LO5: Postproduction and analysis of postproduction techniques

Digitally editing my visuals

The cinematography of my short film isn't just enhanced by the camerawork and set design I used in production, but also the digital editing. This is useful as some of my shots didn't turn out how initially planned, so the digital editing allowed me to go back and fix some of my previous mistakes. 

An example of digital editing allowing me to fix/enhance my cinematography is this shot, which appeared much darker than initially intended. This was an issue as only a slight bit of the foreground could be seen in the shot; seeing the background here is important for the audiences understanding of how the scene plays out, as it lets us know that there's something in the room with my protagonist. 

I fixed this issue by accessing the properties of the clip and balancing the whites, highlights, shadows and exposure of the clip to make an overall better looking shot. This allowed the audience to be able to see the fact that the door was opening by itself in the darkness. It also made the scene much more satisfying to watch as a movie being too dark is a highly regarded criticism in modern horror movies that I wanted to combat in my production, whilst still creating a fear of the unknown with my monster hiding in the shadows.  Increasing the brightness also helps to enhance how blue the scene is, which is what I was originally trying to create when filming. 

Using pale/cold colours such as blue to reflect the atmosphere of a scene is a common convention of horror used to unnerve audiences. This was why it was very beneficial to create lighting sources such as the TV (and later the fridge) that reflect the terrifying and cold scenario my character finds themselves facing, and then intensifying it with the visual editing. Effectively conforming to these conventions allows my audience to feel comfortable reassurance in the horror conventions I am using in the visuals. Furthermore, the blue colour is often synonymous with a feeling of bone-chilling terror, fear and sadness that I want to communicate to the audience.

Another way I fixed an issue with my recorded shots with digital editing was improving the continuity of the scenes, as well as just giving the movie more of a visual style that helps make it stand out. An example of a continuity issue with how some scenes were filmed is that the lighting drastically changes in between the shots that are supposed to be taking place one after the other. Here is an example below:

In the first shot we can clearly see that our antagonist is being hit with a dim orange light in the room where they are stood, but when the shot changes that allows s to see in to the room, the lighting is not only much more high-key, but also much whiter/yellow. This makes the room appear much brighter, which is an issue as it completely pulls the audience out of the immersion of the film for what is supposed to be an otherwise shocking and important scene. 

And here is the updated scene after adjusting the properties: increasing the exposure in the first clip and increasing the temperature and shadows in the second. These changes make the scenes look as if they're are taking place immediately after one another and help to give more depth and meaning to the film. The orange was initially intended to be used in the scene to make it feel hot with tension as we reach the 'boiling point' of the film, so being able to accomplish my initial vision through editing helps to exentuate the movie with more meaning that audiences will be able to pick up on and recognise. This gives the audience a strong impression of the atmosphere of the scene so that they know how to feel before even realise what's happening. As well as this it helps to improve the cinematography by making the shots feel more stylistically distinct from the standard white/pale lighting.

This was a change I made to most of my scenes also, correcting the lighting and giving the film more visual flare so that the audience stay invested in my film. 

I also enhanced my cinematography with digital editing to conform to the conventions of my horror genre. In this example of my protagonist Quinn's phone light scanning over the environment, I edited the temperature, exposure and blacks/whites. This caused the light to be much more concentrated and made the surroundings darker. This made it so that I could directly control what the audience were allowed to see within the light, putting them in my protagonists shoes and allowing me to appeal to genre conventions of horror by creating a creepy atmosphere to keep the audience engaged and on edge. This genre convention not only enforces the audiences comfortable reassurance 

Another way I applied my cinematography knowledge to the short film editing was by cropping the shots. Cropping allowed me to make the shots look exactly how I wanted, as when recording I would often film the scene very closely to the storyboard, but accidentally have my subject off centre. Cropping made it so that I could adhere to the rule of thirds so that the visuals are perfectly balanced and multiple subjects can be in the audiences focus. This results in my short film feeling much more satisfying to watch for audiences, and allowing me to conform to the conventions of cinematography to create stunning visuals. 

Special Effects to Improve Visuals 

As part of my project it's important to apply visual effects in post production so that I can make the short film as closely accurate to my vision of what I want the film to look like as possible. In the production of short films, especially horror, special effects are the way to do this. 

As I have not only a budgeting constraint but also a talent constraint for the application of practical effects, it resulted in an issue of me not being able to find a way to create an effective dead body to communicate to the audience the twist of the movie. I came up with the idea of a close up shot of the hand, that way I can also solve the enigma of where the car keys were by having them be in the dead body of the mothers hand. I added a minor practical effect of fake blood (as seen below) but it still didn't feel worthy enough of a shot to reveal that the mother is dead, especially with the extreme lack of blood on the hand. This causes the audience not to be satisfied with the reveal as their audience expectations of what they expect to see in a modern day horror film is a lot of blood and gore. 

(the shot before any application of Digital Effects)

This is why I decided I wanted to apply a digital effect to the shot to make the scene feel more 'gore-y'. Although I still had a digital effect talent constraint being that I couldn't create fake blood/gashes on the hand, it didn't mean I couldn't make the scene feel more gorey. I decided it would narratively make sense if I made it seem as if blood was dripping down the camera lens instead, implying to the audience that the death was so brutal that blood splatted everywhere, even on to the camera itself. 

The first thing I did to create this effect was duplicate my clip and layer them on top of each other. I did this by holding down the option key and then dragging he clip a layer higher, duplicating it on top of the other.

I then searched for the 'tint' and 'gaussian blur' effects in the project window and added them to the duplicated clip.

I opened the added effects settings and mapped the black to a dark red and white to a lighter red on the tint effect. For the Gaussian Blur effect I just increased the blurriness to make the screen look like we (the camera) were looking through blood, causing the screen to be blurry. 

I then clicked the 'new item' button in the project window and layered a black 'colour matte' on top of my clips. I then put the 'VR fractal noise' effect onto this new colour matte. 

I edited the 'VR Fractal Noise' effect by adjusting the contrast and brightness to create a white stained fog like screen. This white fog would become my blood. 

I did this by adding the effect 'track matte key' to my previous duplicate clip, accessing its settings and then changing the 'matte' to 'video 3' and changing the composite to 'matte luma'.

This made it so that the blood red overlay replaced the white and black of the fog-looking matte. I then further started playing around with the settings of each effect (mainly the contrast, brightness and opacity of the clips) as well as increasing the size of the matte overlay so that there wasn't excess blood on the screen and making the blood larger.  

The finishing touch I added to this effect was editing the 'evolution' setting on the 'VR fractal noise' effect. I enabled the animation for the setting and created key frames at the start and end of the clip. The starting keyframe being set to 75 degrees and ending keyframe -13. This made it so that the blood moved on the screen slightly, as if it's dripping down the lens.

How My Created Special Effect Conforms to Conventions

The absolute most popular and common convention of my chosen horror genre is the use of blood. Blood is the ultimate trope as it connotes a sense of guttural fear and pain that the genre is popular for, this is why it's important to implement this genre expectation into my film. As my audience are expecting to see it, it's important to deliver on their expectations so they feel comfortably reassured in my movie being a part of the horror genre. Its use here is also effective as my camerawork purposefully obscures the audience from seeing the entire dead body, so the implication that there was so much blood it splattered all over the camera only reinforces the terror and fear in the unknown and makes the audience themselves picture the whole scene, without me having to spend a lot of money on visceral practical effects.