Major Project: Editing-Stings

Major Project: Editing-Stings

For our documentary, we had come up with the idea to show the passing of time with the inclusion of very fast paces, very quick montages that would act as a kind of Sting between certain sequences. 

I had a clear idea about this from the start, and although the end result is different to that, it is still one that I am happy with. 

Cailan our VFX artists and my co-editor put together some cool looking countdown clocks that were to be used during each sting (forming their base). I then sat down with Alex to find clips to play behind them. He worked out the order of each sting and what shots to include and I did my best to make them fit. 

The first version of these felt very slow and ineffective. This was partly due to the lack of music in the stings. We had all envisioned music in the stings but after much much searching and debating, no one could agree on a track to use. 

Instead, though we went down a different route. I located a basline tone that could be looped to match the tickigng of the digital clocks. Playing this in the background once again gave me a template to utilise rhythmic editing. I attempted to cut to a different shot in every beat but initially struggled.

This was because in most of the shots we had picked, not much happened in the space of a second so the cuts just seemed pointless. I tried speeding up some clips but this just looked worse. Eventually though we found some better clips that matched.

We also had trouble seeing the clocks against the background. But after working with cailan, we added various effects such as vinuets and shadows, to the video to help them stand out. They became so successful that we ended up creating more than originally planned.