Now that we have a basic cut of our opening sequence we could begin tweaking it to make it exactly how we would like it. To begin with we showed our basic cut to our teacher to get some feedback. Once we had the feedback we began working on the sequence to improve it based on it. To begin with our teacher raised a good point which was that although the actually suicide shots were good, if the main character were to kill himself this early on in the film, the audience may not have a great deal of interest in watching the rest of it. Even if the film focuses on the month leading up to this point they would still know that the character was dead at the end. for this reason we decided to put in another shot just after the suicide shot. It was actually part of one of the previous shots that we slowed down and put in reverse, so instead of bringing the knife to his wrists and cutting them it looks like the whole suicide shot was him thinking through his death and then snapping out of it, hesitating and pulling the knife away slowly, leading to the audience wanting to know if he has decided against it or if he is purely putting it off. We felt that his was a far better end to the sequence and then moved onto some other minor sections so we began those with cutting certain shots out such as the cereal part. We did this because, although it was a part that we liked and thought was good, it was unnecessary and once deleted it made the sequence look smoother. With this in mind we thought about the rest of the sequence and how it did go on for longer than we would have liked it to. We felt that it if it was shorter then it would look and feel more like an opening sequence so we set the goal of bringing it down from 3 minutes to between 2 and 2 and a half. This was not going to be easy as we wanted to keep all of the main parts of it to convey the story, however we felt that this would be possible.
We decided to start by editing everything extremely precisely and not miss any opportunities. This meant trimming anything we could of each clip, every half a second matters. So that is what we did to each and every clip, cutting of as much as we could (without making the clips look to fast or too jumpy, we cut as much of as we felt we could without ruining each shot). As well as trimming we also cut out a few more unnecessary shots, including two of the transition shots in the drug deal.
With this all done we decided that we were happy with our opening sequence and that the length, now roughly 2:20, was much better. At this point we changed some transitions, partly on our teachers advise (the cross dissolves between the shots as the character wakes up and making the colour effects appear earlier as the character takes cocaine the second time), but mostly on our own decision (some flashes here and there, mostly where the character takes drugs).
With all this in mind we showed some classmates and and teachers who seemed to be impressed and decided that we were happy with our work, and with the positive feedback we had got from others
Willheart 