Avid Editing Studio Shoot Task - Extra Evening 2

I took another extra afternoon and evening to come back and edit more of my sequence as it had begun to go in the direction I wanted it to so I was keen to get more of it done.

I started from where I last left off by finishing editing the beginning of the fight scene together. I started refining the settings for the effects I had used in this sections such as the overlays:

I then moved on to continuing contrasting the sequence/edit from here as this is as far as I had got to. Again I used most of the shots from my bin I had called best shots as I knew these were all the shots I defiantly wanted. I constructed the end of the fight and had to try and find a way to show the passing of time so decided to use a fade out so that my next shot will look like it happens later:

You can also see on the timeline where I have put very small flashes in again where I have made it look like it quickly blips from one image to another. I used this at the beginning of the sequence to show fear and how its all in her head so I resisted this at the end of the fight sequence but this time I used it on the good character to show how because she used aggression in a fight she is slowly going downhill towards the bad characters side. This is subtle but I feel it adds a lot of meaning.

I then spent a while trying to find a way to build up the tensions after this passing of time (fade out) so that the fight could initiate again. I decided to use black space as a way to do this by having the shots of each character flash up showing their emotions then drop to black suddenly then back in with then next charter etc. I just felt like this would work to build tension because it gives the audience a second where they don't see whats going on and then suddenly they see a very stressful image which I feel creates the feelings I would want them to have:

I also used some overlays in these tense moments to help them become more visually impacting and stressful. I used another effect as well which was speed bump and time warp which let me change the speeds of the clips that flash up in any way I wanted to. I sped them up and down to highlight certain points with the slow but then to add stress with the sudden fast movements. I felt like this worked to help bring the action back in and really pull the audience into it.

Now that I had found a way to add tension and reintroduce the action I tried to find ways of finishing the edit in a dramatic way. I played with the idea of fading to black after the main character falls down and cutting out the ending but doing this didn't work because it left too many things unresolved and happened too suddenly. Instead I just used speed again to help create a much better spaced ending through the time warp effects. I particularly like the use of slow motion on the clip where the main characters head falls to the floor as this gives the audience a moment to absorb what is going on and therefore makes it more intense and dramatic to watch:

I then decided to add a bit more slowness and tension in the ending by having more time passing between where the main character falls and when she wakes up. I did this very simply again with a fade however I tried to make my shots match up as closely as I could so that it was very subtle and didn't take away from the piece too much:

Now that I had finally put the whole sequence together it looked like this:

This is only a rough cut at the moment because even though I have worked hard on it so far it really needs refining in areas and I want to keep going back to it with fresh eyes to see what needs to be added or removed.

I know that I will need to colour it all and make a sound track for it hopefully. I also need some opening and closing titles but these are all things I will add soon once I am happy with my edit but I am glad that I have got a rough cut now which is strong to work from.