Timed Essay

“The post-production process can be the most important part of the filming process.”

How important has the post-production stage been in your foundation and advanced portfolios and how have your skills developed over these two years?

Across the two years I have studied Media I have been able to use post-production techniques for three products – my preliminary task at AS, my thriller opening title sequence at AS, and my music video production at A2. The post-production stage has been vital in these products, as it has given me the opportunity to provide meaning through creative editing techniques.

In my thriller opening title sequence at AS, post-production was important when trying to give the product a horror undertone. I was able to use sound effects such as eerie background music (a convention of thriller films) throughout to set the tone and make the audience feel on edge, creating suspense. This was vital as engaged my audience and made them want to continue watching. I also used the sound effect of glass crashing when the vilain dropped a picture frame, this enabled me to use a loud, shocking sound effect to frighten the audience and, again, keep them on edge.  

I was also able to use slowly increasing cuts in order to set the pace of my thriller opening. When editing in iMovie I was able to create quick cuts towards the end of the product to increase tension and show the terror that the victims felt in the situation they were in. These increasingly fast cuts symbolised the increasing heart rates of the girls, symbolising their fear and anxiety.

Another editing technique I was able to use in post-production for this product was titles. I was able to use the ‘titles’ tool on iMovie and splice these in between scenes to show that this was an opening title sequence to a thriller film. For these titles I was able to use an eerie looking font that marqueed from left to right to go with the horror undertones of my thriller, making the colours of the fonts red, black and white which are conventional colours of a thriller film. I found in my feedback this was very succesful in maintaining a creepy atmosphere.

In my second production at A2 (my music video) I was able to use more creative editing techniques in post-production than in my AS product. This is because I had almost used my AS production as a way of becoming comfortable with the editing software (iMovie) and was now more confident in pushing the mark with this product.

In my music video I was able to use split screen to show a girl in one situation with two different outcomes, showing her expectations and the reality of the situation. This, I found in my audience feedback, was particularly effective as I had used many different situations which implored my audience to keep watching to find out whether the girls reality was ever better or as good as her expectations. I had also intertextuality when it came to the split screen effect, as it was inspired by the film (500) Days of Summer which features split screen showing the main characters expectations of a situation and the reality.

Much like my AS thriller opening I was also able to use titles in my music video, however these were used in a more interesting and creative way. In order to convey the meaning of the expecations and reality sides of the split screen, I added titles at the bottom of each side of the screen to make it clear with ‘Expectations’ being on the left and ‘Reality’ on the right. My audience feedback showed that this was succesful  in conveying the meaning and my audience particularly liked this effect.

Also in my music video I was (again, like my AS thriller opening) able to use increasingly fast cuts. I feel this was more succesful in my music video, as I created quick cut montages (a convention of music videos) to show flashbacks of the main character and was able to quickly splice together many different angles of the same shot to give a variety of shots which kept my audience entertained.

I also used colourisation in my music video to convey that the expectations and reality situations were actually flashbacks. I did this by adding a black and white filter over these shots in iMovie during editing to make the meaning more clear to my audience. I also used a vignette filter over scenes of my artist lip sycning in order for it to stand out among the situations. This was important as it distinguished the two different sides of the music video.

I have found that although I used similar post-production techniques in both of my products, I was able to use them more creatively and effectively in my A2 music video, enabling me to convey the meaning behind the video more clearly and making it look more realistic.