Editing week Post-production (14/06/09 - 19/06/09)

23/06/09

I've just finished an extremely tough week of editing for my video (Audio included) and it's all pretty much done. I've spent the majority of the week within lesson time locked away in the editing suite clicking away on Avid Liquid and dragging clips all over the place to create some vague order that makes sense. Don't worry, it actually makes sense now.

You don't realise how hot and stuffy it gets in the suite until you spend a considerate portion of your life in there.

All of the editing has gone fairly smoothly thus far. I was forced to relog the entire 2 tapes of footage when Avid strangely started logging over sequences I'd already logged, so instead of creating new sequences it was overwriting existing ones. Something I didn't notice until I'd gone through the tapes once.

But after finally logging all of the correct footage onto the system using the PD150 camera, editing the clips together was fairly easy. I was starting to think the fact I hadn’t filmed all the of scenes in order would disrupt the speed in which I'd be able to find the clips and put them in the time line, but it didn't seem to be a problem and after a quick look through and renaming everything appropriately finding the correct part was fairly easy

This is the first project I've done that involves a conversation of any considerable length, so varying the shots are making sure the interest is retained for the audience became a crucial element.

Although to the frustration of my actors, I filmed each shot several times in a variety of angles, so my choice was in no way limited and syncing each clip together and muting individual scenes, running separate sound track over the top for consistent audio quality wasn’t as tough of an exercise I first believed it would have been.

When you look through your footage on the camera after filming, you never really get a good sense of what the footage will look once placed in the correct order in the timeline. The use of very shaky and unnerving camerawork, using several unique camera angles really emphasises the paranoia and uncertainty reflected in Michael's mind. The camera is effectively a visual representation of the confusion in Michael's mind in this case.

I couldn't use the original soundtrack I'd used over the week to edit too due to copyright rules in the competitions rules. This was a factor I was perfectly well aware of whilst editing, simply using the tracks (Mobb Deep, Xela etc) as a rough guideline to give myself an good idea of the type of sound I was looking for in the final product.