Editing Process: Part 5 SECOND EDIT OF OUR COMPLETE FILM

Today we found lots of highs and lows in the progress of our film. Tutor Geraldine was shown the first edit of our film, she had constructive criticism for us. Going through the film scene by scene was necessary as she helped us decide what sections needed removing or chopping up. Having stared at the footage for such a long time it had become stale in our own minds so it was nice to have the direction from Geraldines prospective. She felt the opening to our film was not "punchy" enough and did not have the desired impact on the audience. This was because we had repeated the image. Her favorite shot for the opening of our film was a silhouette in look one showing Camber and its atmospheric early morning scenery to its full potential. It is a shot with potential but we understood her comments that in having it repeated it loses its impact. She suggested changing the image to a close up of the look which could fade into the scenery?


 She titled the piece as a 'supernatural landscape', and felt "the shot of Camber should be longer to allow the unconscious mind to take in its beauty for literllay two frames, to set the scene for the film, or maybe have a black screen with the sound of the wind-giving a mysterious edge to allow the audeince to get a 'feel' into the film, and allow the luscious scenes to trance the audience' This sounded perfect to my ears and in my head.


Geraldine like Dennis also pointed out the sections that were to long and that needed editing down. She suggested cutting down the rose part or even speeding it up however Peirce another tutor suggested the complete opposite in slowing it down staying true to the melancholic mood. This would increase the film time to much. Maybe the solution is to use the effects we have learnt and overlap into layers segements of the rose being ripped apart-this could make it look edgy and dynamic. She felt at times the film needed smoother transitions, and found footage amongst our 'libary' which we had not considered using in our film but were special moments with impact, making the point that it is the little shots that support the sequences. An example of this is the clip named 'Throwing Letter'. Her personal favorite clip was a section of sand being blown over the beach of Camber she referred to it as poetic movement. This was slowed down and became a key part of the film striking and beautiful. 


She explained that the film should have continuity in the story so the ending frames should mirror the beginning ones of black backgrounds and overlapping footage, ending with a central shot of the silhouette in the white dress on the beach which is shot identically but with less somber clouds-to fit the narrative of our story. 


Over all there was a feeling of positive feedback which was in a way a relief as i personally would not have been ready for a complete over hall of what had had so much energy poured into, although i know this can happen in the industry! Changes needed were written down including neatening fading shots, making higher resolution of the dominating letters when they are overlapped and rearranging what we have already done to make the film stand out. 


I found myself and Heidi a little overwhelmed with what to do first with so much to complete. We decided to work chronologically going through the film scene by scene. Just by altering the beginning the film looked so much better so that spurred us on to improve the film.  By editing the opening with different, un-used footage and loosing the repetition it had the originality to make our film interesting and did 'wet the audience's appetite' to keep viewing.


Olle helped us by showing us a new transition to join clips as where we added new footage suddenly it was jumpy again and the transitions were gone. He showed us how to whiten the screen to blend one piece of footage into the next. To do this you had to click (effects...video...generators...shapes...rectangle..[drag to the timeline and resize in the view finder to fit the screen then shortened on the timeline so the effect is not to obvious and not tacky]...cross disolve) This is what we did to stylize our film. 
Below is an example of using this effect:


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It was noted that after completing all these changes the film had lost its wow :( and initial power and impact-scenes such as the 'rose bounce' were different and appeared slower and out of time in context to the film? Overall there was something not right and missing after all the changes-the opening and ending sequence however looked improved. This was heartbreaking at 4pm after the whole day editing finding we prefered the film at 8am this morning, and felt today had been wasted. We felt the only way to get back the 'magic' of the film was to merge the two, using the new sequences with the old ones which were stunning. Geraldine agreed with us, and suggested we cut out some of the white faded transitions as they had been overused, and the jump cuts actually worked for us and needed to be kept. By 5.30 we was back on track, but it was the end of the day. The footage that needed to be cut had been, some of the sequences shortened, and with the 'punchy' beggining and ending it was sudenly improved. But as Geraldine said "its nearly there...but not finished..." This is true our film had no decided track to combine with the natural sounds of the wind, sand and fire burning. This is what has to be finalised next.


An interesting day overall, coming away feeling that our film had improved, it was down to two minutes 8seconds, elements were better but there are still scenes to cut and improve transitions. It was said our film has a raw quality about it and almost not to fiddle with it to much more, i think this is because like a painting if you do to much to it we could ruin gems of it. 


We finalised the second draft today shown below:


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