Re-Editing

Re-editing was planned to be done as a group, though this didn't end up happening. One of my teammates wasn't allowed to come because his family was trying to implement social distancing. I still came to edit though, since I thought this would be one of the last times we could work as a group to finish this project. The first thing I thought we should do, was to sort through our new footage. We re-shot about eight shots, so we needed to compare each take to see if they were better than the originals. For the footage from inside the house, the re-shots were brighter than the originals, so I decided that we should use them for the final project. The shots I took in the driveway were questionably better than the originals. The shot I needed to retake also required that I re-shoot another shot to better blend it into the film. Both of these shots ended up being good, since the pan was smoother than the original, but they were too bright. I decided that we should keep them in the film, and just put a filter on them to make them match the other shots. The title screen re-shoots were not, though. I decided that we needed to re-shoot those to keep continuity with the other shots, since the streets were wet in the originals. The re-shoots didn't end up looking very good though, the pans were to fast and didn't align with the music, so I had to keep the original shots.

My teammate and I split up the editing work: I would edit the transitions, titles, and filters and she would edit the sounds and effects. The first thing I did was the transitions between the shots. When adding the new footage, the time for the project when down, so I tried to increase the length a little. I matched the actions from shot to shot so they flowed together. Then, I re-positioned the titles so they faded in on time. I also adjusted where they appeared on screen their size, and color in some cases. Inside, it was slightly lighter than before, so I changed the color from white to a grey so I was less out of place. The hardest part was the filters. I had to match every shot's saturation and exposure, which would be hard with the new shots, which were very different in exposure. I decided to make every shot outside be slightly unsaturated, so that the forest was even more different than the rest of the film. I think I went a bit overboard, looking back, on the saturation, though I am still happy with my work.

This image is from when I was inserting the new footage into the project. I came across a problem, where the original footage glitched out. The solution I came up with was to restart the program, and thankfully it worked.

Re-shooting

Even before the Peer review, I knew that we needed to re-shoot some shots. Since we split up the filming days, there were some differences in the setting. One of the days, the streets were wet because of rain while the other day was sunny. These continuity issues, while not the most glaring issue with our first project draft, were something I wanted to correct first. So, when I planed a day to re-shoot with the rest of my group, I wrote down what scenes we needed to shoot again. Two of the shots I put on the top of the re-shoot list were 4.5, 6, and 7.5. These shots included the supporting actress, Sydney, so I asked one of my teammates to contact her and see when she was free. The date we decided on was a Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Besides those three, there were quite a few other shots my other teammates wanted to re-shoot. The reasons for re-shooting them varied from wanting to perfect a pan or tilt, to getting a slighting different mood with the acting, and getting shots with better lighting. For a lot of our first takes, my camera work was shaky because it was the first time I had used that camera. This time, I knew how to keep the camera from jerking to a stop at the end of a pan. I also got better at adjusting the metal tripod's legs and using the various adjustments for setting the camera's angle, so the process was faster than our previous filming days. Re-shooting every shot we planned only took one and a half hours, leaving us with time to spare. While we could have used this time to edit, we decided that we were too tired from spending all that time filming in the hot sun. We took a well deserved water break and planned the date for when we wanted to edit. The Wednesday of this week seemed like a perfect time, since school was canceled due to the Corona Virus. This break in between filming and editing will also give me time to think over what other things I felt we needed to change or improve on the film.

This image is of the new footage replacing the old footage. This new shot was a lot brighter which created unique challenges to work against when editing it into the project.

Editing: Searching for Sound

When we were first given this project, the first thing my mind went to was music. For our commercial, we had to rush finding some music for it. This scrambled rush for music was partly caused because of the editing software we were using, which was IMovie. I knew that, because we were using Final Cut Pro, we probably wouldn't encounter similar problems that we did with IMovie. IMovie didn't allow us to upload any music, so we had to rush to find new music the day before the project was due. Despite these problems being unlikely to effect the project anymore, I still worried about what possible problems like this that could pop up for this project. My way of working against these problems was to start searching for music immediately. With my group in class started looking at different royalty free music that we could use maybe use in the film. Since the genre of our project was originally fantasy adventure, I looked for epic music. The site that I found the majority of the music we could use is called Fesliyan Studios. Besides epic music, they also had pop music! One of the requirements for the project was to have an actual song, so that was the next thing my group and I started to work on, after gathering a good amount of epic music to use later. The first song that I came across was called Shy, by the Local Natives. This song, unlike the one we had looked at so far, was copyrighted so we would have to contact the people who owned the song to get their permission to use it. Since I didn't want to email them, I kept looking for more songs. One of my team mates happened by another song, Sapphire by Grasshapa and Lo, and emailed the artists for permission. After two weeks, we gave up waiting for a response. Finally, I emailed the Local Native's Manager for permission. We waited two weeks again, and again there was no response. A teammate of mine found another song we might be able to use, and reached out to the artist. We have higher hope for a response because the teammate's father known the artist personally.

This is the email I sent to the Local Native's manager.

Editing: Improvising the Titles

In our previous projects, the teachers didn't require us to put in any titles so this was a new task. Though, we weren't entirely unprepared! During the planning process, we looked into the titles other movies used. The things we looked for included their font, order of appearance and when they came on screen. We then determined the format our own titles using those movies as a reference. When actually putting in the titles, we didn't really use much of the plan at all. The original font we had set wasn't available on the editing program I was using, so I had to search for one that was similar to the original one. I stopped trying to compare the fonts very early on, and just chose one that worked best for the project. The same method was used to determine the rest of the format for the other titles.

The font color I chose to use on most of the titles was black. This was because all of the shots were bright enough for it to be seen clearly. On some of the outdoor shots that were darker, I put the title in the sky to make it visible. The only place where I changed this color was during an indoor shot where it was very dark. In that shot I made the font white. We used a template for the titles to make them dissolve onto screen. This originally made some problems, as when the title appeared, there was a weird yellow glow around it despite the font being set to black. I had to fiddle with the setting a little, but I eventually found that the "glow" setting was turned to yellow. I then changed the glow to a light green, to match the background more.

Next, I had to decide when the titles should appear. At the beginning, I stuck to the storyboard, but then the titles started to look a little too crowded, fit into two or three second intervals. I then started to break the titles up, like having the words "edited by" and the names of the editors separate. I then staggered the times that they came on and faded off, which created a wonderful effect that me and a team mate perfected, and used on the other titles after that. I didn't apply it to all of them, wanting to keep some variation.

In this photo, the purple bars represent the titles. You can see how the ends and beginnings of them are staggered, which is the technique I was talking about.

Peer Review

We had a peer review on our final project, which is where we give our project to another group to review. My group and I will then use this review to improve our final project. We also had to review another groups project. The things we had to look for include all of the required shots, angles and camera movements, sound, lighting, and generally anything the film could improve on. The project that we got to review was unfinished. It had no titles and was only a minute and twenty seconds long. Obviously, these are things that need to be improved on, but when reviewing this project I wanted to give them other stuff to fix. One of the main things I noticed was their use of sound. Every cut had a different volume of white noise and during one of the clips, their dialogue was cut off! This simply couldn't do, and luckily there are ways to fix this! To fix the white noise, you can simply turn the volume down on the clips so they are all the same volume when you listen to it. For the cut off dialogue, there are several options to fix it with. You could separate the audio from the video clip and extend the audio clip so the dialogue carries over to the next clip. The second option is to record a voice over to put over the existing dialogue, which you would mute. My group and I used a combination of the two options in our project, so both options could work for the project I reviewed. One thing I liked about their sound was the music they used. The music picked up in key points and enhanced the action.

Another thing I think could be improved is the use of shot types to improve their story. At one point, one of the characters had to pick up a paper, and we never got to see what was on it. While normally this would heighten the suspense, but in this instance it only confused me. It is implied that the paper is a warning or wanted sign for a serial killer but in the film it's unclear enough that, when you only realize what is it when you see the serial killer. This ruins the suspense built up to this moment by distracting the audience. A way to fix this could be to have an over the shoulder shot of one of the actors holding the paper up, or a eye line match of the actors looking down at it and then a shot of the paper. Despite this confusion, there are still great uses of angles and editing in the film I reviewed. At one point there was a shot reverse shot that went from behind the serial killer, to an unsuspecting actor, back to the serial killer slowly approaching, then to the actor turning around, to then to where the killer used to be. The last shot was a wide shot of the actor, making him seem entirely alone. This sudden change from being closely pursued to being alone heightens the suspense in a new way that I wasn't expecting.

Editing: Cutting It down to size

When we filmed, we took lots of extra shots that weren't planned in the storyboard. This meant that, when we went through the SD card we used, there was plenty of shots and even more takes to choose from! This was something I thought we could have improved on from the previous projects, getting more shots to use. The only trouble was that with all of the extra shots we had meant that, when I uploaded all of our chosen shots into the editing software, the length of the film was outrageous. It had to be at least 5 minutes long! We had set ourselves three hours to get all of the editing done, which in hindsight, wasn't nearly enough time. In that time, we barely finished getting the movie to the right length! After the time was up, I decided to stay at my teammates house a little later to try and start working on inserting the titles.

The program we used was the same as the one we used for the music video: Final Cut Pro. We decided to stick with our software, rather than the provided one, again this time because of the problems other groups were experiencing with the last project. We didn't want any technical issues to compromise our final project, so we decided to play it safe. Final Cut pro is a blast to work with. Since I was just getting used to it, I kept discovering little tricks to manipulate the footage in new and surprising ways. I already knew how to stabilize a shot, but I figured out how to speed up footage and how to keep continuity of action through a transition. In these little things, Final Cut Pro really came through for me.

The first thing I had to do was get the footage down to a manageable size before I could work on transitions. This part was boring, because I was only getting rid of the beginning and end of each shot. The next step was choosing how each shot transitions into the next. When it came to transitions, Breanna was the person deciding where they should go, as she had the clearest vision for the project. I did have some chances to shine when it came to some transitions though! When the setting needed to change from inside a house to the forest, I had the idea to speed up the end of the footage as a way to blur the two places together. The effect was disorienting, which was exactly what I was looking for!

This picture is of the blurring of action i created for the transition of house to forest.