Edit: Week II

Well, I'm a little bit shocked, but it looks as if we have something that has come together really well!

Everyone came in over the weekend or earlier on Tuesday in pairs or on their own to tackle a few little things before we got together to do our big edit on Tuesday night.This week we went through as a group and watched what we had put together a few times. We basically just tried to figure out what needed to be cut out, if any interview needed to be put back in (were we missing anything essential?), and I guess, we really just sat down and put the film together. At the end of the day we basically we left with only a bit of tweaking left to do! I was expecting editing to take like, 40 hours.. thankfully it didn't! ..Andrea scared me a little bit!

When we started doing this project in January I started thinking about how editing was going to go with 4 people. Because I had never done anything like this before, I just had no idea how this would go. I got home after the first class and couldn't help but be curious to see how we would fare during the editing process; would we but heads over ideas or would we all be on the same page? Turns out we did pretty well for a larger group with a very creative project on our hands. We could have had 4 people with 4 different visions, but we actually seemed to all be on the same page, more or less. There were a few times where people thought things should go in different order or that a certain B-roll clip would be better in one place or another, etc., but in the end, everyone was happy to listen to everyone's ideas and opinions and we were able to come to an group consensus on everything. To be honest it was great that everyone had different ideas. Because everyone had different ideas for things I think it came together in a much different way than it would have if we had done the films individually or in pairs. It's amazing how everyone has been able to bounce ideas off each other to make the film better.   

I was really worried that after hearing the poor quality audio we had when we uploaded our footage and audio that we wouldn't be able to raise the quality significantly, although, lo and behold, wondrous Julia was about to fix it! It sounds awesome now! I really didn't think we'd be able to fix it, but again, what do I know about video technology!? We were able to put out most of the 'uhms' and weird pauses with only a few little blips.I think there is one place where it is slightly noticeable, but hopefully by putting B-roll over we've made it smooth enough that most people wouldn't notice it unless they were looking for it. Or at least I hope that's the case.

We went into today with a little bit more than 16 minutes of footage including some B-roll that we still needed to fit in, so I don't think we will have any trouble staying within the time frame. I was worried when we went though our interview footage that it would be hard to cut clips down to an appropriate time, but I think it should be no problem!    

I think the biggest things we need to do now is go through and smooth out our transitions between scenes, and add in B-roll in a few more places. We finally got our Pier hotel footage into the film, and we are going to get our footage of the finding balance piece and Cornett this weekend so hopefully that B-roll will be the last of what we need to get to make everything 'fit' properly. I guess the other things left to do now are music (which is a little bit worrisome.. I'm curious to see if we can come up with something appropriate for the film..), a title and credits, a little bit of work on the opening and closing scenes and putting in the Cornett footage. Then just making sure everything is cohesive. It's crazy that there is so little left to do!