Individual Project - Editing

The editing process of my film had some difficult task to overcome. After i had captured the video to Final cut pro, on video playback i noticed alot of lighting problems. Many shots, and unfortunately some of the most important shots, were very dark. So this was going to prove a problem in the near future, but my first task was to create the film, in its narrative order.

some of the opening scenes, which involved the two characters having a conversation on the log, was quite difficult to edit. I took a list of different angles for these shots, but through bad acting, and the boom mic entering almost all the shots, it proved a problem. why didn't i notice the boom in the shot? well because we had such a small group, two of us were acting, and one was on the boom mic, leaving the camera un-manned. in the end i actually included shots that had the boom mic in, but using an editing feature, called the four-point matte; i was able to layer one shot over another, cutting out the boom mic in one of them, and filling in the gap with a shot that had no boom in shot.

Another example where i used the four-point matte technique, was a scene where i had two of me, on the same screen, at the same time. i took a static shot of the landscape, then keeping the camera in the same position, i took a shot of me with the mask on. Then i took a second shot of me, on the other side of the shot, looking in despair. when using the matte, to cut both shots in half, and layering them over each-other, it gave the desired effect.

now, for the shots that were too dark, i spent a long time using different filters. unfortunatley each shot that had come out dark, had to be edited with different filters individually. There were many 3 way colour corrections, gamma level and brightness alterations, along with a few over variables i had to tweak among the video filters. Also, i decided that i wanted the film to look grim, and pale, so i desaturated all the shots to my liking, which certainly added to the mood of the film.

i edited the music into my film to also enhance the mood, and flow of the visuals on screen. I edited the music in hope that the audience would connect more emotionally to the narrative. All in all i was quite happy with the outcome of the film, but thought that i should have collected more material on the filming day. Also i think having more people when filming, would have resulted in a much easier editing process.