Editing: Action & Void Scenes

After diving into Premiere Pro for a couple of hours, I am back with more (very) rough cuts for all of you guys to see!

Action Scene

First up is the action scene. Before getting down to business, I knew that this scene would be the most dense in terms of arrangement, sound, and visual effects. Because of this, I took extra time in this rough cut to establish certain design choices before working on the full cut. For instance, I put a lot of effort into the sound design. I filled it up with a bunch of intense, atmospheric drones and impacts to help develop a gritty atmosphere. Another example can be in one of the shots, which has extreme close-ups of both character's eyes sliding into the center of the frame, almost as if it was a comic book. I had the idea for this shot back when we were writing the scene so I wanted to make sure I had it right early into the post-production stage. Overall, I am very happy with how this scene is shaping up.

Void Scene

Next I did a rough edit of the void scene. My main focus was to make the void itself seem like a convincing space. To achieve this, I made a mask around Edward. This removed everything around the selection and was especially useful to remove any visible parts of the garage that appeared in some of the shots. From here I boosted the contrast of the clips to get rid of any wrinkles or light reflections from the black backdrop we set up. These editing techniques were extremely successful in transforming our small set into a plane of eternal darkness. The rest of the edit consisted of the arrangement of the scene and a much necessary impact sound to help convey that a table had suddenly appeared after the Protagonist had voiced their plea. You can view it here.

Conclusion

In other news, you might have noticed that the Narrator has been absent from these rough cuts. Fear not, as Oliver will voice act each scene tomorrow. After that, we plan on locking in to put together the full rough cut of the short film by combining our progress with the other scenes into a single project. Expect to see it next time on the blog!