The Editing Process

On the Friday of the week we went to Liverpool, we captured the footage from Liverpool to get started straight away with our editing.

Firstly, we merged our sound from the marantz to our visual clips from the camera. Some of this was really hard to do because of the style of sound or clip we had captured, so it took a lot of time to do this, but luckily we managed to get what we wanted. We wanted to ensure we used and edited both the visual and the sound as we went along, so we spent focused time on both of them rather than favouring one first and focusing on the other later. I feel this was the best step to take to ensure that both the image and sound were edited to a high standard, unlike I'd done with previous projects. Rhys did a lot of the sound editing, whilst James did the other, as I they showed me what to do so I know for future preferences, I helped with the sound by cutting and adding fades when needed. We used a lot of fades throughout our work because we wanted to ensure that what was being said flowed smoothly and the audience wouldn't see the jumps between people etc.

We created a rough assembly between us and decided that it was okay, and started editing it. However, as we edited, we decided that the structure we had wasn't strong enough (this was after Esther's tutorial) and decided to write up the restructure diagram before re-starting a new sequence.

When we'd decided on the new structure, we started to assemble and create a finer cut. The screenshot shows one of the times we edited the sound of the busker playing, so that it dipped (but still played for continuity) but allowed the interview to be clear for the audience to be able to hear. We used key frames in final cut pro to edit this part of the music. Also shown in this screenshot, we had a few issues with gain, which was a shame because we couldn't fix it unfortunately, but we preserved and did the best we can with the footage. Also we noticed that the microphone came into quite a few of the shots without Lewis noticing on the camera (because it was out of the camera screen's area) so we unfortunately had to manipulate and scale some of the shots there, which sometimes added to the grain, but hopefully it looks okay.

We also chose a wide range of shots from the edit as Esther had suggested to add dynamic to the piece. As we had a close up of Chris Mitchell, we wanted a long shot of the bang performing as people walk past. We think this is a strong idea, and the range will add to the creativity of the finished documentary.

We did run into editing issues from time to time, such as disagreeing with ideas, which we all overcame well by working together to suggest an idea we all liked and think would work - as we worked really well as a team. 

We had trouble syncing the sound from time to time, as said before, however James and Rhys worked hard to make it work for us!!

We also felt that we couldn't fit everything we wanted in to the piece, which isn't a problem to such an extent but we had a lot of decisions to make as to what we could use in order to make it work, make it interesting and make it creative, and working hard together day after day, I believe we pulled it off, as we are all happy with our end result.

When the edit was complete, we went through checking each clip, editing (adding colour correction, fades and other effects if needed) to make the piece a clean cut. We did then run into the trouble of export, in the fact that when it was exported the project had changed it's aspect ratio to 4:3, however we resolved this quickly.

It was a hard but fun process and I really enjoyed bringing the project together from start to finish!!

:D