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.