Main Task - Zozo

Here is the final product that tested all of my editing abilities:

Click here if the video doesn't work

Creative Critical Reflection Questions - CCR

The four questions from my Craetive Critical Reflection (CCR) are answered in a Prezi below. Please notice, due to some bugs, the embeded Prezi might not show up. To fix that, I have attached the link using a hyperlink.

CLICK HERE IF THE PREZI DOESNT LOAD

Or copy paste (or click it)  this link in a new tab:  https://prezi.com/view/QRSpWD1lYrnfw1tSMX4M/

Post Production - Color

I created this separate post for Color Correction because this will contain mainly photos:

For the Color Correction, I just adjusted the basic settings, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, and Sharpness etc.

The corrections are, again, very subtle but here are Before and After photos:

Post Production

*Please notice that in some places, the project and sequences are named as "Ouija" and in others, as "Zozo". This is because I originally thought of naming the narrative Ouija, but later, Zozo seemed like a more relatable and appropriate name.

The very first thing (that also makes it easier and quicker to work) is the organization. So, after filtering out the videos that I would use, I named the videos 1-14 (followed by the keywords that would distinguish them from others) in a sequence, on a timeline. 

All of my Post Production (movie Editing) was done on Premiere Pro

After this, the second most important thing to make the audio more workable. By this, I mean that the Audio needed to be in a range that didn't chip (AKA Clipping when those hear screeching, millisecond-long noises when listening to Audio. This video explains it. Click Here to listen to an example).

I achieved this by listening to all of the footage and marked wherever the audio clipping was displayed. Then, I adjusted the gain until I had audio that didn't peak at the red bars. 

Cuts

The key to continuity is good cuts. While there are numerous types of cuts, Hard Cut, Fast Cut, Cutaways, I utilized the hard cuts, matching to beat. However there are exceptions, for example during an OTS shot where two characters are talking, it is important to not cut as soon as the character starts speaking. This is because, imagine, in real life, you are listening to two people talking. As one person finishes speaking you don't immediately look towards the other person, you look towards them when they start talking. This means that before you look at the person, their voice reaches you. This is explained in my Research - Editing post

As you can see, the cuts in the Audio Layers (Blue, with waveforms) differ from the cuts in the Movie Layer (Light Blue, with pictures in them):

Composition Corrections

With the shooting done so quickly and with a one-man-crew, it was impossible to a shoot a perfect A-Roll, so obviously my A-Roll had imperfections, such as wrong angles, perspectives errors etc. The only two imperfections were the Board Top Shot and the Establisher Shot, the later being minor. So, for the Top Shot, I used a built-in Plug-in called 3D. 

This Plug-in enables you to control a 2D footage in a 3D element, such as warping the angles, Swivel etc.

This is a Before shot:

Adjustments:

After:

 Before/After:

Before

After

I used the same plug-in for the establishers as well (3D), and here are the Before/After:

Before

After

Hand Removal

One problem with getting a Top Shot of the Board that arose was that I could precisely monitor the live view, and it resulted in my arms showing twice in the reflection of the table glass and it was very noticeable:

This resulted in a very lengthy solution, where I had to mask out a section of the table where the reflection wasn't visible and one that would match the exposure and color of the section that had my arms visible, and place it over the masked clip over the reflection and choose a correct blending layer.

So I created a new sequence, duplicated the footage 

 Took a section from mid-left on the table and masked it out:

But, as you can see it had a part of the Board visible, so I enable the second layer, rotated it 90° and masked out the visible board section:

This give me a L-shaped masked out section of table to cover the layer. After this I reduced the exposure to match the section of the table:

Here are the Before/After pictures:

1a & 1b

2a & 2b

Rolling Shutter:

As exaplained by Wikipedia,

"Rolling shutter is a method of image capture in which a still picture (in a still camera) or each frame of a video (in a video camera) is captured not by taking a snapshot of the entire scene at a single instant in time but rather by scanning across the scene rapidly, either vertically or horizontally. In other words, not all parts of the image of the scene are recorded at exactly the same instant. (Though, during playback, the entire image of the scene is displayed at once, as if it represents a single instant in time.) This produces predictable distortions of fast-moving objects or rapid flashes of light. This is in contrast with "global shutter" in which the entire frame is captured at the same instant"

Here, Destin from SmarterEveryDay explains this very well:

This is the reason you can see the propellers of an aircraft distorting and other likewise phenomenon:

This is the same reason, passing by perfectly straight structures might appear slanted:

This also caused problems for me, when the lights go out, becasue my rolling shutter goes from top to bottom, it would create a smooth fade out like effect:

Although very subtle, I thought it would be noticed. So I created full screen black solids (as they are called across Adobe platforms) that would start after 1 frame and end 1 frame earlier to keep some realism instead of an imidiate blaackout (keep in mind we are talking about miliseconds here, so while it may seem very extra or unnecassary for a majority of people, filmmaker will know how impactful this can be):

Now, here are the same frames, but with the black solids:

Sound

As I have mentioned again and again, Sound is the main factor that ties a Horror scene together. For sucbconciously creating tension I used Risers, which is when an audio track increases in volume gradually then comes to a sudden halt:

For other effects, I used beat drops etc:

Audio Peaking:

As I mentioned earlier that when Audio peaks it creates a clipping noise, which is very uncomfortable for ears. I tried using this for my advantage when Kumail's face is revealed and during the Zozo spell-out:

But I dropped this idea because without peaking I got almost the same results:

Cut to Beat:

Beat to cut is exactly what the name says, a cut occurs when there is a specific beat. This can be seen in my movie when the sequence where Rohail picks up the planchette starts:

The first beat occurs as sson as the first frame appears

Audio Clean-up

For clean up, I did nothing special, but added a little bass to the audio from the camera because the raw Audio from the camera was little high pitched.