Update 09/02

I have now finished editing the second scene of my short film. The second scene goes straight into the montage of my main character's experiences with bullying. I did not add a scene in between the first and second; with short films it is important to get straight into the action and not waste time.

I added a 'dip to black' between the shot of my protagonist leaving her house and getting to college. This transition represents a change in time and setting. I also added this transition before the montage began for the same reasons. I found that this transition looked the most professional. Some were too cliché. For example, the 'paint splatter' and 'wipe' were interesting but did not fit the serious context of my piece, setting a happier, more comedic tone.


I also added the audio to both scenes, and added an exponential fade between the different pieces of music to make the transition less distracting. I begin with a calmer, slightly positive piece of music. This continues until the cyber-bullying begins before my main character has even left her home, to convey the seriousness to my audience almost immediately. I also felt that the happier music at the beginning puts my audience in a false sense of security, making what follows even more shocking.

The sad piece of music is not long enough to cover the rest of the film therefore this is repeated seamlessly. I achieved this by clipping the end and importing it again.

I reduced the 'audio gain level' to -10 as this made it slightly quieter so as not to distract the audience too much from the action, but to compliment it.

My music has lots of lone piano notes therefore through editing I was able to match the first shot of the montage with the first note of the song. I also did this later on. I feel that this successfully represented the change in mood.



No editing was needed in terms of reducing grain, however I did increase the brightness of some shots in the 'bathroom scene'. This is because the lighting here was poor and came from above, which gave my characters dark circles underneath their eyes. To do this, I dragged 'lighting effect' onto my clips, and switched this from 'spotlight', which is more stylised, to 'directional' as this increased the brightness of all of the clip. I reduced the intensity to 20% to make this change subtle, and not too bright. I put each shot from this scene to the same setting, using the same adjustments, in order to maintain the continuity.

I am happier with this after editing; although subtle, the added brightness makes the shots look more professional.

The following shot is filmed at night in much darker conditions. This represents the darkness encroaching on my protagonist.

This is what scene 1 and scene 2 look like together...




Overall, I am happy with this because they flow together nicely and I can see my film begin to take shape as a sad, emotional piece.

However, after further editing and adding the rest of my scenes, I may need to cut my montage down so that my short film isn't too long when put together. Although I will wait until the end to see how long my film is before making this decision.

I have also added my title quickly for now, however I will be looking in more detail at the colour and style of the font. Although, I like the frame hold as it does not disturb the action as much and makes the title link to the context more.