Ollie Tristram

Tuesday 24th February 2009

With approximately 40mins of footage in hand, spread over two Mini-DV tapes (one from the Sony Z1 and one from the Sony Handycam), I was ready to capture the footage to my computer, via Adobe Premiere CS3.

Today simply involved just capturing all the footage, but instead of capturing it off one tape in one go I thought it would make editing easier if I captured each scene separately and labeled them all individually, this way I could drag and drop each part onto the timeline in the correct order and cut the starts and ends off, rather than going through a massive bit of footage finding where every part needed to be cut, and then moving it around that way.

Wednesday 25th February 2009

Today involved me sorting between wanted and unwanted footage and then arranging it on the timeline in the order of the narrative. I quickly began to realise I was not going to be able to fit all of my scripted action into 6 minutes. So I thought I would make a full length version which includes everything I have scripted and then cut that down into the required 6 minutes. This way I can showcase my versatility in editing further.

With 14 minutes worth of intended footage arranged on the timeline, I began post-production on the clips. One of the first things I did was to use colour correction on a few of the introductory clips which I didn't white balance quite right as they were too warm in colour, so I reduced the Red and increased the Blue to try and give a more realistic colour and match the first shot which I did white balance properly. In terms of colour editing, I also increased the green on all the nightvision shots, just to emphasise further that it was using an infra-red nightvision light on the camera. I also boosted the contrast a bit to make the blacks even darker and create an even more eerie atmosphere.

Next, I went on to sorting out that intentionally 'messy' introduction to the film. All I did was use a Gaussian blur effect on the footage so much so that people's features were unable to make out, with the intention of adding the film title on later.

With all my footage looking like it was supposed to look, all I had left now was to add titles and audio. I started with the titles, finding a font from Da Font which was clear to read but looked like a horror text keeping with the film's style. I used a Text preset that gave it a glow, but used a small grey to white gradient and changed the glow to a dull green. I added the title over the blurred introductory shots using a crossfade to fade each section of text into the other. I then went on to adding credits at the end of the film - showing the film title in full, who made it (me), the cast, and a special thanks to the people at The Salutation Inn for letting me film there. And finally, I added text in the corner of every new scene using the Handycam to show that time had paased a lot more than it actually had, to make out that Daniel and the volunteers had spent a long time in the cave, as was intended in the narrative.

Thursday 26th February 2009

With the titles in place all I had left to do was audio. I didn't want a soundtrack for the film as it was in the style of a video diary and that wouldn't have a soundtrack over it, therefore it would sound odd. So instead I went on to add sound effects.

Now I had always intended for there to be a Sheep sound effect and during the shoot we even had to act as if we heard one. I searched the internet and found a Sheep 'Baa' sound on a Sheep website, which was mildly amusing. I had to edit the sound to fit in with two locations it would be used - a cave, and a bedroom. I opened up Logic Studio and applied a considerable amount reverb to the sound effect for the cave, also reducing the dryness of the original sample. For the room, I added a small bit of reverb again as the original sound was fairly flat and must have been recorded outside.

One part of the film is where Warren becomes possessed slightly, and I needed a demonic growling sound to overlay while he had a fit. I did this by recording myself into my flatmates microphone in ProTools and then headed into Logic again to edit the sample. Again adding reverb due to the cave, but as the camera approached Warren the dynamics needed to increase, but I sorted that in Premiere.

Another significant piece of audio was an eerie and strange royalty-free apple loop I found in Logic which I simply lay over the credits.

And finally I found a royalty-free cave ambiance sample, which I overlay on any of the cave sections of the film. When the film is watched back you can hear the occasional drips and a low rumble which really adds to the atmosphere of being inside a cave.

One I had all the audio balanced I wanted to master it. I exported all the audio tracks as a stereo uncompressed WAVE file and imported all 150mb of it into Logic. To master it, I boosted the levels (as the original overall levels were fairly quiet), used a limiter and also added compression. Unfortunately, when I initially recorded the footage on my Handycam the sound was clipping/distorting whenever I spoke. But with a little help from Logic I managed to remove most of the clipping by using a High Shelf Filter, and it came out quite nicely.

With the footage arranged, video effects rendered, titles on and audio processed I was ready to export my full 14 minute 30 second film. Now the task was to be how I would cut it down to fit 6 minutes... hmmm...