Editing Continued & Combining Scene's Two and Three

After discussing with some of the media experts within the media and music department at my school. I have decided to make some changes to improve my thriller opening. After watching my rough draft a number of times, I feel there is too much in the way of dialogue in the second scene which considerably slows down the pace. Now I understand that thrillers need to have calmer moments to emphasise the thrilling parts of the film to make the audience feel even more anxious as they anticipate the end of a calmer segment of a film, and know that something big is imminent. However I feel that the second scene slows down the pace too much as it is only two minutes long, I am safer condensing as many of the codes and conventions of the thriller genre into that time allowed such as quick cuts and extreme close ups. I have decided that an effective way to tackle this problem is to combine both scene's two and three. Before I had access to Final Cut Pro X to make these alterations to the opening, I drafted some storyboards of what I expect the combined scene to look like with my group. This made the editing process faster when combining the scenes as I already had a brief idea of what the scene will look like after the changes.

I have edited my opening so scene two still starts with close up tracking shot of the corpse, however I have used parallel editing by cutting in the killer's walk in scene three after this shot which will give the audience a hint that the detective is also the killer but may also make them feel uneasy and unsure on what is about to happen. This shot is now followed by the over shoulder from scene 2 rough edit in my previous two posts, leading into the dialogue two shot which cuts to the rest of scene three whilst the two detectives are talking about the murder from scene one. Luckily, the dialogue from scene two also applies to scene three as the killer stabs the tramp twice and steals nothing from him. This will make the audience feel increasingly uncomfortable and highlight how far behind the killer they are, setting up for the rest of the film which would revolve around Hudson trying to find this man.

There is also the small matter of superimpositions to consider. When using Final Cut Pro X, superimpositions are the last feature which can be added to a piece of film therefore this will be completed after sound and colour enhancements; however I feel that I have already found the perfect font for all of the credits. The font I have chosen is called 'Oh No' and strongly resembles the typographical choices made for the opening credits of Se7en as it mimics shaky handwriting, possibly that of the serial killer presented in both scene's one and two. The letters are also surrounded by drips, which could be seen as blood splattering around the opening credits, making the audience feel anxious before the opening has even started. I plan to have these fonts fading in and out of the screen, as if they are creeping up on the audience one by and one then disappearing again making the audience question what is around them.