05.02.09 Editing

In this lesson, we decided to edit, as we could not film due to bad weather conditions. We uploaded our footage to the Macs “Capture now” and split them according to the various shots we filmed. After it was all loaded up on the Mac we looked at our storyboard to see what shots went where and for how long. Our first shot was of Carel’s feet hanging for 3 second. Second shot was of her hanging from her hanging (mid shot). Third shot was a long shot of her hanging from a tree. This is where our first minor problem occurred. We noticed that we did not entirely think it through, in the long shot Nicole is nowhere to be seen and in the next she was suddenly almost approaching the hanging figure. But to fix this we decided to add a fade transition to show that time has passed by. Then we added a few more shots to the sequence such as match cuts until things became a little difficult to trim on point. When we were filming because silly me did not do the 5 second rule. But with our confident editing we managed to work our way around it.

As we continued to edit we came to a point where perfectionism was necessary! We didn’t cut to the next clip until we were happy with the previous one. Also we had the issue of not completing the filming process which meant we had gaps. Carel was obsessed with adding the title/text to one of the shots before continuing. She preferred to complete that shot until moving to the next. I told her it was best to add the title/credits and effects in after completing the timeline.

Eventually we all got a little carried away with the title. Us being us would never take no for and answer, and refused to fail to do something when editing. The issue that occurred was adding the text in the right position. After playing around with it about I managed to figure out how to rotate it. Now we needed to actually move the text to position, (in order to make it look hand written on the image.) I accidentally did it and Carel spotted it so that was another problem solved. Now as we picked a font and colour we played it back to see that it looked very poor. The text remained still while our footage wasn’t this was because it was a handheld camera shot. We were advised to use a still image instead so we did. This also looked very poor. I found a way to steady the camera movement as another alternative but the film footage needed rendering, which I did not want to risk doing. We eventually used the still image and noticed on the storyboard that we didn’t get to film and important extreme close up. We thought that we could film it there and then considering the background wouldn’t be seen. We did it but found it was hard to hold a camera steady when doing an extreme close up. We had no choice but to go and get a tripod. I set up the tripod and filmed the close up of her eyes with her in front of a window and then we uploaded it on the mac. Nicole was unhappy with the shot and insisted that we remove it, for that moment we had no other choice but to leave it there until we could replace it.

Now we were trying to stick to the storyboard, so we needed to stay with our initial idea which consisted of a shot reverse shot. Carel was exploring the software and managed to use a cross fade effect to change the text that we inserted into the still frame. We were forced to use a still frame because the footage we needed moved so much as the text remained still which looked really stupid because the purpose of adding text was make it look as though it was hand written on the tape recorder. So when we used the that transition I added the shot off Nicole’s eye and turned the opacity lower so you can see what she’s looking it and the reason for her blinking. (Psycle -à “blink” -à Play.) The problem with this is that the effects mean that it goes against being a shot reverse shot. Next lesson we are going to film and maybe think of a better idea, but we all wish to stick to the storyboard.