Editing: Lesson One & Two

 Lesson one:

In this lesson we got to grips with the software we would be using, Final Cut Pro. It was quite a lot to take in, as there were loads on tabs and togs that we should click, and multiple that we definitely shouldn’t.

We checked in our work and began the editing process. To do this we had to find our groups work on the server and open it up. We then created a folder called “Rush Bin’, this is where we put all of our clips, including ones we were definitely not going to be using. From here we created a separate folder, called a “Log Bin”, this is where we copied the clips that we had filmed, that we would be using in our prelim. It was interesting to see how the clips we had shot looked on screen compared to how they looked in reality.

We had the storyboard next to us whilst editing so we could follow it exactly, or as closely as possible. Our group couldn’t follow it exactly due to a lot of errors with delivering lines, so it never fully matched the storyboard.

One thing that I think let our group down was our idea. It was a pretty rushed and not particularly thought out theme. What happened was, because the actors were wearing masks, we couldn’t see their mouths moving.  Which ultimately took away from the whole point of the activity. In some senses it made our editing process easier because we didn’t have to match up the words to the mouth, because there was no mouth on show.

We didn’t finish editing in this lesson, but we had more or less half of it completed.

Lesson two:

This is the lesson when we ran into some bigger problems. One thing, although drilled into our head a million times, didn’t factor in with us. Saving our work. After completing almost all of our sequence, Final Cut crashed. And with that we lost our days work. It was incredibly frustrating that because we had simply forgotten to click ‘command S’ we had completely lost all of our (what I thought was reasonably decent) editing. After dealing with the dilemma, we watched our piece back. Here we spotted a few issues. The first, a very stupid mistake – you could see the directors’ (me) and the camera operator’s reflection in the window. Very annoying, but easily done. The next was that we had some awkward pauses that we had to sort out. To do this we had to cut the sound separately, as we had the track of one clip which we had layered other action clips over the top. This was a bit fiddly but we managed to do it. We then finished our film. To be perfectly honest, I’ll be glad if I never have to see that piece of film again – it’s really not a very interesting or inspiring piece of film. Having said that, that was not the point of the exercise. The point was to practice our camera and continuity skills, not how interesting we could make a one-minute piece of film with a very limiting script. I wouldn’t say I’m one hundred percent happy with my product, but as a first try I think it’s reasonable.