Post-Production

Softwares used

Adobe Photoshop - I had little experience with photoshop, however I needed to use it in order to edit the newspaper cover

Adobe After effects - I used after effects for the majority of the editing process as I already have some experience with it and I am relatively efficient in it

Adobe Audition -  I used audition whilst trying to remove background noise from the audio recorded as well as trying to boost the vocals. I was new to audition and wasn't very efficient with it, and it also didn't work very well in removing the wind sounds.

Adobe Premiere - I used premiere during the latter stages of the editing process in order to sync up the new dubbed audio with the original footage. I was new to the software however I found it easy to use and I managed to use it efficiently

Pre-Production

Photoshopping the Newspaper Cover

As we needed the newspaper as a prop in the film, it was necessary for us to edit and develop the newspaper cover prior to filming. To do this, I downloaded a picture of the front cover of a copy of the irish news and then removed all titles and unnecessary pictures. I then edited a picture of our rookie cop actor onto the cover and added a title alerting the reader to his death, using the font  Times New Roman Bold. I then enlarged the cover to the resolution of a real newspaper and made sure to use bicubic smoother in order to maintain a high-quality resolution when the cover was scaled up. We then brought a copy of the finished newspaper on a USB stick to a printer in our art department and had the cover printed onto newspaper paper, and then we wrapped it up in other newspaper sheets to make it look realistic.

Post-Production

Video

Sequencing and applying fades

The first and most tedious part of editing is sequencing all of the clips and layers  together. This involves a great deal of trimming and altering the position of layers in order for the film to run smoothly together and maintain continuity. I also applied a fading effect to some layers in order to ensure that layers transitioned into eachother smoothly.

Adding Titles

A basic yet crucial phase in the post-production process is adding titles and credits to the film, both at the beginning and ending. I used the font 'Eras Bold ITC' as I believe it had a thick cinematic look to it and made the film look more professional.

Applying filters and removing grain

After I sequenced the clips together, I then got to work on removing grain and noise from the footage in after effects. Some layers needed more grain removal from others, especially the pool scene due to it's dark lighting. I also needed to make a conscious effort not to remove too much noise as making the footage too smooth would make it look artificial. I then got to work on colour grading and applying filters using the adobe after effects plugin Magic Bullet Looks. I applied a cinematic filter to the establishing shots, and a warm, melancholy filter to the bar scene. I also altered the brightness and contrast of the establishing shots to make them look slightly gloomier. I then went on to apply a cinematic filter to the pool hall scene as well as increasing the colour vibrancy due to it's dim lighting. The greatest challenge however came about in applying a filter to the docks scene. This is due to the fact that although the day had been dark and gloomy about an hour previously, the sun had arisen and the day had gotten bright. As a result I needed to lower the brightness and alter the contrast, as well as adding a filter which accentuated black tones, dulled vibrant colours and made the footage seem gloomier overall.

Applying stabilizer 

I applied a stabilizer on a variety of clips of footage in order to remove some shakiness, however it proved to have almost no effect on the shakiness of the footage.

Time Remapping

I found that the panning shot that first introduces us to the drug dealer lacked consistency and the shot sped up and slowed down in different places. In order to stabilize this, I used time remapping and keyframing in order to make sure that the pan was roughly the same speed throughout and maintained consistency.

Audio

Altering audio volume

Due to the fact that the different layers and scenes were not of identical volume, I made an effort to reduce and amplify some of their audio in order balance it out. I also had to fade audio in and out to match the fading of the footage, as well as fading out or muting any external sounds such as laughter which I hadn't noticed while filming

Adding soundtrack and sound effects

For the soundtrack of the film, I chose moody melancholic jazz for the opening and ending scene, as well as ambient jazz for the dock scene. The music I used was independently made and copyright free, however I made sure to contact the artists to get their permission before I used their music. After downloading the music, I simply had to drag and drop it into the composition. As for the sound effects, I used freesounds.com to get download sound effects of ambiance, realistic pistol gunshots and a phone vibration before dragging it into the composition.

Applying telephone effect

In order to create the rather brief audio effect of giving the impression that the chief was speaking over the phone, I trimmed the clip of him speaking that I needed and opened it in adobe audition. Here I opened up an FFX equalizer and set the audio the telephone preset. This gave the audio the effect of sounding like it was coming from a mobile phone, adding reverb and slight echo while making it sound quite tinny.

Removing background noise and altering frequencies

Without a doubt the most difficult and time consuming part of the editing process was trying to remove the loud wind in the background of the docks scene. For this, I began by using adobe after effects' built in equalizer to try and remove the high and low wind frequencies while boosting the vocal frequencies, however this had very little effect. I then added a high/low pass to remove some of the low humming wind frequencies, however this gave the audio of the vocals quite a high tinny sound. I then closed after effects and opened the audio into adobe audition which I had no experience with whatsoever. Here I tried to edit the waveform of the file by selecting and cutting some low frequencies, however this damaged the dialogue audio as well. I opened up various equalizers and applied effects such vocal enhancers, before opening up adobe premiere and seeing if it's denoiser effect had any effect in reducing the background noise. While a lot of the wind sound was silenced, it was still clearly audible and the various effects used to lower it caused the original dialogue audio to sound tinny and somewhat distorted.

Overdubbing audio + adding ambiance

Due to the poor quality of the audio even after I edited it in Audition, I decided it'd be best just to retake the audio altogether. To do this I borrowed a mic from a friend and got Liam (drug dealer) and Matthew (rookie cop) to come back to my house to retake their dialogue. I then muted the audio of the original clip and synced the new audio together in Adobe Premiere before adding this new clip back into the After Effects composition and replacing the original footage. As the new footage is muted bar the dialogue, it is necessary to add some background ambiance which I downloaded from freesounds.