Editing + Sound

So I have now completed the final edit of the film with music. The process of editing took 3 weeks approximately first working in final cut to get a cut so I can work in after effects and tweak it. I used after effects for a great deal of editing which is not it’s primary function. I pretty much rearranged the whole thing in after effect to good affect because when grading shots and applying effects it changes shots you thought not useable into good shots so that is why I prefer editing in after effects to final cut. Because it gives you more options of how you want it to look, especially for me because I need to demonstrate my skills of editing and AE gives me a lot chance of doing so than Final cut. When editing I always like to get a second opinion so I often ask a friend after I’ve edited a scene to have a watch and I would ask them whether what they see is exactly how want them to see a scene. A second opinion is always helpful especially if you’ve been staring at the same scene for too long. I concentrated in the process of editing of trying to link the scenes together via the imagery or sound and I think I achieved. The edit doesn’t really have the same theme throughout, there isn’t a distinctly constant style of edit that runs through the entire film. I did it on purpose because I wanted each scene to be it’s own but it still works I think because the transitions work well between the scenes so they fit but in some scenes they develop into different themes and styles from other scenes but at the end of the scene it would come back and hopefully they will be seen as smooth transitions between the scenes.

Editing the sound was very tricky especially having never used dialogue before so that brought about a new experience. I had a sound man using a boom. Also the camera I used was a Canon Xf305 which is HD. Cutting the shots of dialogue together often meant that the the sound would suddenly drop out or a new sound would suddenly jump in. I definitely have a new found respect for sound recordists and mixers because it’s fine tuned art and to get movies sounding so perfect is impressive. Working outside meant recording sound was trickier then if we were in a closed environment indoors because I had no control over sounds that would be heard. To get over the problems of sound between cuts I  had one atmos track from the shoot which was a couple of minutes of outdoors of birds and cows which I used over the cuts of the shots to smoothing out the sound which worked well so I used it often, cows feature prominently in this film. In one of the scenes indoors their weren’t great acoustics. So in future I will now test just the sound in locations for filming before hand.