POST-PRODUCTION

EDITING AND SHOTSWe began by uploading all of the shots we had filmed from the memory stick onto the editing program. Rather than cutting the clips first, we cut them as we went along as this seemed most sensible. We edited them in the order that the opening needed to be put together (e.g- firstly, we cut the clip of the dancer's feet at home, then the auditionee's feet dancing etc.) Thankfully, we did not have to re-film much, although, there was a clip that prevented us from doing what we wanted to do; for the shot of the dancer running into the audition building, we wanted to split up her running into multiple shots from different angles, however, in two of the shots we had a prop that was not intended to be there in the bottom of the shots, so by careful editing and paying attention to detail, we worked around it.

I found when editing, most of the shots were steady, as we used a tripod. However, to get a variation of shots, we attempted to use the cameras without tripods, which did  not work very well on most occasions! There was one occasion of which the camera was not steady when using a tripod; however, we did not notice this glitch until the opening had been made, when we had audience feedback. But, in general, the use of the tripod was very important in making our opening.

We used a variety of shot types, for example; a big close-up on both of the dancers' feet, a long-shot of one of the dancers travelling and shot-reverse-shot.

SOUNDDuring the post-production process, the only issue that arose was using appropriate sound. My group and I found a song that was well-suited with the mood of the opening for when the auditionee was performing; it took a while to decide on the song, however, it became very apparent that this was an important aspect of how the film would be interpreted. Once the music had finished, we had to use diegetic sound for when the other dancer was travelling to the audition (thankfully, we had recorded plenty of this when filming her), so there were no silent gaps in our opening, and we also used the judges' dialogue.

Due to the fact that there were so many cuts, it was difficult to create nice sound transitions between each shot, as they required different sounds (e.g- going from the dancer cycling and using diegetic sound of the wind, to one of the judges delivering a line). However, we feel that the correct choice was made to edit it the way we did, rather than attempt to add in another song, as this could have made the opening rather tedious.

EFFECTS, CREDITS AND LOCATIONSWe decided to use a 'fade out' effect at the end; this seemed to work well with the theme of the film opening as it was graceful and prevented an abrupt ending. There was deliberation in our group over the colour and positioning of the credits; one member of the group wanted all the credits to be one colour, but this meant that, on some backgrounds, the names could not be read. So, another suggestion was that we switch between black and white credits, but someone else in the group thought this might take some of the deeper meaning away from the opening; ballet dancing is linked to 'perfection', and changes in the colour of the text may have made the opening seem a bit 'imperfect', which would be contradictory to the meaning. We did not really need to use any transitions during the opening, as cohesion seemed to occur due to the graceful soundtrack, and so it did not seem like there were abrupt cuts from shot to shot.

In terms of our chosen style  for the credits in our film opening, we chose a font and colour that seemed elegant and that blended nicely with the background images, as our theme was ballet. The title appeared at the end of the opening, as we felt it was an appropriate point to introduce the rest of the film - if it had appeared any earlier it may have diverged the audience's attention from the action.We tried to make the meaning of the opening clear to the audience by alternating between each location (mostly) in order. By doing this, the audience is able to understand what is going on, whilst not becoming bored. We also used match-on-action when the dancer was walking into the building prior to her audition, and we included shot-reverse-shot between the judges.