The Editing Process

The Editing Process

When we started our editing process, we started by uploading all of our Footage onto Final Cut Pro. However, we weren't quite observant enough to see that we could name each shot before they were on the system. Luckily, we were able to add in titles after they had been uploaded, which made life easier (In the future this is not a mistake we will make, as we have learnt our lesson). There was a silver lining though, as this gave us another opportunity to look through all of our shot, and made it easier to see what shots were better than others, and what order they would go in.


The first thing we did was refer to our storyboard, so that we were certain of what shots were in each
order, and how long each shot would last. Our first shot was a shot of Mel stirring the tea with a spoon. The first thing we did was play the video and collectively agreed on where the shot should start and where it should end, and we set those points as the the in and out point. After this was done, we dragged it into the live bar. We repeated this process with all of the clips.

As some of the shots that we did were intended to be 'Match on Action' and 'Shot/ Reverse Shot' some more refines editing was needed, as we had to cut a shot at a particular point so that it would connect with the next shot seamlessly. This was shown in one of the shots of Melissa reaching for the bottle and picking it up. In the first shot, we have a MLS of her arm extending across the table. Then in the next shot there is a CU of the bottle that se is picking up. In the shot before, we had to cut the shot before she actually picked it up.

One thing we found when we had found when we had edited all of the shots together, was that the overall time was a little over a minute. This was likely due to the fact that when we were filming, some extra shots between what we had planned would look better. Similarly, we found that some shots weren't needed. To fix this, we decided to slim down on some shots with seconds that weren't needed. An example of this was the first shot of the tea being stirred, and another was the shot of Melissa walking across the room with the tea. In the end we didn't think that it made a difference, and it made the product a more sensible time.


Once all of the clips were together, we started thinking about transitions, and which ones would look effective in the movie. In the end we decided that in the duration of the film, that cuts would look better as it would not distract the viewer from the story. However, we decided that a fade into the sequence, and a fade to end it would look effective, and so we added them into the beginning and end of the film.


The last thing that we did was delete all of the audio that had been uploaded with the video footage, as we did not need it anymore to hear the markers, and we had recorded the dialogue separately. This meant that there was a clean slate for the sound editing to take place.