Group - The Final Cut

Our final finished production.

MM: Colour Grading

I did the colour grading for the opening. This was left till the end, due to us finalising the sound mix and still adding in visual effects. Grading would slow down anything else we did after that. I discussed with Taran the kind of look we wanted the lesson prior, showing some test graded shots.

I wanted to mainly emphasize the two different colour palettes of the two coinciding scenes. So the house scenes were a dim yellow/brown tone, while the party scenes were a contrasty multicoloured tone, strengthening the glow stick worn by everybody.

Another feature that I wanted to use to colour grade was selectively enhancing important parts of the frame, to draw the views eyes to the correct part of the image. I did this mainly with the actors faces, making them more contrasted and sharp, especially when they were in dark environments. Another enhancement was the picture frame near the beginning. For some of the establishing environment shots, I darkened the brighter outer parts of the image, and so making the important parts more prevalent by comparison, to make sure that the focus was either in the centre or to a specific area.

The look of various David Fincher films, and so the work of cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth was the main influence for the look of our opening. But we made an effort to make the lighting as close as we'd like to the final image in camera, such as turning off and on certain lights in the house. This meant that nothing drastic was required in grading to get the desired look that we wanted. At an audience screening, we got feedback that commended the colour grading, while the footage shown had not been graded yet and was the raw footage. 

MM: Visual Effects

I handled the visual effects for the opening as I have the most experience in After Effects. The first problem that we had to solve on shooting was getting the mug to fall down and the coffee to fall out. We were worried that it might stain the carpet and would be overall a very big hassle to re-shoot, as well as protecting the camera. So we settled with adding in steam for the wider shot showing the mugs and Ollie behind them, as you couldn't see inside the mug, we thought that this would work. The other shot we had to worry about was the mug falling from a low angle to the right of the camera. I decided to add the liquid in post as I thought that with the shot being so short and with motion blur, I could make it convincing. 

The next major visual effect shot was at the end, with Ollie getting hit with the hammer. For this we decided to combine practical and visual effects to get the best result. We planned to shoot it from a certain angle so that you couldn't see the distance between the hammer and Ollie's face, and so it made them appear close together. This was shot with no practical blood as we needed him to not be bloody before the hit and his face would be obscured after the hit. Firstly I made the actual hit appear more impactful, by putting the hammer closer to his face at the single frame of impact. This greatly increased the effect of the hit. Next I added the blood vfx. The main difficulty was the tracking of the footage as it was so shaky, but it turned out well. I didn't want to overly emphasize the blood, and have it be more realistic, as it fit the tone that we were going for. I put the effects in a blending mode, so that they would adapt to the changing colours of the footage and be more realistic. 

The rest of the shots were really simple like stabilizing the tracking shots with the dolly to make them completely smooth, and removing myself from a few frames in which I could be seen in the mirror. 

Group: Music

Both of us had a similar sense of what kind of music we would like to have in the piece, mainly from our primary influence of Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014). We liked the digital and grungy style of composers Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross. Taran specifically liked the style of Japanese composer Yoko Kanno. 

I (Mishaal) had recently purchased a soundtrack pack from Triune Films at a reduced cost,
with the intent of using it in the piece as it was a horror music pack.

This pack was quite dense with 10 sound types, and each of those with 3 different levels of suspense, and then each of these track split into their different instruments. We picked one track in particular which we liked. We started with looking at the different suspense levels of the track. We used the low suspense track for the first part. But there was a section we liked, as it was a good ambient part. But this wasn't long enough to sustain the length of the clip, so we stretched it out while still keeping the pitch the same. Lastly, I (Mishaal) found previously an audio effect called "Guitar Suite" in Premiere Pro which when added to a clip, makes it sound as if it was being played on an electric guitar. This fit exactly the tone that we were going for. We played around with some of the presets and eventually got to what we wanted. It was grungy but still able to hear the orchestral nature of the track. 

Then we took the end of the high suspense track, when it built to a crescendo, as the ending music for the piece. We aligned the music note change at the end to the reveal of Lara as the antagonist. This worked well, as then the shot cut to back and the title faded on, with still some hints of the music playing in the background. We moved the title around to best fit to when it should fade on.

TK - Titles

We had decided from the start that our titles would appear over the party scenes exclusively, as this would set them to a good rhythm and pace. We began work in After Effects, choosing a font based on our previous research into titles of the thriller genre.

The first titles we made, denoting the casting of Ollie Bignell and Lara Pain in leading roles, lasted for about two seconds each, and are the first titles to appear in the party scenes. We wanted the titles colours to interact somewhat with the changing colours of the party scenes so we put them on the "difference" blending mode and this fit very well. We tried out overlaying the titles centre frame, however this proved too intrusive to the visuals of the shots, and what worked much better was placing each title to a different side, placing Ollie's name to the left and Lara's to the right. 

Lara's is especially well placed, as the text appears over her figure in the frame, forming an instant link for the audience.

We had two design ideas for the end title:

We settled with version 2, as it fit better with the intended music that we wanted in the end scene. It helped settle in the audience after the violent hit has been suggested. Originally it was planned that we would have the title appear on the hit of the hammer to Ollie's head, but this felt too aggressive, so I had the idea of having the title fade on after a short blank screen. The refinement of this would have to suite how the music would play out but both of us favoured this change.

Group: Audience Screening and Feedback

Notes from Audience about our piece in the current state:
Strengths:
 - Good inter-cutting between scenes
 - Dynamic camera movement
 - Good contrast in sound between house and party scenes
 - Looks very cinematic
 - Colour grading (this was the raw footage)
 - Good range of shots

Improvements:
 - Get some more diegetic sounds, make them more prevalent
 - Put the titles in the house scenes, on the still shots.

A major thing that we got from this screening was how effective the sound and visuals were with the hammer hit towards the end. This caused the students to react in the visceral way that we intended, and so that told us that it was very effective.

Points to take from this feedback: Our plan was to keep the titles exclusively on the party scenes, to fit the rhythm and to not distract from the intensity of the fight in the house. We now plan to move onto getting the sound mix finalised.

MM - Sound Design

I handled most of the sound design for the opening. I knew that the most crucial part of this would be the fight sounds as just the production sound recorded on the day didn't get the intensity of the fight across as the actors weren't actually hitting each other but only staging it for the camera. But I learned that not only is the actual impact sound important in establishing the hit, but also the woosh from the arm. This made it more dynamic. I searched the internet for such fight sounds. Primarily on freesound.org.

I decided to go find a pack of the fight sounds presumably by the same person, as this would have a greater consistency between variations in the hit sounds. Luckily I found some good packs online that were free to download. Most of the recorded audio good to use as it featured lots of foley sounds like clothes and grabs. Some sections had to be cut, when me and Taran could be heard. 

The other sounds like the phone clicks and the coin toss needed to be there to make it believable and so create a rich sound scape. The other important set of sounds we needed was of our main lead actor Ollie and his strangling sounds. The ones recorded on set seemed a little unrealistic as we hadn't known what strangling sounded like on the day so we just told him to cough and act like he was short of breath. It was difficult to secure him in a similar location to get the correct ambiance, so we resorted to using Taran as the voice of Ollie, hoping that we would change the pitch of his voice to match.

But this seemed strange and still didn't sound right, so only a little of this was used. Then I thought of looking through the other takes and shots from the day and extracting certain realistic sounding parts and inserted them into gaps in areas of silence, where he would still be making noise. I also tried to put them in parts where we couldn't see his mouth as then it would be clear that the noise was added in post. 

We have not started on putting in the music yet, as we think we could align some of the beats to the hits in the music. 

TK - Edit: Party Scenes

Overall, our party sequences were less planned than the house scenes. The continuity overall is looser, and we knew there were certain shots and scenes that would be required, and that we'd planned to easily fit into the sequence as a whole. The party as a whole is edited as more of a montage than the house attack, which allows it to be more of a spectacle at some points - we were both very proud of the incredibly shot and lit scenes when we watched them back.

In our party scenes, we came to the conclusion that it would be best to overlay several shots and soundtracks on top of each other, which would create a bustling and intense atmosphere and really emphasise the verisimilitude of the party. This involved unlinking the sound and visuals of several of our shots, and cutting them to create a sense of rhythm. We had to select these clips carefully, as we needed to make sure Lara - in the role of Giulia - was still prevalent enough in the shots to be recognised as one of the main characters in the scene. This was difficult, as she wasn't always the one motivating the cuts, however with the various close ups and shots that focused on her character, she held enough prevalence in the film to help construct meaning.

TK - Edit: House Scenes

After we had put together a basic rough cut, with most of our basic match cuts in place, we began the process of refining. We began with our house and fight scenes, as those were already quite well structured, having carefully storyboarded and filmed for continuity.

We struck a dilemma with the length, as it was far over the two minute guideline we were given to stick to. We had to cut out a few minor parts of the fight and chase sequence that wouldn't jeopardise our continuity in any way. In the end, this worked out in our favour, and the film flowed just as well without the scenes as it would have done with them - perhaps even better, as the pacing this way round is more snappy and concise.

The match cuts were something we had mostly planned and storyboarded for, with cuts such as Alex (Ollie Bignell) on the phone, to Giulia (Lara Pain) on the phone, with the phone in exactly the same place in frame. Through these we wanted to help better construct meaning and narrative in an already complex story structure.

However, some of the match cuts were unplanned, and just came to us in the edit. The best example of this was when we juxtaposed the scene of Alex being chased from the room by the assailant, and both of them sprinting through the door, with the shot of Giulia leaving the party. We were amazed that the character blocking proved identical enough for the two to match cut perfectly, and was a kind of visual foreshadowing, as Giulia took the place of the assailant in the frame - and of course she actually is the assailant, the audience just isn't aware of it yet.

Overall, the cutting rate in the house sequences is fast and intense, something especially emphasised when Alex (Ollie Bignell) runs up the stairs to hide in the room. The shots we selected are short, unsteady and fast-moving, adding to the audience visceral pleasure of the chase scene. We also varied this rate at some points, juxtaposing the intense action and visceral violence with a few more calm breather-type moments, giving the action an appropriate pace.

TK - Edit: The Starting Point

Once we had collated all of our footage, we proceeded to organise and cutting together some basic sense of continuity into them, whilst juxtaposing the scenes in the house and intercutting them with the scenes of the party. We went through as a pair, dragging and dropping any take of a clip as a placeholder, and starting to carefully construct the meaning and narrative of our piece.

 This was a challenge, as we had to carefully consider from our plan just how all of the scenes would cut together, and how we would pace them.

However to begin with, we were only working to create a rough cut, and we would refine and flesh out each scene and sequence later on, once we had a better sense of timings and how our match cuts would work.