Monday, 5 December 2016

Post-Production: Editing Day 3

Our last day of editing consisted our group to make any final adjustments or changes needed to help polish our work altogether. Kindly, my teacher had arranged a professional editor to come into our lesson for the afternoon and look over our trailer productions to provide us with critical feedback to help improve certain aspects of our work. We found this help extremely useful as it allowed my group and me to be given fresh, constructive feedback from not only a reliable and professional source however also from someone other than people within our class. 

The editor sat down with our group on a one to one basis and watched over our trailer whilst at the same time making notes on which aspects he enjoyed and which he believed we needed to improve on. He informed us that it was difficult for him to fully grasp the plot of the film therefore in order to adjust this problem, it would be better if we could add titles to help translate our storyline to our audience. After receiving this feedback, my group and I instantly started to plot ideas of what our titles should say and then we began to implement these specific changes to our work. Due to his experience, the editor was able to teach us certain techniques on Final Cut Pro, that we as ammeters did not know, such as how to use transparency and rendering on a specific clip. This overall was an extremely helpful and learning experience for us and we believe that the feedback provided, allowed us to create an effective trailer. 




Post-Production: Editing Day 2

For our second day of editing, my group and I planned to meet at Jeet’s house as she was the only group member with access to the editing software, Final Cut Pro. Our main priority during this day was to take our teacher’s feedback into consideration and make any necessary improvements to our rough cut. We decided that it would be best to focus on lengthening our trailer, therefore we systematically viewed and assessed our filming footage to see which scenes could be effective to incorporate in our work. We started off by playing around and inserting specific clips into our rough cut in order to see if they flow well within the sequence.  

During this time we came across the footage Indiana and I had taken within the graveyard on our third day of filming. As conveyed within our storyboard, we initially intended to incorporate a close-up shot of an old, battered gravestone which reads “In the loving memory of our mother”. However, we came to realise that the footage didn't make sense or flow with the rest of the sequence therefore so we decided to leave it out. 

We then moved on to focus on the sound of our trailer as we currently only had the original sounds from our footage playing in the background. During our research period, we had come to find that sound within a trailer is extremely significant as it helps create suspense or an emotional impact for the viewers. We, therefore, needed to carefully choose which sound effects or soundtracks were most suitable to match what is taking place on screen. My group and I therefore collectively went onto a website called Incompetech as it allowed us to use copyright free sound effects. On the website, we found a number of eerie sound effects which we believed would be extremely effective to build up fear amongst the audience if used within our trailer. Once we picked out a handful of specific sound effects, we experimented with them by placing them within our trailer and had fortunately found the they work well together. 



Post-Production: Editing Day 1


                                                                   ROUGH CUT

Firstly, for our first day of editing, my group and I had decided to hold a group meeting in order to decide which editing software would of be most effective and easy to use when constructing our final trailer. As a group we  were all familiar with how to use an editing software however we found that some members were more experienced than others. This therefore meant that certain members had to take more of a charge when it came to editing however when making major editing decisions, each group member had an input. We decided that we would use the editing software ‘Final Cut Pro’ as in comparison to other softwares such as IMovie, Final Cut Pro is suited to create HD videos of the highest quality whilst at the same time making importing HD video easy and flexible. One of our group members Jeet also conveniently already had this software installed onto her Macbook and had a successful experience using it previously. 

Once we came to a decision of what software would be most suitable, my group and I then moved on to collectively look through the footage which we shot during our production period and decide which ones we believed were the most suitable to incorporate within our trailer. In order to come to a decision, my group and I had to assess the camera quality of each shot whilst at the same time taking into consideration other factors such as  lighting, grain issues and acting. We then created a rough edit in order to give us a visual understanding of what our final production may look like. We however did not have enough time to incorporate certain factors such as sound or any major transitions therefore we decided to finish this off during our next meeting.

Once we created this rough edit, we presented it to our teacher in order for her to provide us with some critical feedback in order for my group and I to make any major improvements. Our teacher informed us that she thought our sequence of shots were extremely effective however believed that our rough cut was too short for a trailer. In order to fix this issue she advised us to incorporate other footage which previously took. In order to stay within our deadline, our teacher set the a task to act upon her feedback by the following week so she could see what improvements we have made and what aspects we still need to change. 

Overall, I believed that the first day of editing was extremely successful and beneficial for us as this allowed our group members to familiarise themselves with the editing software and also give us an understanding of what our final product will look like. 




Production: Filming Day 4

Production: Filming Day 3

Production: Filming Day 2