Editing : Final Cut, Lesson 4

Adding in the dark flashbacks and Including Text

One of the things I did in today's lesson was map out the sinister flashbacks. Me and sonny decided to use the point of view shot of Sarah on the floor as she looks up towards James walking towards her, but cut it after every second or so and place text in between them. On the text we decided to use the very last line of our voice over “A mimic, A wannabe, A fake, A poser, AN IMPOSTER" as it links with the clips and creates effect, so the audience can hear and read the sinister flashbacks. As each clip is shown between the texts James gets closer and closer towards Sarah on the floor and after the words "A poser" appear the audience see James hit Sarah and she falls to the floor, then the title ' IMPOSTER' shows.

To help create more of an effect, the text between the clips of James walking toward Sarah are written in white. This can connote the innocence of Sarah in the sinister flashbacks especially as we can't see her, accept her hands, and then James hit's her making the audience think "why has he hit her" and realise that he is actually an imposter and not what he seems like in a relationship, Juxtaposing to the beginning of the opening sequence where Sarah is shown to be washing blood off of her hands and cleaning out the sink, which then links to the title shown right at the end of the clip. The title is the only piece of text shown in red. We chose to only show this text in red as it mirrors the beginning of the clip where Sarah is washing blood off of her hands, as well as connoting the violence throughout the sinister flashbacks, and the whole idea of domestic violence and the crimes themselves.

















We also put the sinister scenes in a black and white effect, with no saturation, by doing this we were able to create a very good dark shadowy figure of James, following our initial enigma code of, 'What does James actually look like?' and 'Why can't we see his face?'. The black and white effect can also connote the darkness in the scenes and the topic of domestic violence itself as it's a very dark and secluded crime again linked to the text in between the flashback clips as they are also in black and white.

As well as finalising both of the happy and sinister flashbacks and putting all of the opening sequence together Sonny and I then started to add in transitions. The main transition was in between the end of the first scene where we see Sarah crying into the mirror and the beginning of the first happy flashback. We decided that we didn't want anything too fancy such as a fade or cross over into a shape and agreed that a blur or fade was more efficient, and in the end we decided to choose a black fade, as the colour black linked into the rest of the colour scheme and the dark, twisted idea of the opening sequence as a whole.

Another transition was also added in at the end of the sinister flashbacks, this time a scratchier, crackly effect. We wasn't quite sure whether this would work, and that just having the title "AN IMPOSTER" flash up quickly like the rest of the text clips would be more effective and consistent, so once miss comes back we will ask for her opinion and see whether she thinks it's effective or not before making a final decision.