough cut viewing.
I skipped scenes 2 & 3 and went straight to scene 6, 7, 8 where I did quite a lot of the sound design. That was the first scene I found the zoom recording for and added it into the scene, so I just made sure I added some more sound effects like a doorbell sound and so on. I started to do the same with scene 9, but I didn't get round to finishing it completely, but there is still time for me to do that later.
The scenes in between 9 & 17 didn't need any major sound effects that affected the story, so I skipped straight to scene 17. I added the sound effects of the notifications on the iPad, and I duplicated it a few times to show that Annie is getting a lot of likes on her instagram post.
I also added some stings - that we won't use due to us having a composer making us music - just so we could see how that link will work.

Now that we have all scenes edited roughly, and some of the sound design is present, we can show Simon our rough cut and see what improvements he thinks we should make. I think all of the scenes go really well together and the story is told well. There are definitely parts of the video that need to be adjusted and maybe cut down but we don't want to do anything else until Simon has seen it. Overall, I'm happy with our rough cut so far.