Post-Production
IMPACT
The Editing
Post-Production was a very long process. I edited this 20min short film from start to finish all by myself using Final Cut Pro an editing software. I learned a great deal in editing by getting better practising it and by watching numerous videos online whenever I encountered a problem or if I needed to create a specific effect in the edit which required a unique skill.
An unexpected turn, I ended up removing a scene, where Adrian comes back out of the room where he stole some information on a USB drive, because we’ve already seen him walk up to that place, it really wasn’t necessary to watch him walk all the way to the next scene where he is spraying paint on the wall. This made me realise how to cleverly write scenes in the future, leaving only what is necessary to the audience to experience. Scenes must only advance the plot in a way or another, whether it would be revealing something about the character, or a character discovering something.
During the edit, I realised some continuity mistakes, small ones happened and that didn’t bother me, but one did, that was quite a major mistake, was Adrian forgetting his spray bottle on the ground which allowed the man chasing him to keep track of where he is going. Later in the film, Adrian in distress, looks in his bag, and takes out a spray bottle, which looks identical to the one he left. It doesn’t matter too much but it remains a major mistake as it was tied to the plot strongly.
I learned even more in post-production thanks to Serge Russell, a fellow filmmaker, who assisted me during the editing process. He helped me understand the importance of good sound editing, an aspect I always overlooked before then. I acquired many skills from him.
Foley Process
With Serge Russell, we created sound effects for the film. Extra steps that we needed to accentuate a character walking or running. The impact of the bag falling off the corridor that we couldn’t record well on production day. And a few other sounds that helped enhance the film’s story.
Music Score
The entire musical soundtrack was created by me and Sven Unger. This was a tedious process. We worked tirelessly to get it right. The challenge here was to create music that really sticks to the image of the film.
Sven Unger is a fantastic musician, particularly specialised in drums. Sven has a background of band songs, whereas we needed to create a musical score for film. These although might share common things, they are still different in the way you approach to compose a piece.
I composed the original few notes, Sven worked from my notes and vision for the music. Sven added, arranged and edited the music soundtracks using his expertise in music and his knowledge using Logic Pro which is a professional music software.
What we realised is that often the music score was constructed in a simpler way, suspenseful music required not much too make it suspenseful. Holding on note usually did the trick, so thinking more simply rather than getting it too complicated. After a few days of hard work, we managed to create a great piece of music.