Editing for the final cut

When we had all our footage it was easy to see where we wanted the shots to be. We all had a clear picture of what the opening sequence would look like but it was just a case of seeing if it would work.
We used short shots to reflect what real film openings would look like. We tried to fit the shots with the soundtrack and by doing that we had to lengthen shots and shorten them in different places. The one shot which took a lot of time over was Jake's shot, when he walks into his "house". I decided that it should have some sort of zoom in and zoom out, to make the scene look more weird. I cut the shot to make this look effective and put the zoom in throughout the zoom out shots. This editing worked really well with what we were trying to achieve and fitted the soundtrack well. It also showed that Jake was really the main character and he needed to have some of the editing done in his shot to lengthen it etc.
We used simple transitions to keep the social realist theme. They looked good as there was a lot going on in every shot and there was no need to overcrowd it and have too much going on with specialised transitions. Our titles were kept simple for the same reason as above, so as not to make it look like too much.
With the way it was edited, there is a shot type variation in every shot. There arent 3 close ups in a row, or 4 long shots in a row - we purposely made it so it was varied so it didnt look boring. With the final scene where Jake passes out on the table, there is a fading out transition to finish off the opening sequence. The word Coke appears (which is the name of our film) and it stays there while Jake passes out. This fits well as it shows what Coke and bad substances can do to someone, so there is a message in the final part of the opening sequence.