My role as an Editor- Megan Wildsmith

Pre-production Evaluation

My role is the Editor which means that I am in charge of making sure that shots go well together before the editing process. I have to check the shot list and script and try to visual the shots in a sequence remembering all of the rules of continuity. This will ensure that there are no big leaps and that the editing is invisible. This is important because the key to a good film is when everything flows seamlessly.

Our initial idea for our film came from the film Blade II. We liked the title sequence montage where you saw blade getting ready for a fight and we developed it from there. We decided that the boy should be leaving home and that the film should be a sequence of flashbacks in the wrong order including him stalking and killing a young girl. Also, we want to include a funeral scene at the end.

The inspiration for our film came from watching films such as...

When watching horror films for research I have found that the film 1408 is especially good when it comes to editing. The film uses a wide range of angles and shots and they are edited together perfectly so there is always tension. The audience is always on guard waiting for something to pop up or something to appear behind the main character and I think that this is how a horror movie should be- always capturing the attention of the audience.

Our opening will be more tension that ‘fear’ as we are starting off slowly with a scene of the boy in his bedroom. It will be edited together slowly with long shots and also there will be minimalistic shot types and angles, with a few canted angles, but generally calm, subdued and creepy.

As we choose ‘vampire’ as our sub-genre we have conformed to a lot of the conventions- for example, we are going to be using vampire teeth for effect, scenes of neck biting, a graveyard scene and also stalking. We think these conventions are important because it will make the film more exciting and action-packed.

Some things like neck biting we can’t actually film but we can edit scenes together in a way which suggests it occurs. For example, cutting together clips cleverly and using a range of angles and shot types to keep the audience watching closely. A film that often does this is ...