Cutting it Down to Size! Editing

Once we had all the filming done, we dumped all of the footage onto a computer. We separated them into the different days and locations and went through all of them. We would watch it and determine its quality, and if it was good or one we liked, we placed it in another folder. There were about three or four takes a shot, so we would compare the takes with each other and choose one or two to be the final take on that shot. Once that process was completed we took the new folder and ordered it in chronological order, according to our storyboard. Then we went through and got rid of the lesser duplicates.

With our now finalized shot list, we dumped that into our editing software: Final Cut Pro. It was about five/six minutes long including all of the extra parts. So, we went through each shot and deleted the filler beginning and end of each one, cutting down the time. We weren’t focusing on making it perfect at this point, but only getting the bulk of what we needed there. Once we did that, the video was about three/four minutes long. Realizing that even with the blank spaces cut off, we were a little worried. So, we went back and through it again, this time a little more thorough.

We focused on exactly when we wanted there to be a cut, if only to shave down time. In one scene, we decided to have jump cuts, as the part we had was unnecessarily long. In that scene, I was supposed to be panicked anyway, so it made sense to make it look like I was rushing. We sped some things up and cut things so meticulously. We were very happy when we got it down to 1:59. A lot of time had passed when we got it there, and our time together was coming to an end soon. So we decided to only do a few more edits.

We wanted to get to sound and titles that day, but we planned to do it another day. The only sound we really edited was the only line in our project, “Wake up!” We liked the visual of one take but the sound from another, so we deleted the unneeded video and audio accordingly. We got it how we wanted and it looked good! For a work in progress. The only other thing we edited was when my character collapsed. My group mates sped it up a little to make it look like I was falling more realistically then my controlled acting. Otherwise, that is all we got done that day, and we anticipated the next time we could get so much work done!