Editing in free period

Today in our free period, me and Emma spent the whole of our free afternoon editing our film opening.

From what we watched on credits in last Wednesday's lesson, me and Emma saw that for the film 'Angels and Demons' in the dvd opening before the main menu came up, there were quick shots of black screens appearing spelling words for example; 'MURDER'. This idea really appealed to us and we thought it would be relevant to our film.

So in our editing session, we came up with the phrase; 'MURDER IS LIKE MUSIC TO MY EARS' which is also relevant to the title of our film opening. We inserted black screens at the beginnning lasting for about 6-7 seconds with white text over the top using an online horror font.

Me and Emma spent ages trying to get the timing correct of the black screens together with our montage to fit with the music. It was particularly difficult to fit the music with it as before the film opening begins, there is a black and white shot of the typewriter reading 'The Music Box' and there is a part in the music where a heavy beat drops and we wanted that sound on exactly at the point when they typewriter slides up.

This took a lot of teamwork and me and Emma timed them, we got out our calculators and took into account the seconds from right at the beginning to the beat drop shot and divided it by the number of black screens there were so we could be precise in the black screen duration times. After all this, we managed to time it perfectly and were completely satisfied with it.

Following from this, we needed to include our credits as we realised from watching opening credits from other films that the credits are a lot more effective over a black screen. So, to break up the 3 minutes of footage we have, we inserted black screens with our names. Also, we realised that each person needs a specific role, so I took filming, Emma was allocated editing, Elle director and Sophie music and lighting.

We used the colour white and adjusted the contrast of it to create a silver/grey colour which really stood out against the black background. We also used the 'drifting' type so when it appears on the screen our names are drifting sideways away from each other. Also from watching opening credits in films, we realised that our first names are bigger than our surnames so we mimicked this idea.

As well as adding to the film opening, we finally came to the decision of deleting the blood scene. We realised that at the point where it occurs in the film, it is not relevant and does not make sense and just adds an element of confusion. However, we still thought it was a good shot and cut it down to 0.2 seconds and inserted it into our montage at the beginning.

We also altered the ending. Following from the shot of Elle in the car park, this fades into a new shot of the music box and we zoomed into the ballet dancer spinnning and overlapped a clip of Elle spinning. So the shot goes from the ballet dancer spinning-to an overlapped clip of Elle spinning and back again to the dancer in the music box. This again reinforces the idea that Elle and the ballet dancer are similar.

Following from this overlapped shot, we changed our minds about the title and wanted to include it at the end of our film opening. So, we chose a new and different shot of the music box as we did not quite like the close up of the one we already had. We managed to find one I filmed in the garage which shows the whole music box and we cropped it and adjusted the contrast and darkened it, then we inserted the title using a basic font and changed the colour to white.

This shot also fits in with the music as when this shot comes up, the sound playing is music box music. The shot also begins sharp and blurs when the title comes up so it appears more prominent and then it focuses back to normal again and then fades to a plain white screen.

Below is the finshed version of everything we edited on Monday:

Credits Research and Analysis

Yesterday in our media lesson, we watched the opening credits of many different films as a helping idea of the type to include in our film opening, as most of our class were finding difficulty with this part of the editing.

We watched the opening credits of; Babel, Derailed, The Bourne Identity, In Bruges, The life of David Gale, The Mexican and Angels and Demons.

The ones that particularly stood out to me were: Babel, The Bourne Identity and The Mexican, although they are all of different genres from Action to Rom-Com.

The opening credits to 'Babel' started with text over a black screen reading information like, 'A ....Film' and 'A...Production'. This was the basic information which is essential so the audience immediately know that it is the film opening. But the part that particularly interested me was the part where there was a plain black screen which lasted about 5-10 seconds with sound over the top and the opening credits appearing on the screen.

As an audience, I found this particularly gripping as I just wanted to know what was going to appear on the screen next as the black screen allowed the audience to pause to think but still kept them engaged with the sound.

The opening credits to 'The Bourne Identity' were completely different which is why it stood out amongst the rest. It started with a piece of footage which lasted for a long duration, with text in the corner informing us of the location.

Following from this, the footage continued for about 7 minutes until the title came up over a black screen. Then, there was another set of footage for another 5 minutes, and we did not manage to see the opening credits. But judging from what we watched, about 10-15 minutes into the film there were no mention of any names.

The opening credits to 'The Mexican' were also different and relevant to the movie genre. The names of the actors and producers etc were shown through objects on the screen for example, traffic lights.

This reminded me of the closing credits in the classic movie 'Grease' as we also see the names of the actors through objects.

Although we could not take any ideas into account for our credits, it still added to my wider knowledge on film credits.

From watching all these movie opening credits, I will take into account the idea of credits over a black screen with sound in the background and enter it into our own film credits.

Justification for title

We decided to name our film opening, 'The music box'. But our storyline is of a psycho stalker man following a dancer girl on her way home from a dance studio with the motive to kidnap and kill her.

The title 'The music box' is relevant to this storyline as the ballet dancer in the box is similar to the girl victim as they are both dancers. Also, we have incorporated a music box in parts of the film as a kind of alert that the stalker man is lurking and near the dancer girl.

The music box appears at the start of the film opening when the ballet dancer is spinning and we inserted an effect so that it spins into a shot of Elle dancing which shows their similarity.

Also, when Billy slams it shut in the car and following this is a close up shot of Elle falling over which shows that he has some sort of power over her and controls her.

The next time it appears is when Elle is running away from Billy in an underground car park after realising he is following her. The music box is placed on a post and as she runs past it, the camera focuses on it to inform the audience that Billy is lurking.

The reason for our title is portrayed through the props we used and also through our music box style music so it remains evident throughout the film.

Discovering extras on imovie

After watching Jess' group, we realised that there was more advanced things you could do on imovie by going onto "imovie preferences".

This showed us how to overlap to shots, what we've been trying to do for ages when overlapping the typewriter clips onto the actual footage of the walking home trip. It also lets you put a green screen etc. So next time we're all together we will experiment with this and try and incorporate it into our film.

Fifth edit to our film opening

This is the latest edit of our film and hopefully will be the last ! We have decided as a group that we are 100% happy and satisfied with everything and we think that there is nothing else we could change and improve.



In the ending, we added a clip of the music box spinning while it blurs so you can see the writing clearer.We still need to change the writing, as we were just experimenting with the transitions,colours and fonts. Since Elle and me liked the black screen with the scary writing on it better than the music box spinning we used both and added "A Universal Studio Film" on a black screen woth white writing using a downloaded font, which may be changed later to show who's producing the film.

We also noticed as we were watching the film was that we analysed it in depth. For example, as Billy is winding up the music box, the light in the car goes out. This light could symbolise Elle as in she's dying out. Also the music is a cycle music, to show that his killing streak is ongoing.


As a group we think that we have filmed and editted to our maximum potential and now we need to evaluate thoroughly independently, as a group and take into account feedback from our target audience.

Copyrighted Music

We have found a piece on youtube that is not copyrighted that we believe fits our film perfectly. The music is off a music box melody repeated, which shows what our film is about hence the title "The Music Box" and the fact that it keeps repeating on a loop the music represents the fact that the killer will strike again and it's a continous occurence. We also sat and editing this music to show our editing skills. Since this music originally was over 5 minutes long, we needed to cut this down by 2 minutes. But the end of the film was perfect with our visuals, so we had to cut out the middle of the film, which was much harder than I thought it would be, as you have to get the beats right to make it sound continuous.

We also cut it up so that the end of the music box slowly turning would fit in with the end of our film. In order to do this we had to cut out the middle bit of the music and make sure it fitted with our film. Here is a screen shot of how we did it on garageband.