Prelim Task Part 2

Following on from our Prelim. Task Part 1, where we filmed our 12 boxed short storyboard sequences when we were in the Film and Television studio, our Prelim. Task Part 2 involved us having to edit our footage from that day.  I found the whole process an enjoyable challenge as this was the first time I had ever edited using professional software, so I had very little understanding of how everything worked on the program and where to start. After a brief introduction about how editing works when the basics we needed to know for that lesson were explained,  we began editing our sequence in pairs.

Our process began with watching all of our footage to refresh our memories of what I had filmed, not only the compulsory shots but also the extra shots, and then either deleting or naming them appropriately to their action making it a much easier process to find when editing.  I found on the left side of the screen the list of shots  with titles such as Long shot, Very close shot, over the shoulder shot and so on.  This was extremely helpful as we were able to find the shots at a much faster speed especially as we only had a limited time to edit.  It makes sense for me to make this a compulsory step before editing and definitely a good idea to include within the editing process of our upcoming Thriller.

After this we were supposed to create, which I accidentally forgot to do,  a new bin (a copy) of all our shots to be able to go back to our raw footage at any time in case anything happened to our footage whilst editing including it being erased from the desktop. Luckily for us this did not occur but it was something very important that I learned to always undertake before every project. We will have to remember to do this for our 'Opening Sequence' of our Thriller as it is extremely important because if we don’t do this, if anything is lost or deleted we will only have ourselves to blame.

We then began placing our chosen clips onto the timeline whilst playing with the order of them until we were content with how it looked.  One thing I learnt after the session was that instead of putting all our clips next to each other on the timeline, which we did, we should have alternated each individual clip as it would have helped us with both the visual and the Audio element as the Audio was the section which I found the most difficult as you could hear the change in loudness of the audio and the overlapping of the actors dialogue when changing from each clip.  Perhaps it didn’t help that we weren’t using a mic which would have explained the difference in loudness but in the future I will learn how to create strong audio to go along with the visual as they are both as important as each other in creating a flawless film.  I did however learn shortly after the process that for some shots where you don’t see the actor physically speaking, you could use the Audio from only one of the clips as I know now how to separate the visual from the audio.   I think with more practise it will be much more affective in creating a professional looking and sounding piece and for future projects and especially for my soon upcoming Thriller.



When filming our short sequence there were 4 words which we were told were essential to know on set: Standby, Rolling, Action and Cut. Not only was this important for our actors to know when to begin or end their dialogue or acting, it is also a major guideline for editors to know when the scene has begun and ended during editing.

What we discovered, which was essential during the session, was we had to constantly save our work as programs, such as the one we are working on, are known to occasionally crash if too much data is being stored meaning that your work might be completely lost. Even though the program has been set to atomically save every 15 minutes, a lot of work might still have been achieved in that short space of time making it very time wasting if it was deleted or lost when it could have been very easily prevented by the click of one button saving after every 5 adjustments to your scene.




One challenge I personally faced was a continuity issue of making every clip smoothly transition into the other, for example one of our Actresses had the phone in her hand in the initial shot and we then switched to another shot as she started to move her hand up towards her ear along with the phone. What I found difficult from this was the timing when to cut one clip and then to start the other so that we have a seamless progression in the story and motion. What made this process much easier to edit was the set-up of the two monitors showing our footage on the 'Adobe Premier Pro' program, one for the selected clip and the other for the footage we already had, making it much easier to cut a clip at our desired moment.  I was, however, very pleased with these finished shots as I thought they were very smoothly transitioned, especially on the shot when our actresses hand reached from her back pocket to take the phone out and pass it to our other actress. I was extremely happy with this as the transition between the two shots was very smooth but it did take a lot of time for me to be able to make it right and very precise.  It all very time consuming in our short amount of time we had during the one session.  One thing I will do when it comes to editing our Thriller is to not spend so much time on one short element as I should get the important things done first, such as the scene outline as we had to slightly rush it, but hopefully with more practise and less of me being a perfectionist I will speed up my editing skills getting the work done a lot faster.

I wasn’t overly pleased with our finished product as we did actually run out of time during the session meaning some of the editing at the beginning of our sequence was not completed resulting in us having an awkward pause straight after the first shot.  Luckily it wasn't that easily noticeable and looks like it was deliberate.  Our audio though was very bad and probably was the weakest part of our video but overall I really enjoyed the process and I did learn a lot of skills which I can utilise when I edit my 'Opening Sequence'.