Final Cut Preparation

 Last Refinements Before Completion

After weeks of fine tuning, I was finally ready to finalize the film. This stage involved:

Exporting a high-quality version with the correct resolution.

Watching the entire film multiple times to catch any last-minute mistakes.

Showing my teacher and getting feedback before completion. 

After I showed my teacher the final product, he told me that it was a well shot film and that he liked it overall but my opening shots needed to be cut down, I had to add a graphic content warning at the beginning and subtitles for the urdu dialogue and song. 

So with everything I had left in me, I began working on the final adjustments and during this time I thought that I needed atleast one more psychological fragment and decided to edit the shots of Ali sitting on the couch and suddenly his reflection looks at the mirror while Ali is looking elsewhere. Why did this shot matter? well this moment isn’t just a creepy visual, it’s a symbolic representation of Ali’s inner conflict. The reflection moving independently suggests that Ali is not fully in control of himself anymore. His guilt and paranoia are manifesting in ways that blur the line between reality and hallucination. Up until this point, Ali’s paranoia is expressed through sound design, pacing, and flashbacks. This shot visualizes his deteriorating mental state in a way that feels unsettling but not overtly supernatural.  

I edited this shot in Capcut by importing both the shots, one of him sitting and one of him looking in the mirror, I then overlayed the reflection shot onto the sitting shot and horizontally masked it from where the mirror ends. 

Finally, after all the struggles, Shaam was complete. Looking back, every technical error, every frustrating moment, and every re-edit was worth it. The film had evolved so much from its initial concept, and I was proud of the final result.