March 04, 2009

Today we further edited our film and as editor this was a very extensive process. Following up on last period, I continued to cut out irrelevant scenes, not so much concentrating on the fine adjustments. This technique I learned from Ms. Wong who told me to firstly do all the major edits first, such as choosing the important scenes and noting down any sounds that may need to be used in particular scenes, then proceed to minor edits and fine adjustments such as transitions and continuity aspects. This method of working, compared to my original way which was to edit both on a macro and micro scale as I went along, was much more efficient and glad I chose this method of editing.

As I continued to edit, I encountered many different situations which exercised both my "knowledge" and "risk taker" attributes of my IB Learner Profile. One particular example was when I was editing a scene where Natalia pulls Jackson's tie then whispers in his ear. Although I could have used a simple cut to join these two shots, however, by using a "match on action cut" it made the two shots much more compatible with each other and allowed the scene to flow more fluidly. The result of the match on action cut was Natalia's movement was synced between the two shots, making it seem like one flowing action which really helped in their continuity. The idea of choosing a match on action cut was from the Charlie Chaplin film that we saw when learning about different cuts, by using a match on action cut it allowed us to achieve "directional continuity" where the action between two shots are going in the same direction.

Another tricky situation that we encountered in editing was the audio. During our filming/shooting process, the boom mic kept coming loose without us knowing which resulted in numerous shots having no audio. Another problem was that the boom operator held the boom mic at varying spots, sometimes above the actors and sometimes below. These to errors contributed to audio complications in the editing process. In some shots there were no audio however, I had come up with two easy solutions to counter this problem. Firstly is to re-do the audio. During one instance, the audio failed during Natalia's speech and I decided to have her re-record her audio and sync it with the footage that we had. This was quite difficult however, through very minor adjustments and occasional speed manipulation I managed to achieve good synchronization. With other more minor problems, I simply extracted the audio from different pieces of footage and implanted them into others. This unorthodox and seemingly crude method of editing proved to be very effective and was very easy to do. This idea was of our own and shows how "taking risks" can be very beneficial if we just try it.

Referring back to flaws in audio, the fact that the quality of the sounds varied between the shots is due to hasty preparation. I think our group learned (during the filming process), to keep the boom mic in a constant spot in every scene to minimize the variations in loudness between shots. Secondly is to have someone listening to the audio while the camera is rolling, this will prevent any problems due to faulty connections and also will help the boom operator to determine the most suitable spot to hold the boom mic.

Overall, this period was very product through using my new method of working by doing all the major cuts first, it helped me be more efficient. This will also eventually allow me to concentrate fully on minor fine editing when all the cuts are done. In terms of the IB Learner Profile, I was a "risk taker" in using unorthodox methods to edit which proved to be very successful, "knowledgeable" remember and using the techniques I learner in class and applying to my own project, "open minded" to the suggests of my group members who have been very insightful and gave critical feedback on the editing in each scene and lastly a "reflective" learner who learns from the problems that are encountered in the process of editing and what I did well and the ways I could improve.