We have now finished editing out preliminary task. I was absent for some f the editing time, but when I was present me and my partner finished and also tried to perfect all the little bits we were not happy with. During editing we made sure we a window open on our computer with our animatic on, therefore we could refer back to this. Our final edit is very similar to the animatic as whilst filming we had a story bored with us. There was some small changes, including shot lengths, and types. But these are all things that were hard to get exactly right whilst making our animatic. We did face a few problems whilst editing. One, was an issue that i mentioned earlier about the sound and recording voice overs. This problem was solvable for two of the three shots applicable due to the fact that in 2 shots the actor talking did not have there face to the camera. But in the final shot the actor's face is seen. Therefore in this shot we decided not to put in a voice over and just turn up the sound throughout. This meant that the actor could be heard. The music playing in our venue did not negatively effect our task as i thought it would. One other problem we faced was that at one point we had a shot of the girl sitting down and than putting the bag on the table. The shot that was supposed to follow than showed her placing the bag on the table again- we did not notice this at first. When we notice it we decided to just cut one of the shots shorter so this mistake could not be seen, this shot than varied from the length we originally wrote on the animatic.
The video we designed was set in a cafe. But the venue we choose to film in was a school, and a school cafeteria. Therefore during the filming we had to try and make sure that the mise-en-scene did not portray that of a school. Whilst filming we kept moving the bin so it was not in shot. And i also took down some posters that were in shot which looked 'schooly'. I feel that the mise-en-scene fitted our task well. The spot we chose in the cafe was next to a window therefore letting in more light and making the shot brighter.
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| The outside of our location which is featured at the start of the task |
We tried to vary the shot types included- whilst still taking into account continuity editing. At the beginning of the video we had a long shot o the female character walking towards the character. We felt that having this long shot at the start was effective on the audience as it established the setting and also because it showed that the character was going somewhere. The camera often stayed still, and let the actors move rather than the camera. This is because we wanted it to seem quite still and tense rather than quick paced and frantic. One pan we did use was a pan down girls body showing her dress- this created an anticipated atmosphere and made the female character seem powerful to the audience. A shot we took particular care in shooting was the shot where the female walks away from the table nearing the end. We decided to have the camera completely still whilst she sits down, stands up than walks away. The shot stayed in the same perspective and she moved around within it. We got this idea from our research when we watched the film This is England, where near the stat the male character gets out of bed and the camera does not follow him.
Whilst editing we kept the pace of the film quite steady, we didn't want it to become really fast as we wanted the task to portray a calm atmosphere- contrasting with what was actually going on. Times when we did speed up was when editing the continuity, we wanted these shots to go a bit quicker, particularly during match on action, this would make the continuity look smoother and more fluid. There was one part of editing i was not happy with near the start. I thought the cross over between the long shot of the female walking toward the camera and the pan down the females body was not very fluid. Unfortunately this was not really fixable as we did not have enough spare footage to fix this problem.
We had some music in our task. The music started as the pan starts on the female. This was effective as before this there was a scene with diegetic sound where footsteps could be heard and it was eerie and when the music starts it draws the audience in. The music than stops later when the dialogue starts, we wanted this to create an effect on the audience which meant that the scene had properly started when the dialogue starts almost as if the music section was an opening.
I felt that I did meet the brief as we included the continuity editing techniques that the brief stated we had too. I feel that we also followed the story line that the brief stated we had too. During the preliminary task my knowledge of continuity editing grew, and i also feel more confident filming and editing now after a long break over the summer holidays. I feel that my ability to meet deadlines and be more organized has also been helped by this task.
