Post production: editing.

- 'Film editing is a creative and technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking.'

- 'Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information.'

- 'Editing is arranging, revising, and preparing a written, audio, or video material for final production.'

My definition of editing:

Editing – is a process of putting shots together in a story, with the use of cutting, sound and digital tools.

When we just started editing we wanted to produce a believable linear narrative to engage the audience – an opening sequence, which would create demand for our thriller movie. Every member of the group, including myself, was expected to participate in the whole process, be flexible and produce good ideas. We also were expected to know how to use different editing and sound tools – like Adobe Premiere Pro CC and titling software -  and regularly save, not lose our footage.

The key decision throughout the editing were:

1)    Which shots to use - for example, we had a really nice shot of Clare's legs when she's standing over Chris, which for me made her look more powerful, but also feminine - and we were discussing whether to use this shot or not, because some people in our group thought such character positioning is a bit oversexualising our character, making her looking less villain-like. However, at the end we decided to use it, because overall character positioning - he is at the floor, she is standing over him - is beneficial for the flow of  the story.

2)    What song to use - before the shooting day we've been looking for a soundtrack to put in to highlight the juxtaposition, but we didn't know that we are not allowed to use copyrighted songs. During editing we were told our song must be un-copyrighted and we started panicking a bit because we didn't know where to find the song we need. However, it was not as hard as we expected - we've looked through some jazzy compositions on the YouTube and chose a couple of extracts to try with the footage.

3)    Creating names for titles - as we are not a real production company making feature-length movie - we don't have a company name, a director or other cast apart from stars - but we had to invent those names for the titles to give an impression that we are actually making a real movie. This doesn't sound like much of a problem, but if someone asked you to say a random name from the top of your head it would probably sound weird and we didn't want any weird names in our titles.

4) Coming up with the movie name - all the same reasons from above - making a name for something so that it reflects your ideas and conventions is not easy. We have not come up with the actual name for our thriller yet, but we had a chat and put together around 20-30 different names - out of which we will choose one, when we finish editing.

As I’ve shortly blogged previously – our first editing day we spent on looking through our footage – it’s vitally important because you, as editor, get to see what shots have you actually got, which helps you to structure and compose your product. We then quickly ‘re-named’ clips, so we knew exactly what shot we were dragging on the timeline - it saved us a lot of time. 

The timeline in Adobe Premiere is very helpful - it allows you to easily drag and drop clips from rushers, move apart and put together. If you press '+' button you will zoom in your footage so that you can cut off small sections of your clips more easily. This becomes essential when you're editing a fast pace piece, like ours, and need to cut on action - you have to make sure all your transitions are as smoothly edited as possible. After that you can press '-' which brings clips on your timeline back to the normal size. You can also unlink sound from the clip and move it around, shorten or crop it to fit with what you're trying to create.

After dragging all of the footage on the timeline – we’ve deleted all the shots, which were completely messed up – for example: on the couple of shots we saw a shadow of a camera man moving, so we couldn’t use it. This stage is also really helpful because you now have shots, free of continuity mistakes, all of which you can use. 

However, at that point we realised we didn’t have as much footage to choose from as we thought we have – some shots didn’t even have a backup, so we had to be creative to overcome some problems we faced. For example: at the dragging scene, when she is facing the camera – we can see our actress actually looking at the camera, which completely broke the 4th wall and just didn’t look professional enough. We tried to use other shots, but they didn’t fit as well as that one, so we had to crop the shot from the top so that you can’t see her eyes - and it worked, so we didn't have to replace that shot.

Another example of cropping we had to do is – the very last shot, when she’s chopping the squash and he is trying to escape for the second time. We didn’t have another shot (another angle) of her chopping the squash, so we had to use the shot from the beginning when she’s cutting the yellow pepper and put it right before the cutting of the squash. This is a continuity mistake - because there are different vegetables - which we didn’t like – so we cropped the very last shot so that you can only see her cutting something, but you can’t see an actual vegetable. After that the scene looked believable - looks like she's just cutting one yellow pepper.

Mostly, we’ve done all the editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. We’ve uploaded our footage there, we used razor to crop the shots and timeline to drag and drop clips, which made it easier to maintain continuity and create the right shot composition. We also relied on the shot list to keep the correct chronological order and faster choose the best shots from the rushers.

After finishing editing the shots we moved on to sound. 

To edit sound – we had to unlink the clip from it first. Then we’ve started creating one united diegetic soundtrack – cutting, sizzling, breathing - from what we’ve got, in order to make our audience feel like this moment is happening ‘live’ and that all the noises are ‘real’, just like they would sound in life - smoothly and on the same volume.

The main point of editing – the audience should never notice editing.

In the process of creating sound we had different layers on our timeline - like three or four – because sometimes we had to make the soundtracks overlap with each other or extend one to the next shot – which is known as a sound bridge – to make a transition smoother. We’ve recorded some of the sounds – like oil sizzling – on the shooting day, which turned out to be really helpful when it came up to editing, as we already had the sound ready and we just had to drag it to the right place. The last layer we’ve added on top – was uncopyrighted song, the only non-diegetic sound we’ve used, which we turned down a bit so that it sounds chilling and realistic - not like it was added on top afterwards, but like it was actually playing in the moment.

Lastly, we’ve moved on to titles. 

We didn’t feel like we had to use a different software to do this, so we created titles in Premiere. Titles in film are written to make people aware of the production company, director, cast and crew, who participated in the production of the film. 

They may also be used as a unique selling point, for example, if your film is directed by Christopher Nolan, you know that if you put his name in large font in your titles – people will want to watch your film no matter what, because: 
“OMG. IT’S A NEW CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S FILM!”.

We were struggling with the name for our 'production company' and I said:  'Guys, come on! Just write anything! Like...like..Yellow Tree.'
And they went: 'Yellow Tree? Okay'. :)

Luckily enough our story is quite simplistic and has to look realistic, so we didn’t have to spend time on graphics or CGI – we’ve only done a bit of colour editing to make our sequence brighter and more saturated.

To maintain the genre of our sequence and the juxtaposition we’ve created in our shot list and storyboard – we were really precise with the pace. We’ve started with longer shot durations when she’s peacefully cooking and then moved on to shorter shot durations and tried to cut on action, jumping from shot to shot, which provided high pace and action. 

All of our transitions were ordinary straight cuts – at first it helped us to keep up with the idea of ‘ordinary boring woman’s day’ and then helped to maintain high pace.

During editing we had a couple of moments where we slightly came off our shot list and tried to improvise. In some cases it didn’t work, in some it did. For example, we made a really interesting shot-reverse-shot, when he wakes up and notices her cooking – it cuts to her and then back to him – he looks frightened. This shot-reverse-shot  provides the audience with more information and also adds tension, as you feel she may turn around and notice him any moment.

Examples of the shot-reverse-shot:

We’ve also used one eye line match shot at the very beginning when she’s cooking. The camera was placed right in front of her, which kind of connotes that she is an ordinary women and makes the audience compare themselves with her, but when in the same shot she touches her hair and we see the bruises on her hands – we realise that not everything is as normal here as it looks. This juxtaposition should be really effective for the audience.

To sum up - the editing was a really interesting and engaging process - it wasn't as hard as I imagined. I got a chance to edit a piece that requires a high level of concentration and problem-solving skills because we had to maintain continuity to keep our opening sequence at the higher standard. I'm also really happy we were almost left 'on our own' to edit, so that I got a chance to understand how the process and the program work without teachers constantly doing all the work for us, but letting us to make mistakes and correct them as we believe is better. Overall, it was a great expeience of editing something 'movie-like', not just a fun or beautiful clip where you don't have to stick to the shot list as much, which I've never done before (apart from prelim task). 
However, what disappoints me slightly is that we didn't have a variety of shots + any 'creative shots' to choose from, so our thriller ended up being a bit...I don't want to say 'boring', because it's not - but there are not as much tension, action and unusual shots as I wanted it to be.

Anyway, it leaves us with a lot to analyse for the future so we don't keep on making the same mistakes.