Construction Post 24: Reflections on Edit Week 1

Our first week of editing consisted on going through all of the raw footage, renaming the takes, and putting the shots onto the timeline in the basic order. No grading or title making took place this week as the main focus was to see whether a back up shoot would be required after looking through our opening sequence with the footage we had. Below is our Edit week 1 schedule.

1st Editing Week Schedule

As a group we had decided to do a back up shoot as there were both small issues for example the lighting kit can be seen in a shot and the fact that the lawyer locked her door but didn't have keys. Also there was a lipstick stain on the character's glass despite the fact that she doesn't drink the water. 

Lighting kit is seen on left hand side

Lipstick mark is sen on the glass

There were also a few narrative issues. By including our shot of both the lawyers heels and the jogger's trainers we gave away the fact that he is a jogger and so we lost our element of suspense and tension. This was also an issue with the over the shoulder shots we took. After trying our different versions of the shot we decided that the best one was the point of view shot as it is similar to the stalker shot which helps to create mystery and tension. However we only had one take of this shot and it was extremely shaky.

Therefore we need to do a backup shoot to get more takes of this shot and also to make a few adjustments to the end sequence to fit the point of view shots better. Additionally when looking through the footage we realised that the distances between the lawyer and the jogger were inaccurate. The jogger is moving faster than the lawyer but the distance between the two characters never decreased. We plan to change this as well in the back up shoot and pay attention to the distances so that the matches between shots are accurate. 

Group editing session

Another change we decided to make was to have the laywer on her phone as she is walking to make it more realistic as to why she couldn't hear the jogger. This is in response to a text she received in the kitchen scenes. The text will read "Heard he has been released. You ok? I will call you soon." This will hopefully make the link between the lawyer, the stalker and the radio announcement clearer. 

For our back up shoot we are planning to redo the kitchen scenes and the outdoor scenes as our bedroom sequence was exactly how we intended it to be.