As the editor for our film, I had been asked by the director from the very beginning of the filming process to integrate themes from such films as 28 days later, 28 weeks later and Dawn of the Dead. Together this created a collaboration of ideas from previously successful zombie movies. We as a group were going for themes of Horror that were strongly influenced by film noir, doing so this resulted in the creation of dark scenes and a very monotonous sequence of events which is characteristic of film noir. During the editing procedure I reduced the lighting of our film to impose the eary mise en scene we required.
We decided on the narrative by throwing in ideas from the known zombie movies (quoted above) and also using our own initiative we knew from very early on that we wanted only one character in the film itself to add the extra emotional state of isolation. This helped build upon the mind state that we sought the audience to be at by the beginning, middle and the end of our film. The feeling and emotion we wanted the audience to be victimised by was a sense of uneasy darkness from the scenes and unsettling diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. The aim was to involve the viewer by making them believe that it was a normal night that they may experience when the sun goes down, they were not only meant to witness the images and sounds going across the screen but also live it and feel it.
Some of the scenes in the beginning of our film are very slow paced and build up to a moment when the audience is disturbed by the sound of a female screaming. Naturally for a zombie film I needed to create suspense for the audience and I achieved this by using cuts and making them much more frequent in a smaller amount of time. The quick cutting technique I used was meant to drag the viewer into the screen to really look closely therefore mounting tension and concentration. For example I attempted to emphasize the P.O.V shots for Martin and also the Zombie by making the shots very short and snappy by cutting back and forth between them. This made the sequence very distracting but worked well for the sake of the plot. The editing style I used was very naturalistic and worked well with the narrative and was intended to be somewhat disturbing for the viewer.
One main aspect of the film that I am especially proud of is the fluidity and smoothness of the cuts between shots that make the film a masterpiece in its own right for the way the sequences have been simultaneously put together. The feedback on this was obviously very positive and that is where I’ve gathered my confidence regarding the continuity for our movie. I would say there was a lack of technical skill and knowledge with the computers we were using (Macs) and this may of caused the final cut to be a little less successful than I had wished it to be but with the little time we had to get use to the programs I would regard it in general an achievement.
On the whole, I consider our final cut to be successful in the sense that the story board went exactly to plan and even the editing was just as we had intended it be like. Perhaps with just a little more financial support and opportunity we would have created something even better.
