Editing the footage

Once we had finished filming we had to edit on a computer to get our end product. For this we used a programme called Las Vegas movie studio 9.0. Overall we had around ten minutes of footage when our opening sequences had to be around two and a half minutes. This obviously meant that we had to cut alot of the footage and in some cases even elements of the story's plot to keep withing the time limit. First of all we decided that the very beginning scene, with the black screen and the girls voice, could be cut as it simply took up valuale time space and simply didnt add much to the zombie apocalypse theme that we were striving for. Many of the shots that we had were of high quality however felt that they whent on far to long and so we simply cut them down, keeping crucial actions in but leaving out the unecessary. This made the film run smoother.


When it came to the zombie chase part of the sequence we had to think how to make it seem fast and pacey. To do this we cut long parts of the zombies or dan running into shorter clips, which played one after the other gives the impression of speed. We had to completely cut the first appearance of the zombies, when they are huddled and about to run, as we felt that the shot looked to corny and also the downside of seeing traffic in the background. I feel that the shot offered little to the overall scene. At the very end of the chase scene we see Dan fall to the ground and clutch at the grass, we put this shot in slow motion and faded it out to the movie title. I feel that by doing this it adds alot more dread into the scene, with the message of inescapable death.

We als edited the music and sound in the scene. We muted most of the sound from the actual footage as it featured far too much sound of passing traffic. We did however leave some sounds in such as the noise of the chain on the fence and dan jumping over the gate. I think that hearing these sounds highlights how empty the streets are and how isolated he is. We added the music and were very pleased with how well it fit, however there was a problem as we thought the second song started too suddenly and we needed something to set it off. We incorperated a zombie scream as dan looks up and starts to run to make it clear what dan was running from and also as an introduction to the song. The fast paced music fits very well with the chase and it also fades out simultaniously to the last shot.


I personally felt that the scene we had was a good one however something was missing. It needed to be darker and more mysterious. I had watched a number of films for inspiration and desided to use a method used in many films such as The Dark knight and The Legend of sleepy hollow. The colour balance of the scene can be changed to make it brighter or darker. We lowered the brightness to make the film seem very grey and therefore more dismal and hopeless. Overall im very happy with how we edited our film opening sequence and feel that it has been a great success.