Post-Production Reflection

In post-production, my editor and I first went through all of the footage together, deleting unuseable takes and beginning to think about ways in which to edit these shots into a scene. We divied up the editing work scene by scene  in what I believe was an equal share before working on these separately. However, because this was the editors main role in the entire film production I assigned her the role of colour grading each scene and allowed her to edit the scenes that were more creative and artistically driven with myself focusing on aspects like the credits and smaller scenes.

Receiving feedback from Tim on a rough cut, I was encouraged to implement a more Expressionist Style, utilising related stock footage, digital zooms and removing shots that felt too drawn out or lacked emotion from the Actor. This was incredibly helpful in bringing a stronger horror tone to the film.

Whilst editing, I noticed more mistakes within the raw footage e.g. Mics in shot, shaky camera and the focus being off. To conceal this, I used Warp Stabiliser on Premiere Pro, cut down shots that were initially going to be longer and interweaved it with stock footage and added in successful shots from other scenes. These editing choices helped to elevate the footage rather than amplify its flaws.

It was surprising to see how much dialogue and scenes were cut whilst editing. Listening back to the dialogue I’d written, so much of it made me cringe and I knew that the audience would likely experience this too. To avoid this, anything that was integral to the plot was removed and in turn, the scenes without dialogue were more tense and uneasy and the ones with dialogue became more impactful and meaningful within the film. Originally, the final scene was supposed to reveal that Mary, having escaped James’s grasp and in a new relationship, has become a vampire herself. Writing this ending was a struggle from the very beginning, trying to write a strong reveal, present her evil vampiric actions of evil, and crete an ominous future for her new partner. As a result of this uncertainty, the shots taken for this scene were lacklustre, and didn’t match what I had first envisioned at all. The ending needed to be both powerful and horrific, and so when it came to the editing process, I decided to remove this entire scene, and instead end on Mary having just bit James, covered in blood, laughing and finally free. The message of this is much more powerful with this ending, focusing more on women’s experience being in young, toxic relationships with men and the feminine rage that accompanies that.