Film Review Blog: Editing- Turning Advice Into Something Twice As Nice

    Hi there! Today marks the day that my team and I have completed the final edits to our project. After analyzing and evaluating all of the constructive criticisms I received, I figured it would be best to just get the changes I wanted to make out of the way and call it a day! This is especially because today marks the first official day of our spring break and I'm going to need a mental timeout from all school-related activities. With that being said, let's get into how I made the edits I discussed in yesterday's blog!

    Beginning first with the bulk of my editing work is none other than making auditory modifications. When I began I determined to work in order of ease so at the top of my list was muffling the police audio and quieting the song that plays in the final scene of our short film. I was able to change both of these aspects by working in the Fairlight tab. There, I was able to alter the equalization and as such alter how muffled an inputted audio sounds. The higher the frequency, the more clear the audio, whereas the lower the frequency, the more distant it sounds, the latter of which was the effect I was shooting for. To give you an idea of the exact values I used to achieve the effect you will hear in our short film, I've attached an image below.

    Decreasing the volume of the music proved to be even easier, although I did decide to take a more complicated route to achieve the intended effect. Instead of just lowering the entire snippet of sound, I split it into three segments, making it about a medium volume before the police audio is introduced, making it extremely low, and having the song increase in volume once the police sound clip had elapsed.

    Moving on, I also found a way to fill the gap in ambient audio when the primary subject makes a comment about seeing their forgotten partner on the news. Obviously, their remark is the most important piece of information being conveyed seeing as it tells the audience that they had in fact lost all memory of their partner and relationship. Having said that, I knew that once I had created an audio I would need it to be as quiet and almost indiscernible as possible, so decreasing the volume was a must. Before I could do that, however, I needed to record the sound clip. I resorted to using the iPhone application, Voice Memos, because it was the most straightforward and accessible voice recorder that I have access to. Although I do have access to an actual voice recorder, transporting a recording of that audio over to my laptop would not only be time-consuming, but it is quite likely that the quality would be distorted when changing platforms. Since the application I used is technologically more advanced than an actual voice recorder, I did lose some of the expected static-like sounds that one might expect to hear, which matches the sound of a television in the background. Therefore, I needed to take some extra measures to get just the right sound. I held my phone as far away from myself as possible and spoke into my sleeve, methods that proved to be effective!

    With those adjustments out of the way, all I had left to do was make a transition between two scenes less choppy. Since I was working with an action-match cut between the bathroom and office scene, all I did was align the hand movements and make them a continuation of one another in both scenes. Not too difficult of a change, but definitely a necessary one. The final amendment that I made was to the coloration, tinting, and brightness of the entire film. After speaking with my groupmates, we felt as though a reddish tint was best (in fact, it was a color we had discussed prior for the same reason) because not only did it make the primary subject truly look like an alcoholic with flushed cheeks, but it added a sense of ominousness that we wanted to capitalize on for the sake of our film being a thriller.

    Overall, I'm glad to have used today as a time to reflect on the changes we needed to make to improve our short film to be the best final product that it can be. As Billie Eilish likes to sing, right now "I'm happier than ever" (2021).