POST PRODUCTION AND EDITING

For our first few sessions of editing we began by taking the rushes, cutting them up and putting them into sub-clips. This was to make it easier in collecting the exact shots we wished to use, as they would all be titled and in separate bins which we had created. Once this was done we already had our filmed timeline in place, so we decided to just put the somewhat relevant clips in their correct position on the timeline. However, this proved more difficult than it sounds, as some of the shots we had drawn for our story board we had not actually filmed, so we just placed what we had down to give us a basic structure. Moreover, we found it very difficult to all cooperate at first, as there was a continuous battle to get on the mouse, so eventually we decided on just two people to move on with this, whilst the others got on with completing the background.


Once we had a basic structure down on the timeline, we actually realised that our initial idea of having a more narrative driven pop video was not actually working very well. Therefore, we decided to scrap this idea and start from the beginning, still keeping the same themes in place but now using a more of a montage effect. So we started to place things down on the timeline, however, myself and another member came to great difficulty in finding the actual beat. This was making it very difficult to cut in time – this was a great struggle that we defiantly had not over come quite yet but we are trying to get better. We wanted the pace of editing to be spot on and we wanted the right mode of address to be conveyed to the audience, so our slight technical problem was evidently becoming more and more difficult to over come.


We decided to just battle on and try and work through our problem, even though it was beginning to really get us down. So we continued to just getting the sequences down on the timeline in the correct order, however, we were somewhat just seeing where it took us rather than having an exact plan. We knew the general direction in which we wished to take our video, and how it was to be split up into three sections -it was just getting that perfect balance of these, and getting the pace of the editing in the correct position. Although, another problem that we were beginning to encounter was the lip sync, both our actors did not know their lyrics very well, this made it very difficult during these editing sessions, as shots we wished to use we couldn’t in the end because the singer was obviously singing the wrong lyrics, and this would jeopardise the overall look of the video. Therefore, getting the right shots with the singers singing the correct lyrics was becoming a very lengthy process, as were often having to cut in and out of more shots because of this factor. Nonetheless, it was making the video look all the much better as it was so much more precise.


Today, we have somewhat encountered a small problem, we seem to have overwritten our filmed and edited storyboards, and now we do not have them nor the original drawn out version. However, because we had very much moved on in our editing process and we actually realised we did not need them, nonetheless it would have been useful when it came to evaluating the product and reflect on what we did differently.


We have been spending a lot of our free time editing, just refining all the shots and making sure that the pace of editing is to the correct beat (which we are still continuously struggling with) and making sure it conveys to the audience what we wished to show, reinforcing this autumnal, organic aspect. We were coming up to the last few stages in this initial part of the process, as I think tomorrow we are going to start working in AfterEffects. Our pop video, without any of the blue screen shots are all placed down, so we just need to do this last part now.


Today, we started our editing session with an introduction into how to use the programme AfterEffects, undoubtedly this process was very complex and defiantly set us some great challenges. The first thing we did was initially went through all the shots in the video with the blue screen, we then had to export them individually into AfterEffects. This was all we managed in the first lesson, as this process was very time consuming and we had about 50 shots to consider.


Following our initial work, once they were all in AfterEffects, we went through each shot one by one and ‘Chromokeyed’ in the background. All of this was very tedious and time consuming but it was a repetitive process, and luckily myself and Lily just got on with it together, so it somewhat relieved a lot of pressure. Eventually, once our textile background was now in place, we began to put them on the timeline with markers, which enabled each background to move – as this was the effect we wished to create. Although, we noticed that some shots were travelling more than others, so we had to continuously make sure there was this balance. However, we did encounter an even bigger problem, many of our blue screen shots seemed fuzzy, this was inevitable as the blue screen we used was a thick, course material, so it was somewhat expected that it ended up looking slightly ‘fuzzy’, nonetheless there was very little we could do about it as this was a technical fault, that was pretty much impossible to completely overcome.


We now have sorted out the ‘bike scenes’, this process was slightly different. We uploaded all the pictures we had taken on a digital camera of a country road into AfterEffects, then we created a sequence with each shot lasting approximately one second – this created a montage effect.


We have now finished all the shots in AfterEffects and today we put it back into Final Cut Pro, once it was in there we decided to change some of the colours by using the enhance key, to make it look as authentic as possible.