D1: Post Production Analysis

Analysis of Post Production.

When audiences go to see a horror film they expect to see specific things that link to the horror genre and i tried to interpret these things during post production.

Pineclones Productions is a short movie that we planned to be of the horror genre. I tried to edit my film to conform to the codes and conventions of a horror film.

The first thing i edited to do this was the starting title of the film, most horror films show a short scene with no dialogue and this input a title screen and this is what i have done. Serif font is used because audiences will recognise this as horror style lettering and helps meet the audiences expectations that they are watching a horror film. this font was downloaded from a copyright free source called dafont.

For lighting and colour correction i used an effect called day to night which made the scenes darker and more gritty this gives the film a more edgy and eery look to it making the audience feel as if they are in a night time setting. We used mainly medium shots this is so that we could see all the characters in.

We used mid close up shots in Pineclones because when we wanted to capture a moment that was intense and important to the plot so we brought the camera closer this is so that the audience can feel more involved and makes the scene more immersive. This shot is still effective because it shows the characters individually without any other interference and it helps to capture character emotion.

When we were editing the film, we took into account the genre was horror, so we used certain techniques to give it a horror genre look. For example creating suspense which is built on the audience’s anticipation. A video editor- in our case final cut pro, can use the timing and pace of clips to build this anticipation and grow suspense. There is no set formula for building suspense through timing and pacing but there are some basic guidelines that serve as a solid foundation.

Its usually best to use short clips and quick transitions in the action scenes (in our case the horror scenes running from the little girl) Therefore in post production when editing we made sure to use short clips with quick transitions in order to build the sense of action and chaos this crates fear. This is shown below where as u can see the start is long clips of the girls watching the horror films creating a feeling of normality and safety, and later on the clips are shorter breaking the feeling of normality and safety.

Sound effects play a large part in horror films to create further understanding of the plot and also as a technique to create scares or jumps, i added sound effects in post production with the though of doing this. Sound also plays a very large part in horror films as it is used as one of the main techniques to build tension and suspense and i added royalty free music into my post production to do this.