Chapter V: Finalé
After lots of planning, plenty of filming and A LOT of editing, the film is finished. Watch it below, if you dare...
"A short film documentary focusing around the Arkwright Haunting 'myth' in Nottingham. Pieced together using previously archived found footage filmed by a [still] missing student, the film explores the history and eerie present day site of room #AB109."
The film has been purposely kept very natural for the most part. I wanted to hold onto the suspension of disbelief provided by the found footage approach and heavy special effects were not the way to do that. As such, keeping it looking untouched became very key. Subtle features such as the increasing amount of glitches in the film (inspired by Ghostwatch) were added in using Adobe After Effects, as were many of the other effects as described in the various Experiments. Another one of the biggest influences for this film was The Blair Witch Project, a defining film in the found footage genre.
The film has been purposely kept very natural for the most part. I wanted to hold onto the suspension of disbelief provided by the found footage approach and heavy special effects were not the way to do that. As such, keeping it looking untouched became very key. Subtle features such as the increasing amount of glitches in the film (inspired by Ghostwatch) were added in using Adobe After Effects, as were many of the other effects as described in the various Experiments. Another one of the biggest influences for this film was The Blair Witch Project, a defining film in the found footage genre.
Following this idea, the film uses a very calm approach to titles. They are very bright and crisp, with slow fades during the opening and closing credits. But all of this is very quickly switched around by the onset of chaos. The juxtaposition works very well, especially at the end when the audience feels as though it can catch it's breath, only to experience the sneaky end credits scene to try and catch them off guard.
I have made use of timecode quite considerably in the film in order to provide a sense of time in the video. The time can be seen to jump around as the cuts happen. It is especially noticeable at the beginning and the end.
The beginning shows the first glimpses of being trapped in the basement, at this point the time is set forwards. It gives a time to bare in mind and makes the viewer aware that something is going to be happening at that point. This means that when the main section of the film begins, the clock is counting down to when we reach that point.
At the end of the film, the time can be seen to have jumped forward considerably when we see the camera being dragged away. It then jumps forwards again to when we wake up again and leave the room, as if having been blacked out for a given amount of time.
The beginning shows the first glimpses of being trapped in the basement, at this point the time is set forwards. It gives a time to bare in mind and makes the viewer aware that something is going to be happening at that point. This means that when the main section of the film begins, the clock is counting down to when we reach that point.
At the end of the film, the time can be seen to have jumped forward considerably when we see the camera being dragged away. It then jumps forwards again to when we wake up again and leave the room, as if having been blacked out for a given amount of time.
The primary program used for the film was Adobe After Effects. In this I cut the video, applied effects and combined compositions to create the main visual attributes of the video.
Following this, I took the video into music editing program GarageBand. I connected my laptop to a TV and placed the video onto the TV, allowing me to adjust and add audio to the video in post production.
Finally both the video and the audio were brought into iMovie to be combined together and produce the complete film.
All of the footage, photos and sounds used were recorded by myself. I recorded footsteps, ambient noise, white noise, breathing etc for sounds in a variety of different ways. These sounds were especially useful. Screenshots of my recorded source materials can be seen below.