Production: Editing (Rough Edit)

Before anything else (and even before the filming started), we have  cut
the music clip to our liking and put the markers on selected bars to
align the footage later on in the editing process.

You can see the marker at the point where the audio clip
was supposed to start playing. 

Here, all of the footage (excluding the final title)
 was simply cut and put in the correct order
(without touching any nuisances such as speed, stabilisation
or colour correction).

Since I wanted to have the pipette shot reverse, so here I just
made sure there is such a possibility! 

After consulting, I decided to add the Pluton Productions logo
before the actual opening began. 

I decided to reverse the second clip, so the footage looped
just like the original gif.

Using the gif twice seemed too rushed, so after consultation
I decided to put if in four times and bring the speed
down to 80%. 

I toggle locked the video footage and deleted all of the
unwanted audio clips, so the chosen audio
clip was clear and not disturbed by other sounds. 

I finally got around to duplicating and reversing the pipette
shot (later increasing its speed to 200% as well + adding the
audio clip to the sequence). 

  

This shot (which we used toothpaste for) was great, but the
resemblance to the previous one was not the best - so I
decided to colour correct the toothpaste. However, Premiere Pro
did not allow me to change the area of colour correction; so I had
to learn how to use After Effects to an acceptable standard. 

After Effects was... eventful to say at least, but I finally figured
out how to manage masks and adjustment layers, resulting in
nicely colour corrected toothpaste drip.

A little side comparison of the
original clip and the one
undergoing colour correction. 

Since all of the other clips from the street scene had
blue lighting, I decided to adjust the colour balance
of that clip so it matched the rest.

Colour correcting that bit of footage
(and the one with the flask, but unfortunately that's the only one
I do not seem to have screenshots of)  was the last thing I
have done before exporting the rough edit in order to
get audience feedback. 

 

Above is the rough edit of Toxic, uploaded to Youtube. The music continues beyond the end of the clip, but this will be cropped down later.

We asked for audience feedback, and this is what we were given;

• We needed to slow down the transition between the Pluton Productions logo and the first shot.
• A sound effect was necessary before the start of Danse Macabre, as the transition from silence to music was too sudden.
• The shot of the victim with 'foam' spilling from his mouth was described as "uncomfortably long".
• Obviously, we need to match the footage to the music!

Our group's opinion was that the ending could also use some improvement, as we felt it was too sudden and not to the standard of the rest of the footage. We are experimenting with ways to make this work, but we may remove it altogether, as expert feedback has informed us that the logo at the end makes it appear more like a trailer than a film opening.

The feedback we were given was useful. Even though Wik was already planning on fixing these aspects in her second edit, we found it important to hear multiple opinions from people who hadn't seen the production process, and see which flaws were mentioned the most frequently.