Editing for me personally is by far the most exhausting and
painful part of the whole filming process.
I find it easy enough to write down the script and film my
desired shots but to cut down all that hard work into a 90 second snippet
(which seems so much at the beginning of the task), is very difficult.
Thank goodness we had the lecture and tutorials primarily
targeting how to edit footage effectively and all the ways to make the piece
look professional; it was another chance within the course to brush up on
skills I had already attained in the previous unit of “Editing sound and
image.”
A website by a Lam Thuy Vo a multimedia journalists outlines
three key elements that can need to be adhered too when editing journalism
footage and making a news story come to life, these are sequences and actions,
rhythm and practice.
I found this editing task to be particularly frustrating as
we had so many good shots that we had taken to go with, editing footage reminds
me of essay writing. When you write an essay and its one thousand words over
and all the material you have got is necessary to emphasise the argument you
are trying to make but to submit it you have to cut it you have no option you
just get on with it.
It was logical for me to begin the editing process by loading
the audio content onto the final cut pro before beginning to even think about
the video. In her article Lam Thuy Vo outlines that this is a natural instinct for
print journalists whom find it easier to work with a written script as opposed
to divulging through hours of footage. Also drawing up a story board of
different shots taken helps outline both what shots have been taken and
selecting the necessary ones to make the story work.
We automatically ruled out were the video that were shaky,
to dark, to light or had too much background noise in regards to our piece to
camera and interviews.
We then proceeded to do some “visual story telling of sorts”
and match up the images that were partly represented by the audio, for example
when discussing the social media sites we had a person on a computer scrolling
through the human brochure face book page.
After adding our piece to camera and the two interviews we
had taken we realised our video was far too long and began cutting out bits
wherever we could making the piece pretty much stick tightly to the script. We
went about cutting out little pauses wherever we could find them in the video,
so there was hardly a break between cuts. Lam Thuy Vo argues that when
journalists do this it disrupts the rhythm of the video and doesn’t allow it to
“breath” next time I think I will take this advice.
The last bit that should be attempted during the editing
process is the tidying up of the images, fixing the shots that are too bright
or perhaps too far away; all these editing tricks make the video look visually
better and more professional.
Practice is of course an essential part to mastering the
editing process, I find each time I use it I’m more comfortable and know how to
produce good results in a short time period, I will only get better with time!
I am so relieved when the editing process was over, partly
because the program final cut pro can be so tricky to use, but the main reason
I love to finish editing is to see all the hard work and hours you have put
into making the video play out before your eyes.
For more tips on film editing visit Lam Thuy Vo's blog:
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