Editing time!

Now I have finished all my filming, it is time to edit all my shots together! Yesterday, I uploaded all my shots onto Final Cut, and started deleting unwanted shots, shortening shots, and putting them together into a logical order. Final Cut is a fairly easy programme to use, allowing me to re-order shots with ease, and add editing transitions such as cross-dissolves. Yesterday I managed to edit just under half of my film, adding transitions and putting shots together. I find editing to be one of the fun parts of production as I get to play about with shot orders and transitions in order to see what looks the most effective.

Adding a cross dissolve between shots

One thing I did need to do, was to speed up the drawing shots (I don't want 5 minutes worth of footage for each sketch!). I wasn't quite sure how I was going to achieve this as I am not particularly technology savvy! But I managed to play about and find a 'time lapse' button, through which I selected the shot, and changed it to x20 of its original speed. This looked really effective and I was really please with the results!

Adding the time lapse

Originally, I was concerned that I would not have enough footage for 5 minutes worth of a film. However, after editing around half of the film, I am at 3 minutes 24, which if anything, worries me that my film will be too long! However, I always have the option of shortening some shots which may be too long, or speeding up the sketching shots to be even faster - which I don't think would look too bad, and may in fact look better. Once I have put all my footage together into one film, I will then look at the timings and see if there is anything I need to change, and discuss how I should change them.

I am lucky enough to have access to the Final Cut software from home, so I was very keen to start editing straight after filming. I will however, need to finish editing on my schools Final Cut, as I have a lot of lesson time I will need to fill. One issue with this, which I had last year during my AS coursework, is that the software I have access to at home is Final Cut Express, whereas the school use Final Cut Pro, a variation of the software. Last year I tried putting my half finished Final Cut project onto a hard drive and putting it into the schools computer in the hope of continuing my work there. However, because they are two different versions of the software, this did not work. This year, I decided to work around this through exporting my existing footage into one film and putting this onto a hard drive. I will also take my memory card from my video camera into school. This way, I can put all of my footage back on, without loosing any of the work I have already done, as I can simply place my exported file into Final Cut as one long shot. I do realise, however, that I have only done a rough edit, and that I may need to re-edit some of the film so far. Although it will all be one shot due to it being exported, I will be able to chop pieces up, and if I find it easier, I can chop it all back up to its original individual shots. Another option would have been simply to start editing at school like the vast majority of my classmates, but now I have roughly edited half of it, I will  have more class-time to create a musical score for my film, which I feel will need to be well thought-of and created with detail, as it needs to convey the same emotion that speech would - I have no dialogue, but my audience still need to be able to tell what is going on and how the characters are feeling.