Post-Production! (Prequel)

     My first time editing this beautiful project, I didn't get very far. I hadn't edited since November and had grown unfamiliar with Premiere Pro since then. Because of this, I was very slow when editing, but also very nervous. Since I was so nervous and rushed I just completely forgot to save the entire thing. Don't get me wrong, even though I didn't get much done, I did the entire base of my opening. As in editing all the clips together to make 2 minutes.

Here, I pretty much had no editing plan and was just sticking clips together recklessly.

    

    

    The second time around, I had more of an idea of what I was doing and could also edit a lot faster. I not only edited the clips together but started working on motion. This meant I took into perspective if some clips were too shaky and needed to be stabilized and if some clips were too slow and should be sped up. I didn't know how to do any of this but by asking for help I found a couple students from my school's TV program that knew a whole lot more about editing. 

I never found out what happened to this draft and why it didn't save either, but I don't have it anymore.

    The third and last time, I edited all the way through. Before this, I finished all of my homework for every other class so that I could just focus on editing. Over two days, I spent 6 and 5 hours respectively editing my opening. And I couldn't be prouder of it. I've finished putting the clips together, color grading, adding music and foley, integrating the production company, and finding the perfect fonts for the credits and title. Only quickly, I mentioned foley, which I was supposed to make myself, but the grass sound I needed was not able to be made since it's been raining for the past few days and I can't use wet grass for any kind of crunch, so I stuck to royalty-free sound effects. However, I did record the pen click and rustling trees. Anyways, the editing this time was thorough and neat and even. Here are the time lapses for one of those days.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KL-BP94iMkVGs5cmSWsZbJaT_hEdozm8/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ONKPpTafKbdIVhAdikd6N35oEQhu04O_/view?usp=sharing

I edited the rest of it today, but this was only yesterday's editing.

“Birds Sound Effects | Mixkit.” Mixkit.co, 2025, mixkit.co/free-sound-effects/discover/birds/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.

“Grass Sound Effects | Mixkit.” Mixkit.co, 2025, mixkit.co/free-sound-effects/discover/grass/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.

Post-Production!

Lighting

    In my film, the goal was to integrate two different kinds of lighting. The beginning and end have high-key lighting while the scene where she finds the noose and the earring has low-key lighting. For the most part, the opening has bright, vibrant, high-key lighting to mimic a kid's mind. This is because her memory is limited, giving her a child-like whimsy. The scene would reflect this by the lighting and color being exaggeratedly vibrant and highlighter. In direct contrast, the later scene with the tree, the noose, and the earring had dim, dull, low-key lighting. The contrast was in the negatives and the temperature was set to cool. I edited my project in Premiere Pro with a set-up template for editing and simply switched the template to one for color. 

Editing Layout                                                             Color Layout

Settings for the high-key lighting clips

Before                                                             After

Settings for the low-key lighting clips

Before                                                                    After

Production Part 4

    Hey, Cambridge! It's a new week! Today's production is dialogue. As previously mentioned, my friend Margot has a lovely English accent and is going to be my voice-over actress. 

    Apart from being awesome, Margot spends the bulk of her time playing volleyball. This meant she had little to no time to meet up after school to record. Thankfully, we have theater class together every other day in which we have access to noise-cancelling recording rooms and microphones. So our solution? Record then.

    Though we had this class time to use, we still had to be responsible and participate in some part of it. For this reason, we cut our recording into three parts. One class is 90 minutes long which is three 30-minute blocks. For the first two thirty minutes, we worked and rehearsed; for the last thirty minutes, we worked on the voice-over. We did this three times to have a total of 90 minutes of work time.

Day 1:

• For about 10 minutes, we came up with this dynamic.
• For another 10 minutes, I explained the film and the opening plot. 
• For the last 10 minutes, she read the script and I explained the different decisions.

Margot reading the script.

Day 2:

• Read over the script and made different choices to see what sounded best
• Wrote down the different interpretations

Day 3:

• Recorded!
• I forgot that Lily's mom called her in for dinner in the opening and that I had to record that too.

 In the recording room.