Georgia BURKE

George gets an SOS call from Mikey, but Mikey is fine when George meets him until George realises that the Mikey he is with isn’t the real one.

George and Mikey are best friends. One night, George calls Mikey to ask about some maths homework. About an hour after they hang up, George gets a call from Mikey, saying that Mikey needs help and to come over immediately. George runs over to Mikey’s house, but when he arrives, everything seems fine and Mikey says he never called George and he’s okay. Mikey can’t find his phone, and while they are looking for it George gets a call from Mikey’s phone. They pick up and it’s Mikey again, saying that he has been kidnapped but the kidnapper doesn’t know that he still has his phone. George tells the phone Mikey that he is with real Mikey, but the phone Mikey says some sort of secret that only George and Mikey would know, so George knows that the person he is with is definitely not Mikey.

As editor, it was my intention to use sound and clip editing to make the film's tension build and give it a desired atmosphere. I did this by adding and making music that had long and high notes, and contrasted it with a quick beat, sounding like a heartbeat.  A big part of the editing was the sound and music, which I had to create from scratch myself, and so I had to develop the skills to do so and do research about horror film music, as this was the first time I had done sound for a film. I aimed to use editing to contrast moods, making the difference more impactful and apparent, and uncomfortable for the viewer. I did this by using quick and sharp cuts for short dynamic shots and filming before cutting to a completely still, long shot, to juxtapose the former. Because our film is a horror film, we had to rely on aspects like jump-scares, lighting and cinematography to make the creepy atmosphere less than the narrative itself, and I wanted to use editing to heighten the uncomfortable ambience. In the first part of the film, my main intention when editing was to build tension from natural and calm, at the first phone call, to high tension and urgency at the last phone call, as to reflect the characters’ feelings, so I lengthened and shortened the clips, with the addition of the music score coming in at the moment the tension breaks.