Directions: The Edit Proccess

Directions: The Edit Proccess:

The final part of my filmmaking (apart from the screening) is the edit processe. This is my personal favourate part of the project and I feel really conected with my film at this stage since it starts to unfold infront of me. 

I went through variosue draft edits before the final cut so that I could reveiw it, and receive feedback in order to make it as sleek and effective as possible. The first step was to place the master shot's in to my timeline, reveiw them and their length, then work from there. 

The master shot allowed me to see where the natural pauses and gaps in my scenes were that would be apropriate places to cut in to new shots. I made sure to have my shot list close by so that I had an initial plan to work from, however thanks to creative impulses and input from others I ended up with a greater variety of shots than initially planned. Which was only an advantage as I could effectively controll the space and the perspective that my audience get to see. However I did find that I had missed one or two reverse shots which meant I had to break in to wide shots more often. While this is great for re establishing the space but breaks can break a chain of close up's so the audience become slightly less emmerced. 

I was sure to include a variety of shots in my edit rather than sticking to one or two. thos way I was able to demonstrate a variety of angles and use of space, while carefully controlling my audiences atention with techniques such as focus pulls or cropping a shot.

In terms of technical work (filters, adjustments transitions etc.) and sound design I was able to compile and use a great deal of the knowledge i picked up on from workshops with directors as well as my own research. One of the aspects I worked on the most (since it was critisized in my last unit) was sound design. I made sure that a buzztrack was playing at a low level at all times so that if there were ever a gap in the dialouge the atmosphere wasn't lost. I found that some of the audio in my scenes didn't quite fit for one reason or another. So I extracted the audio from other scenes and overdubbed it in certain places, ensuring to use ripple edit tools to precicely match the action. I also implimented a number of aditional background sounds from variouse online sources and self recorded catalouges. Since the buzztrack was a little empty in places I felt it neccasarry to add in aditional traffic noise, clock ticking, footsteps etc. so that the atmosphere was more realistic and beleivable (i learned about this from my research in to Lans Von Trier's Dancer in The Dark). 

 

Mixing the audio was also key since although it was all recorded at a high quality it didn't necasserilly blend well with the scene. Which is where the reverb controlls/filter ccame in handy in premier. I ws able to use controlls to specifically controll the distance and echo my sound had (useful for open spaces like the location of my second scene). I also found it handy to import pre edited sounds from software like Audacity where I could muffel and reduce background noise from audio tracks before importing them in to premier. I aslo used the mixer controlls to stop the sound peaking to high and becoming un balanced in places, but allow it to become more present in scenes with little dialouge. 

Adding in aditional sound effects also allowed me to experiment with rhythmic editing to considerable success. Having a constant atmospheric tone like the clock in my first scene or the music score in my second allowed me to cut the shots in time to a beat and keep the audience following the scene's steady pace. 

I was alos ablke to make use of a great deal of visuel effects and editing tools to imrove the continuity and overall look of my scene. Firstly to keep continuity and maintain veiwer emmersion some scenes had to be reframed or cropped so that I could carefully controll the details that my audience are allowed to see, and remove any spoilers. I used each resizing point to carefully cut out particular details in wide shots e.g. light stands or coats that were slightly in shot. There was also some brightness and colour correction that had to be undertaken in order to ensire a consistant look for my film. One of the disadvantages when shooting under primarilly natural light is lack of controll. when the sun came out in one of my scenes I did my best to account for it with the brightness and colour sliders, but it is still not quite as presise as I would have liked. 

Some shots also required stabelization as I was primarilly using hand held shots. This was most effective on close up's but i found it best reserved for short shots as the more frames it has to stableize, the more distorted the shot can become. However I was able to successfully blend atatic tripod shots (mostly when establishing a new space) with manuel tracking shots. As well as mixing my music score so that it didnt over power the diegetic sound e.g. footsteps characters interactions with objects etc. (which had to be dubbed over with foley sound or or boosted manuelly at times).

Some scenes needed a bit of help to fit together in the correct way so I found myslef looking through my coverage and breaking in to a few wide shots or flipping the image completly in order for two shots to transition in to each other naturally. To stay close to hitchcocks style i made sure to use fades instead of cuts when changing locations so taht the pace of the scene remains un changed. Thanks to the quite successful blocking of my scene, I found it quite easy to match the action of two shots seemlesly using ripple edot tools to ensure acuracy. I also applied certain other visual effects such as screening or frame holding (mainly when inserting my title sequence) to ensure two sections of video blended in to each other gently and didn't jump cut. One of the final tricks I used while editing was using motion tracking and zoom tools (gradually focusing the frame on a specific area) to controll the perspective of my audience and get them to focus on specific details within the scene and build suspense just as Hitchcock would.

I made sure to produce two different cuts of my project and showed it to variouse peers and course leaders to get as much feedback as possible. This way I was bale to improve on things I may hve not even noticed/thought of before hand.

Overall I enjoyed the edit process and it was quite successful. The one thing i would change for next time would be to give myself a little more coveradge to work with. Since I found myself missing a few reverse shots that would have fitted perfectly, and it was ocasionally a chalange to edit around continuity errors.