Prelim Task : Part 2

The final prelim clip edited by Mia McCallum and Evelyn Wandernoth

As a follow up from the first prelim blog post „Prelim Task: Part 1“, which was uploaded on the 

10^th of October, 2015, this is the editing portion of the task. Last week we were required to shoot a sequence whilst sticking to a specific storyboard to get specific shots (over-the-shoulder shots, close-ups, and wide shots), and were also able to shoot some of our own extreme-close-up shots, some mid shots, or other if we wanted to, as long as we had the necessary shots in place.

When coming into the studio yesterday, I didn't exactly know what to expect. I know that we had all the shots required multiple times, some where we were definitely sure that they were in focus, and others where we weren't so sure if they were in focus. In the end, whilst going through them, we realised that there was never a big problem with the auto-focus/manual-focus; however I still believe that it was a good thing to reshoot those scenes, just in case something had gone wrong. This also gave us a larger variety of clips to choose from, as our actors did do different things in each shot; even if they were only small things.

Mia and I immediately got into editing, whilst keeping things from the editing lesson that we had on the 2^nd of October, in mind. Using such things as „I“ for „intro“ and „O“ for „outro“, it made it much easier to fit the clips together. Over all, we thought that things were already going very, very well at the beginning – however our view on that changed almost immediately after we watched back our first edit. Something wasn't working quite right – and that's when we realised that the door that we had been shooting with was going to be much more of a problem than we had thought. Because we also had things such as dialouge to watch out for, it made it much more difficult to work with the door than we had thought – we weren't even able to use the best over-the-shoulder shot that we had, but instead had to settle for one where the shoulder was less blurry as the door and Amrs' actions wouldn't match up. In the wide shot he'd stumble through the door half-way and then begin talking, letting the door close behind him as he continues his dialouge; in a few of the over-the-shoulder shots, he would stumble through the door completely, let the door shut almost completely, and then begin talking. That is something that we hadn't paid attention to during filming, and ended up being a larger issue whilst editing, so when doing our thrillers, this is something that we have to watch out for. Even though Mia and I got a relatively good edit from the wide shot into the over-shoulder-shot, it is still noticeable as there is a tiny continuity error with the door. As I don't want to completely eliminate the idea of having a door in our thriller, which is a large possibility if shooting in a location that has to be accessed through a door, my team and I will have to really pay attention to small things like that. Usually you wouldn't think that it would be a large issue, but it definitely was.

Another small issue that Mia and I constantly ran into, which wasn't too difficult to change, however was still a hassle, was that the sound would overlay one another when editing other clips ontop of the other – our actor would say „Do it, come on!“ in one clip, and in the clip below he would say the exact same thing, but it would be delayed by a few seconds/milliseconds – as milliseconds are so short, nobody would suggest that it makes a giant difference, but it definitely does. The sound would end up being something along the lines of „Do it – t, c-come on-on!“. It sounded absolutely terrible; we easily fixed this problem by using the „razor blade“ - what this does is that it gives us the ability to cut a clip in a specific position, and then create a cut out of this clip, and then delete it. This gets rid of the cut out clip that is placed beneath the clip that is shown, however as it isn't relevant for that moment in time, it isn't a large deal. Even though this didn't present itself to be a large problem in the beginning, it ended up being more of a hassle towards the end. We hadn't realised that it would cause this problem, however if we wanted to move one clip a little bit to an earlier or later point in time, we would have to take the clip and manually move it. For some reason we had expected all the other clips to move with it, however this presented itself not to be so, meaning that if we wanted to move one clip forwards or backwards, we would have to move every single one back into its position – this would especially be a big hassle when having one clip that was perfectly edited ontop of the other, and then it just wouldn't work the second time when everything was moved. Usually we just left the clips the way they were, because we were to afraid that we would lose anything else that we had edited ontop of it. I'm not sure whether this would be a way to solve the problem, however I think that if you shift-click on several clips they can be moved together. I should definitely try that out before my team and I begin creating our thriller, as a minor thing such as moving clips could become a larger issue for us when creating the thriller.

Another thing that you would usually never expect to disturb continuity whilst filming annoyed me a lot whilst editing; when we were shooting the close-up of Mia, we didn't pay attention to the lighting. This means that in every close-up of Mia, her face would be darker than the background, not really making her face properly visible for the audience – as she is otherwise well lit, it completely ruins the continuity that the clip should have. It always looks a little different, perhaps also making the audience think that it is either a different character, or that there's something about them that the filmmakers aren't telling the audience quite yet. Stepping away from the connotations, I believe that this is a giant issue that we will have to watch out for when creating our thrillers. I wouldn't want one clip to ruin the entirety of the sequence just because something wasn't lit very well. Something like that sadly can't really be changed in post-production, so when filming, this is definitely, DEFINITELY something that we have to watch out for.

 The last thing that is so crucial, but most people usually forget about, is syncing up the sound with the different clips. When switching from a wide shot to a close up during dialouge or right before or after someone says something, it is important that the sound works with one another, as it is noticeable if the actor says something and the word isn't completely finished, or it is repeated slightly in the other clip. It is extremely difficult to edit it in that way, however the audience will be distracted by a small continuity error like that, so it is definitely worth the effort to do it right. Mia and I ended up muting some of the clips that were distracting the sound, however this caused some issues as well. It is best to make sure that either the sounds sync up really well, or parts of clips layered below the others have to be cut.

Over all, Mia and I spent around an hour and 10 minutes trying to edit a 23 second sequence; this tells me that editing will take up a lot of our time when filming, so we will have to take into account that this will probably be the longest process and that we have to plan the most time for this process.