Post 17

Post-Production Report

The first step to editing our film after it had all been filmed on the camera was to capture the scenes we needed to edit. To do this we plugged the camera into the editing suite and viewed all our footage. Whilst viewing our footage we then made a logging rushes table where we had to make decisions into what takes of each shot we wanted to keep for our final production. In this table we had the in code, where the clip started, out code, where the clip ends, the scene, shot and take, a description of what happens within that scene and a column to write down whether we wanted that scene or not. Below is the logging rushes table for our short film ‘Status’. After we had finished our table we then had to capture the clips we said we wanted to keep.

Once we had filtered through all our footage so we had left only the scenes that had been captured we then made a rough cut of our film. We went through each captured clip individually cutting it to the parts of the clips we wanted, cutting out unnecessary sounds like ‘action’ or ‘cut’. Once this was done we then added them together creating a rough cut of our film, a simple version to see what our film might look like. Now this was done we ran the whole of our rough cut through looking for continuity issues. Concentrating on the visuals we were able to see whether our short film so far worked. This is the point where we saw the issues mentioned in my production blog post so to make the visuals work we then went to re-film this. Once the re-filmed footage had been through the stages mentioned before and inserted into the rest of the rough cut we then had a basis for our film and the visuals.

This then led to the next stage of the editing process which was to sort out the sound, looking at the sound levels so far of our film. The first stage was to mix the sound of each clip together. This consisted of adding sound dots so we could control sound levels. The main reason for mixing sound when we were editing was so that the film would not only flow in the visuals but also the audio. Once the sound had been mixed we then had the job of making sure the middle parts of each clip had the right sound levels as some clips were a lot louder than others. This just consisted of putting in more sound dots and moving them up down carefully to control the volumes of each clip. We found that because we had not experimented or used a microphone with such sensitivity before, we had a variety of sound issues. Some that consisted of the microphone picking up unwanted background noise and others where the sound just cut off completely. This created more problems when it came to editing as there was unwanted sound that needed to be fixed. However this easily done by controlling levels and using sound from previous takes where the audio has worked really well.

After the visuals and audio had been completed we felt that it was best to get our teacher to look at our film. This is because she can look at it from a professional stand and from her previous experience will be able to spot minor or major mistakes we may have made.  So after we asked her politely, she sat down and watched our ‘draft’ and as she watched it she wrote down some notes about what needed to do to improve our film. One of the main changes she made was the end scene. Originally we wanted to have the camera pan up to the sky. However our teacher felt that this didn’t look as good as our film, so as a group we looked at the effects on the editing and decided to put an effect on our end shot of the hands because we felt that this is one of the most iconic scenes in the last scene. She also said that we needed to think about our transitions between scenes. She asked us what style of film we were looking at, because this will affect the way we move from scene to scene. We felt the best way to go from each scene was to cross dissolve out and then hard cut in as this fitted in with our film well.  

Once the visuals and the audio were both done so they were to the standards that we had set ourselves we then had to complete the fine details for the rest of our film. The first small detail we needed to complete was the music we wanted, to look for the music we went onto the site unsignedbands.web where we found a song to use for the start and end of our film which is displayed below:

Once the music had been added to our film at the start and end, we then had to add in the title sequence also at the start and the end of the film.  The title of our film and the font had already been sorted by one member of our group who wanted to use this for our film. We then added in the job roles that each member of the group performed in order of importance in our opinion. We also then entered the end credits where we decided we wanted to use the effect on the editing suite 'rolling credits' where we listed the character names and actors in order of importance and most appearance. The second minor detail was to add the texts in to my film. Not only the texts he recieves from Ashley but also the text he sends. For inspiration we looked at the messaging system on my phone and what it looked like when I recieve texts and tried to replicate this. We then wanted the text James texts back to come up to the audience on screen as James types it. To do this we put in each individual letter into the editing suite so it will run like it is being text.   

Once this was done it then meant we had finished the editing for our short film and all we had left to do wasto render our film.This year the editing process was a lot easier as we had a lot more experience as we used Adobe Premier Pro last year and we could work our way around this software easily and quickly.