over the last few weeks we have been learning avid,
I was completly new to it but feel fairly confident now, not 100% but getting there with the more intermediate things.
before the edit i have a workflow plan so I felt comfortable about managing my time knowing we had a limited time on avid, the plan was.....
name all my files
create an order on my timeline
add tighter edits to create pace
add motion effects
colour grading
titles
sound
export
naming my files
because my role for the production actually knowing the order of shots was not fully known to me so organising the clips in a good way was important,
A big problem was the capper board was organised wrong so the order of clips had to be thought out alot rather than just reading of the clapper board left to right.
my way of naming my clips was to start with the scene, then the shot and then verson but add a description.
i went through each day and organised them and the put the all in order by putting them in one folder.
the next thing i did was go through all the footage and created and order which i liked,
this was done by creating a plan in my notebook
this was my treatment for the edit,
it came from looking through the shots and making 3 different basic edits and adding direction to the edit.
the basic idea was to use the reveal of the Id to start messing with the edit structure and fluidty and use speed changes and jump frames to show the disruption of the Id.
once there was a order and then started making the order more pricice,
this meant choosing the best shots,
i did this by separating the edit into smaller section and using the diffrent tracks to put shots against each other so i could choose the best ones.
these are more bins, showing how much footage i had to choose from
this is the finished time line. it shows how i used the diffrent tracks to choose between, (not as extreme as before final)
the main part of the edit was repeatly going through the edit and triming and triming till i was happy with its intial flow.
once i had done that the next big thing was to add the motion (effects)
the first motion editing i did was to match certain edit points to motion points, ie when the id's bum hits the seat the cut is put,
i did this at many points in the film to add motion and pace to the edit.
when the close their hands there is a edit, I liked this kind of editing as this was a motion baised piece.
for the curtain putting up scene I found it was far to slow so i decided to use many diffrent shots and angles to give the illusion it was done quickly, stragigly using close ups.
another slow boring bit was the cuddle scene, I decided it need more pace, luckly i could use the styling of my edit to speed it up, i did this by using jump cuts
i then started working these jump cuts into the edit in places where it added to the tention.
this is my favorite jump cut it was the first one and was very dramatic how she jumps forward, i needed to make sure they were shots which focus was put on the ID so the super ego stays innocent of this.
I also used colour in this jump cut to emphrasis it more.
once the edit had the jump cuts part of it I started adding sped up bits to add character to the Id.
this created even more seperation between the Id and superego.
the sped up bits added a creepyness to the Id character and more drama.
you can see how i have automated the speed up on this.
the next thing i did was try and fix the exposure levels to make sure they where in legal range and looked good.
i tried to keep everything similar exposure. and add a bit of stylising to it.
my first colour correction i tried adding extra yellow to it to make it look musty, i didnt like it however so kept the colour fairly simple and most went for a saturated look
I found gamma change was needed in alot of the filter shots.
like i said earlier the main colour change i did was to desaturate it. i tried to do this enough to create a feeling in the situation put not to much as not to remove too much of the set colour as the diffrence was important to the theme.
I think it gave an intresting look to it and gave me something to play with. i had to do this seperatly for each shot so they matched.
I also decided at this point one scene could use a crossfade
I added the cross fade and ajusted the amount before and after.
I had to cross fades, they were usefull to handle the problem of filters (will talk about that later)
but for this i had to make changes to the colour so it faded the colours well together
I made sure the exposures matched and the colour saturation blended the transition
this is the dramatic colour change i did for the big jump cut transition. i wanted to make it very dramatic so it went from saturated to full colour and kept that for the next scene to add a seperation to it.
the final explisit colour change it did was the final drop to saturation when the superego is stuck in the Id room. i think this added a meaning to the colour.
i then moved onto titles
for the titles i used the titles tool and copied the template for each title
for font i wanted to represent the theme of the film with superego (controled) and ID (animalistic)
so i made the role in neat writting and names messy style
the next thing i moved onto was sound. I decided that music was very important to it as it was a movement piece and that the diegetic sound of footsteps was not worth the hours of sound work it would of taken to get rid of the sounds of the lights and airconditioning.
i think it worked better becuase of it, the film was fairly long and needed something to make it feel more intresting.
I wrote my music on FL studio, its not an easy program, basic concept of it is you uses synths and control the envolope, attack, substain, and release of the syth.
then you write your section of that in the piano roll
then put it on the time line and mix it.
I have changed a few of the settings on these sythns, most obvouisly is the attack and susbstain, to create a more atmospheric feel i reduced the attack and increased the substain and release time.
I change the envolpe indicidualy for each sytnth to make sure the work well together.
this is my piano roll. i start by writing the song on the midi keyboard the fine tune it using the writing tool.
this is my mixer for the inserts
this is the playlist it shows how i organised the music, i did this to the edit by exporting a lower qaulity avid export.
i then put it back into avid and use the audio mixer tool
through listening to it all through i decided it needed one bit of diegetic sound and thats when the phone is slammed. i added it. made sure it matched and mixed well with the music.
i then added tone and clock
once i was sure it was all good, I exported it.
Final thoughts
i feel I am fairly happy with my final edit, i think it is themed well and is technically good. i feel more comfortable with avid but would love to learn more.
my main issues were, sound.... for a none dialogue film sound is soo important but we didnt have any sounds to work with, i know ade lost his hardrive but i feel like more emphasis should of been put into this,
similar shots, i feel like we shot to much of the same stuff instead of going for really diffrent shots to add more to it.
the biggest problem was the filters.....it washed out all the colour and didnt look that great, very simplistic. it also added major issue with the edit becuase of the shoting in lots of filters we missed shots in natural colour and had way less choise, alot of the exposure was off in the filtered shots due to the idea not being Ethans.
the cut between colours look a bit wrong and really add very little, colour filters can be added more effectily in post. this made editing alot harder and i feel made the edit alot worse.
another problem was pacing of the film was bad, alot of stuff was slow and unintresting, i feel i fixed it fairly well but there are scenes which dont add much, the cuddling scene was far too long.
another problem was actors often feel over prepared and no instictivy due to the short shot takes.
overall i am happy with what i did with the footage i recieved
