The long, hard road home - Editing

The piecing together of our footage was done using Final Cut Pro and the effects and coloration was done using Adobe After Effects. The main features we used within Final Cut Pro were the ability to rearrange footage into a sequence, and the ability to split footage so different parts could be used at different parts of the sequence. While choosing the shots to pick, we rejected the long shots and establishing shots we had filmed, as we didn't think they were representative of the feel of the sequence. When we got all our footage together, we sorted it into different "bins" after looking through the long tape of unchanged footage, the "rush". After picking what footage we wanted from the rush, we put it on the timeline in Final Cut Pro, and edited it into the sequence we wanted it to become.

The majority of our work however, was done in After Effects. We used motion tracking for the credits, to allow the on screen movement of the text. After we had done this, we did a lot of coloration. We changed the brightness, contrast and saturation, we also changed the color of certain areas of the footage. We also used masks to create vinyetting around the edges, to focus the viewer’s attention on where we wanted them to look. This created a blurry world around the girl, which was full of energy yet unseen, which was juxtaposed against the girls uncolored and clear area.

After finishing all the editing, and getting all the footage we back needed back into the sequence in Final Cut Pro, we got into creating a soundtrack. For this we used Soundtrack Pro, and also Final Cut Pro. The first layer of sound was ambient sounds, which we just dropped straight into the Final Cut Pro timeline. Afterwards, extra sounds, like the sound of the hand banging on the fence were created in Soundtrack Pro. I did this by taking a normal sound of metal crunching, and distorting it. Then by putting the reverb up, and adding in some more effects, I got the sound I wanted and then exported back into Final Cut Pro.

During this process I learnt a lot about editing techniques, much of which I didn't know from before. However, I did know some of the basics of Final Cut Pro from our Preliminary Task. A lot of the things we did in After Effects, like motion tracking are very advanced techniques, and will prove very useful for our A2 project. The editing process also gave us an insight into the real media industry, as it took almost twice as long as pre-production. This made it the most frustrating part of the Foundation Project, as it took up a lot of free time for not much progress for a long time, due to exams.