Editing - Final Scene

Ideally, I could have ended my short film after the previous scene, because that would have more or less wrapped up Dylan's character arc. However since this film is about the parallels of two different characters, I thought that this epilogue was necessary to understand both the Father and Dylan a lot more. 

I started shooting here with an establishing shot. Slightly noticeable in the screenshot is a bluish tinge at the start of the footage, making the sky look a little brighter than the grey that comes later. Although I am unsure as to what caused this specifically (it definitely was not the sky naturally going from blue to grey in the space of 3 seconds) I am pretty sure that it was the camera adjusting to the lighting of the sky. I think I was recording the shot whilst the camera lens adjusted to the brightness of the location. I have edited the blue segment out because it looked unrealistic and slightly menacing. 

Again whether I need an establishing shot here is something I will decide later. I think I will cut to black before I introduce this scene, just so that it becomes easier for the audience to recognise that this scene is slightly separate from the narrative that unfolded beforehand. This is more of an extra, which is why I'm phrasing it as the epilogue, as it brings additional closure and clarity to the story. Without it, we wouldn't really know whether the Father was a regretful or carefree man after killing Dylan's brother. 

Cutting down on footage was quite straightforward in this sequence because I just had to delete the shots which didn't have the photograph in the frame and keep the ones which did. Once I had substituted those, I had reduced the running time to a more reasonable length already. 

The shot moves from the hand putting down the flowers and pulling away, to the shot of the Father standing up again. Even though it is a very simple movement and cut, it looks seamless and so the transition is undetectable. It poignantly draws focus from the photograph and flowers to the character without pulling the viewer away from the narrative. Additionally it enabled me to cut down footage by using some from each shot and deleting the rest. 

Another reduction in running time occurred in the shots above, where I had the same action taking place in two different shots. To overcome this, I made sure that I edited both shots together so I that used the start of one and the end of the other, and so I didn't have to delete either of them but could reduce them both considerably.