Editing Choices

Editing is often viewed as the most important aspect of trailers and moving image as without editing we would simply just have video footage that may not have made sense and have had no effect on the audience. We used iMovie to edit our filming, which allowed us to create sequences that would conform to our genre and make an impact on the audience. We edited our trailer using a range of techniques, which we found were prevalent in existing trailers. 

We used the iMovie program to edit our video footage, as it allowed us to make precise edits, whilst maintaining high quality moving image. We mostly used clip trimmer to edit the clips; we used it to achieve continuity, so that the cuts were effective to tell the narrative.

We added short, fast cuts to increase the pace towards the end of our trailer. Using clip trimmer, we could edit short clips and add them together to create continuous sequences that conform to the climax that we wanted to achieve. We identified from our research that most psychological horror trailers have a ‘chase’ scene at the end where the antagonist torments the protagonist. Our use of contrasting fast cuts emphasise this, as our use of editing increases the audiences heart rates towards a climax where the protagonist gets caught.

We added effects to our edited clips to escape the sense of realism and enhance the narrative. We only had limited resources to film the trailer, so by adding effects to our clips, we could create a more professional piece that would appeal to our audience more and conform to the spooky nature of the genre. Based on the uses and gratifications theory, a main reason for watching the trailer is for entertainment purposes, so by adding effects such as ‘vignette’ and ‘dream’, we could enhance our trailer through these editing techniques to reach a larger audience and have a greater impact on them, which is key for a trailer used for advertising a film.

Around half of our narrative is intended to take place in the late evening, however due to the bad lighting conditions at this time of the day during winter, we had to film the footage during good light conditions then edit it to look like it happened later than it actually did. We added a dark vignette effect from iMovie, which allowed us to retain the high quality footage from in light conditions, and then edit it to make it look like it happened in the late evening. 

We inserted frames of text to communicate with the audience and provide them with information such as release date and who produced it. To make these more appealing to the audience we edited them with a zoom effect so that the text would gradually zoom into the black frame. Although we needed to inform, we also wanted to retain the entertainment element to keep watchers interested, so we added this element as we’ve seen it during research into similar products. The fade in, fade out element also sustains the pace set by our cuts as the text blends in with other cuts.

Certain footage couldn’t be filmed at an appropriate time of day for perfect lighting, therefore we had to edit the footage to make the lighting fit in with our narrative. For example, half of our narrative happens at around 8 at night, however it wasn’t feasible to film the whole chase scene in the dark during the winter months, so we had to film it around 5 in the evening and add a vignette effect to make the footage look as if it happened later on at night. We edited the lighting by lowering the brightness and adding a vignette effect onto each clip in the chase scene. On the other hand, we had to use certain edits and lift the brightness in some of the house sequences, as the natural lighting was quite dark.

We edited short sequences to represent emotions, so that a variety of shots could show the audience their surroundings at the time, their close up facial expressions and their body language. For example this sequence of the protagonist represents her fear from a variety of perspectives, presented by shot types. When honing in on an individual’s emotions, we tried to use a variety of shot types so that the audience are involved in understanding their emotion, rather than just using one shot type where the audience wont interact with the emotion.

We used edits that would clearly represent the narrative. We had to use sequences that would tell the story enough, yet keep it short and brief enough for it to be a trailer. We attempted to introduce relationships between the characters through the use of fades, however for the majority of our chase sequence at the end we used straight cuts to highlight the increase in pace and emotion of the characters.