Hello again! It's been a few days since I've been able to write on this blog, since I was on a family road trip for the latter half of this week, as I mentioned in the previous blog post. While it was nice being on the open road and touring various colleges, it felt like all I could think about was editing this opening, and how I was feeling less and less secure about the state of it. However, these feelings pretty much dissipated once I got home and looked at its current state.
I had spent Friday night and some of Saturday afternoon working on editing the opening, which mostly involved cutting it down from its three minute runtime into fitting into the two minute timeframe. It was a daunting task to cut out so much footage, but when I sat down and really looked at it, it wasn't so bad.
Major changes to the video include the splicing together of two shots that I needed to be mixed together (One shot where Danny is monologuing about some random game and another where Martin is focused on his next victim), which was crucial to blend together because I needed to illustrate that Martin was zoning out and thinking about killing the person he's watching without spoon-feeding it to the audience.
The way I dealt with this was by cutting out almost all of the footage of Danny monologuing and layering the audio recording of his rant over the video of the camera following the victim, which saved me a lot of extra seconds on the runtime and overall makes the sequence flow more smoothly than if it were two separate videos. To further connect the two videos, I added a ear ringing sound effect that I found off of YouTube, which faintly starts when Danny starts talking about videogames and persists, getting uncomfortably loud while the video of the victim walking is playing. I also added a fading out effect to Danny's speech to work in tandem with the ringing SFX to illustrate the idea of zoning out.
Another idea I had was to have the visuals for the scene slowly start to blur and get out of focus, but I was unable to do this because of limitations on the editing system (it only blurs entire scenes, there's no option to apply the effect gradually), which was an oversight on my part. Another way to accomplish this effect would've been to pull out of focus on my phone when we were filming the scene, but this idea hadn't come to me at that moment, and it's too late to refilm and reschedule with all actors involved. I'll continue to look into implementing this effect by experimenting with settings on Openshot or by using another editing app (I might deign to use Premiere for this), but only if time allows for it.
I also messed around with the final sequence of the opening, which consists of Danny waiting outside of the gas station as well as the slow reveal of the murder. I realized that this section of the opening was abnormally quiet, since there is almost no dialogue in this part, and the notes in the score are few and far between, so the silence is deafening. While I initially considered this to be a good thing, since it illustrated a definitive tonal shift from the more casual comedic start of the opening, I ended up deeming it as awkward and sounding unfinished.
To fix this awkward silence, I decided to add some ambient nighttime sounds, like crickets chirping and slight winds, making the space feel more real and alive, showing that the world moves on in spite of the death that occurred moments ago. While this change was minimal, I felt happier and more comfortable with the scene than I did before. I made sure to also muffle these nighttime sounds when showing Danny inside the car, to establish that I'm using synchronous sound, further grounding the story in realism.
In addition to the ambient sounds, I also plan on adding an internal ringing phone sound effect to bridge the scene with Danny calling Martin on the phone to the ending of the opening, all the way through to the last scene with Martin cleaning his hands after killing someone. This also fills in the awkward silence I had worried about, but what I liked about it is that it establishes a concrete link between Martin and the killer, clearing up any confusion about who's the person standing over the body in the last shot.
As of now, however, that's all I have. Though when I really think about it, it's pretty much finished, while missing a few nitpicks and edits I have yet to implement. It is currently a functional opening that could be the final product, if I didn't have a few ideas on how to improve it. I also need to add the credits and the title card to the opening, though they're pretty easy to implement. In fact, tomorrow I plan on seeing if I can somewhat animate the title screen to look more professional and similar to a real title card for a film.
But until then, I'll see you later!
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