The Editing Process - 7/12/11

In Monday's lessons we:

• Managed to convert all of our movie scenes from Laura's camera into the school system, which did take quite a while, but once we were finished, we put them all into the system Final Cut ready to start
• Our next task was to go through the hundreds of filming shots we had taken and pick out the best ones and remove the ones we weren't using. This meant we had to watch every single clip at least twice to figure out whether it was perfect or wrong in some way
• We then had to go through all of the clips and, referring back to our storyboard and script, we had to cut down some scenes so that they fit the timing that we needed and cut out some unneccesary moments before and after each scene (e.g. us couting in the timing, the actors remaining still, etc)
• After we had gone through every single clip and editted them individually, we put them all together in Final Cut so that we could play them all through and see how it looked running one after another
• After, we had to insert our own clip of the productions company that we created, which was 'Legend Productions', and also our chosen institution, which was 'Twisted Pictures'.

This was all that we completed on Monday as we did spend most of our time trying to convert the files from Laura's camera into the computer, and this was because we used Laura's own camera instead of the school's and the computer wasn't familiar with these types of clips.

In todays Media lessons we:

• Familiarised ourselves with what we had achieved in the last lessons by watching the whole project through to see what it's like so far, and if we missed anything on monday
• Made an aim for the lesson, which was to focus on the audio of the clips and try and put in as many sound effects and background music that we can in the 2 hours - this meant we used our songs we had created on the software Garage Band and the clips we had converted from Youtube too.
• Once we had done this, we focused on the audio of our own created insitution which is 'Legend Productions' and for this we had made a song using Garage Band to fit the 6 seconds that we had planned it for
• After we had put the audio in for the 'Legend Productions' clip, we had to edit the clip itself so that it zoomed out from the actual words into the snowy, mountainous surroundings. At first we didn't know how to do this, so we asked our media teacher for some help on where we should look, and we soon had the clip working with it zooming out from exactly where we had wanted it
• We then had to go through some of the clips we had noticed had audio which wasn't wanted, and we had to delete some of the background noise that was overheard (e.g. some cars, footsteps that we didnt want). We did this by simply unlooping the audio from the video, and then deleting it.
• Our final action of the lessons was that we were going to convert them all into the 'black and white' imagery that we had decided on, so that it looks like it's being set in the past. We did this by 'desaturating' all of our clips, and we played it through all together to make sure it looked just as good in black and white, which it did!

As I said before, we are going to be using our 2 hours of spare time tomorrow to continue with this, and we're going to go through the whole opening and see if we need to cut any clips to make them even sharper, then go through the audio and remove/change any unneeded ones, then carry on with the audio for the rest of the scenes, and then focus on the credits and how they're going to appear. Hopefully, we should get most of this done by tomorrow, and then in next monday's lesson we can use it to complete the finishing touches, and then fingers crossed we can start our evaluation in the wednesdays double lesson!

Here are some images that I took during todays editing process:

This shows the view of what was happening on Laura's computer today. It shows the Final Cut software open and running, with all our clips placed in order of shot. From this you can also see the different windows we have open (this including us editing each individual clip, one where we can watch them all, one where we upload them all into and another where we put them in order).

This shows the view of what was happening on my computer today. This shows me having the software Garage Band up and running, as well as potential sound effects and sound clips on the right hand side, which is what I drag and drop into the main part to edit and put it all together. As we had the main project loaded up on Laura's computer, we used the access of the computers well by having me creating the sound/audio clips and the credits on my computer, and then transferring them via a memory stick to Laura's computer so that she can put them straight into the clip.

I think that the way we worked today was very quick and effective and we got most of what we wanted to do of editing actually completed today. We now just have to remember the other points we need to work on for tomorrow and next week, and it's all work, work, work to try and get it finished!