Editing

The key shots we used were shots of the girl, being our main character and the businessman buying her. We had extra shots of the workers, but we chose to maintain their appearance to mainly in the first seconds, because they are not the key aspect of importance. We also showed a number of close-ups to reflect on emotion; like the girl’s fear and the businessman’s cold stare. This reverts into the interest of my target audience, being between 15-24 years, which follows the convention of mystery and tension in a thriller.

We used continuity editing devices mainly to show important links in the plot since we had no speech in our trailer. The main use in our trailer is the long shot reverse shot and match of action run through as the girl is removed from the container. The snaps between her and the businessman show his dominance over her, even though he doesn’t lift a finger to get her moved, also reflecting on his wealthy edge to pay off the workmen.
The key changes in pace wqas main One example in our thriller was contrasting the emptying of the container to the approach of the car.
We showed perspective and dominance through physicality, mainly showing the girl’s hopeless situation when she’s handled by the workmen with such ease, showing their power over her. We also showed the businessman’s dominance over the workmen since they acted out the transfer without any command. A key opposition we could compare was the dominance of the businessman to the defenceless state of the girl. This shows her vulnerability and creates sympathy from the audience, while holding their interest through this mystery, an ideal aspect of most thrillers.
The main development in sound with our thriller was the background noise, mainly the faint buzz of traffic to show the isolation of the compound in the trailer, but also the hum of machinery to show it is a factory of some kind, perfecting disguise for the illegal people trafficking. This highlighting the facts of her journey and the horror of her situation, linking into the riddles and excitement of this thriller.
It was definitely challenging in a few aspects, but also enlightening to aid with my understanding of the editing process. One of my key moments of difficulty was in the sound editing, adding in non-diegetic sounds to create mystery into the back-story, plus the job of editing out diegetic background noise of the night which was causing issues, like school bells ringing which broke the atmosphere of a factory set in our thriller.
I admit, there were a few foggy areas which we pondered over in our development, like sticking sequences together where a slight movement stuck out, like with the girls’ head jumping from angle to another angle unnaturally. However, overall I would not change any details that have gone into our final product.

We all worked well in the filming and shared the different requirements, like preparation, filming and construction in the set, so all to have a try. In the editing, we all focused on different aspects and then merged them in at the end. The only error was in sound, but we all chipped in to that and solved it by putting in extra free time to look up suitable sounds and research other opening titles to find music in common with other thrillers.

The key facts in filmmaking we took away from this experience, was the requirement of early preparation, working as a team and sharing in the production equally, as well as the importance of small editing details like background noise and cross fading. It was a challenging piece of work, but overall I think we had a successful turnout.