When it came to editing the second time round, I really struggled. Firstly the camera we used had filmed the clips into .AVI files which we couldn’t even access to begin with. After spending hours searching the web for a free, functional file converter we thought we had resolved the problem. So I converted the .AVI files to what I thought were .MP4 files, however the converter changed them to .M4V’s which again we were unable to use. Finally we managed to get the files to .MPEG’s and we could access each individual clip. I opened Final Cut Pro on my Mac and there were multiple error messages saying that some program files cannot be found, so I chose to ignore these files and attempted to begin editing. But the files wouldn’t open in Final Cut whatsoever. Sony Vegas is not compatible with Macs, and still being ill I couldn’t go into school to edit so I dropped a memory stick off with Megan and Jack to see if they could get anything working at their end.
It seems as though Megan and Jack still had problems with Sony Vegas at school, but they had .AVI, .M4V, .MP4 and .MPEG versions of each clip so we had our fingers crossed that SOMETHING would work. Eventually Sony Vegas crashed so often at school that it wouldn’t even open and that we had lost our work so far, so Megan downloaded the software on her home computer and managed to get it all working.
Editing the clips together was really straightforward once we got the software working, we could simply drag and drop the clip into the timeline, and then shorten it accordingly so the match on action worked really well. The music simply was dragged and dropped also into the timeline so it starts and the volume decreases at the appropriate points.
Once all editing was complete, the video was really jumpy and when uploaded to the internet there was no audio alongside the video. This was easily resolvable by quickly rendering the whole sequence.
We decided on the song ‘Talking Bird’ by Death Cab for Cutie in the end because it just sounded like it fitted the imagery really well – also the song is slow and calm and this makes the audience unsuspecting of any drama. The song fades out as Jack gets further away as if the song is playing on the radio. We are pleased with this, and it begins to play again at a heartbreaking moment later on in the sequence, as it fits both the peaceful atmosphere and the restless atmosphere really well, and we felt that that specific moment needed some background noise, silence didn’t work well. Luckily this song was diverse so we could use the one song for necessary moments rather than having to use two songs as we did previously.
There are a lot of dissolve transitions to aid the jump cuts in our editing, it created a softer visual style so the clips flow continuously and smoothly.
Another technique we’ve used which we think is successful is the use of slow motion as the music starts up again. Slow motion is traditionally used to emphasise the overwhelm of a specific moment, and in our case it is used to emphasise the sadness and heartache Jack feels. It makes the audience understand the confusion Jack must be facing in this moment, as though he feels disorientated. We feel it does this well.
We are so pleased to have finally completed the main bulk of our opening sequence after days of stress. The editing stage did not go as smoothly or as quickly as we had hoped so it is such a relief to have finally finished it! We just need to add a short title sequence at the beginning of the opening sequence containing our names and ‘Film 4’ and to do this we are going to film footage of a girl who is tied up, acting as Jack’s daughter with our names flashing over the top of it.
natalie robinson 