For our post production editing, we all decided to have Sibel be the one behind the computer. Out of all of us, she’s had the longest experience with using Adobe Premiere Pro, and she’s good at providing efficient and high quality videos.

The first thing we had to do was make sure all our scenes would be in order. So to make it easier, we organized all the shots from each scene into separate bins. That way, we could find where each needed shot was located. Then, we placed each shot, following the shoot sheet, into our timeline in order.

(Different bins for each scene)

One of the first things we unfortunately noticed was how shakey the shots from our school scene looked. We knew that the dolly could’ve had this effect, so to avoid this during production we tried to weigh it down. Sadly, this wasn’t enough to stop the shakiness. So, in our post, we tried to fix it by adding the “Warp Stabilizer” effect from the effects panel. This still made the shaking too obvious, so in that case we decided to cut out that scene completely.

Another section we had to cut off was part of the kitchen scene. The kitchen scene was one of the last scenes we filmed, and it turned out only the first half of the footage was saved into our SD card. Instead of quickly rushing back to reshoot, we decided the scene still stood strong without having the full second part. We cut off that scene at the part where Katie wakes up from the kitchen floor.

(First part of the kitchen scene)

The blinking effect was a new thing we had to learn how to do. None of us had ever done a similar effect to it, so we had to do some research on how to do it. Sibel found a tutorial on YouTube that had the exact effect we all were thinking of. Therefore, she followed the tutorial until we were all satisfied with the result.

Sibel first added a black rectangle and scaled it completely over the video. Then, she took an “Ellipse Layer Mask” found in effects controls. She turned the mask horizontal, and made it move using timestamps. Finally, she added a blur to the mask to make it look more realistic.

(Blinking effect)

We deeply wanted to consider our audio choices when we were in post production. Many horror films take advantage of sound in order to manipulate the audience. For our film, we specifically wanted to make sure the audience knew and felt what Katie felt. Since we clearly can’t see Katie’s face, we especially have to rely on our visuals and sound.

Some sound effects we added:

1. Ringing: In the therapist scene, while the therapist is in the middle of talking, we added a ringing effect over her voice while fading out the talking. This is to show that Katie is unfocused and disassociating from her current situation.

2. Heavy Breathing: Most prominent in our forest scene, when Katie is in more danger, her breathing becomes more heavy. This mirrors her emotional state, since her severity of fear has increased.

3. Footsteps: Once again most prominent in our forest scene, we added in the foley sound of footsteps. This is meant to immerse you into the scene and feel related to Katie’s experiences.

(Heavy breathing was added to the bedroom scene)

To make our opening look more like a real horror film, we added some color grading for each shot. We turned the brightness down in order to heighten the suspense. We also changed the hue to a more blueish tone to create that iconic horror look.

(Color grading in forest scene)

To create our Production Company Logo, we used Adobe Illustrator. Looking back at our draft work, we were able to create the jester silhouette by following our sketch lines within the program. We thought about animating it in Adobe After Effects, however we were running short on time and wanted to focus our effort on making our actual film opening high quality.

For the audio, we all recorded ourselves “laughing maniacally,” and overlapped the audio in Adobe Premiere Pro. Having us all laughing matched the group’s bondness we originally considered when coming up with our draft. Once again, we wanted our production company to reflect our group distinctively.

The specific quote, “laugh fatty” at the beginning is a candid moment from Jace attempting to make Hailey laugh more authentically. We all thought that keeping that in would be funny, so we kept it as a hook to get your attention as the viewer.

A note for our lack of a Title Sequence, we found that the spot we originally wanted to put it worked better when there wasn’t text over it. We felt that the text took away from the dreadful experience Katie was dealing with. The alternate spot we thought to put it was in the school scene, which if you look at my Post Production Summary post, you can see why that ended up not working as well. Ideally if we were able to make our film longer, we would put the title sequence in that scene.