the first draft of scene 4

{In earlier drafts of this scene I had not edited the sound, however, in later drafts I will unlink the sound from the video file and delete it. I had planned to wait until my entire film was completed to remove the audio and choose appropriate music/sound effects, but now these drafts will show my editing process an technique only. Please just mute the video.}

I  filmed the footage for this scene on the 23rd of April, using a tripod and a canon camera. While setting up for each shot it was necessary to adjust the shutter speed and aperture so the shot was fully in focus and well lit. I took multiple shots and referenced my storyboards frequently, always taking into account continuity and how these shots were going to look  in post production. After filming, on Monday the 26th I searched through my shots and organised the files. Gathering all the takes from that day and separating them into groups (grouping the multiple takes of each shot and putting them in the order I will edit them into).  From that point it was easy to search through the different takes and determine which was most suitable, judging based on technical skill, continuity, and how well it would match on action. The outtakes were then separated from the selected shots so it wouldn't cause any confusion during editing. 

This experimental draft was where the scene started to fully come together, by this point I had began to match the character’s movement for continuity purposes. However, there were still many flaws. Firstly, the character had taken a full six seconds to walk onscreen. In my opinion, this drags the shot out and ruins the immersion for the audience. The match on action between the two trees wasn’t cut as well as I would have wanted it to, I felt that I should quicken the pace of the edit in the next draft. The section I really wanted to improve on was where the shot/reverse shot sequence began. The ‘reverse’ shots felt like they dragged on unnecessarily. The cuts to the reverse were too delayed and the reverse shots themselves went on for too long.  In the next draft I will use the razor tool to carefully shorten the length of these shots, until I believe the pace seems correct. The pacing for edits is really important, a viewer can feel when a scene isn’t paced correctly. As a horror film, this scene specifically shouldn’t drag.  I experimented with non-continuity jump cuts with the extreme close up of the character’s eyes. I was attempting to temporarily break continuity to make the audience feel as unsettled as the character did in that moment. Finally, in this draft I decided to see how the scene would look if I cut the last shot of the character walks away. The shot I chose to end it with is a close up of the character reading and scrunching up a threatening note, in terms of continuity I feel this works better. With the past drafts there wasn’t much indication the character was going to walk towards the tree with the close up, I believe keeping the very last shot of the character walking towards the tree breaks continuity and ruins the tense atmosphere I created.