Preliminary Task Post production Blog

Before we could start editing anything, we had to access our work from the final cut server. All your work is saved in the server and ready to check out when you need to edit it. After you have finished your editing session you need to check it in again so it is saved to the server, ready for you to access it the next time. The purpose for the server is that it saves your work and it enables you to access your work at any time from any machine which is connected to that server and it makes sure you know where your work is and it therefore enables you to find your work quickly at any time and not to lose a huge piece of edited work. 


When editing your work you need to make sure that the continuity of your project works so that the audience can keep their orientation and does not get confused. It is also crucial to ensure that all the continuity works when you shoot your film, to make it easier for the editor. For example when we did our preliminary task post production we noticed that one of our actors had his hands swinging in one shot and in the next he suddenly had one hand in his pocket. We kept telling him to do the same thing every time he acted it, during the shooting, but I guess it was our responsibility to ensure continuity and we should have checked this more carefully to make it easier for our editing process. To ensure that this could not be seen by the audience we had to vary the shots and cut a couple more shots in to cover it up.


When we started editing we first viewed all of our material and organised it into the 'Rushes Bin'- this is all your raw footage (i.e. a backup copy)- and the 'Log Bin'- this is a bin in which you put all the material which you like and which you might be able to put into your video. This makes the whole editing process a lot faster and it helps you to use your time effectively, so you can focus on how you are going to be able to piece it together. When we were editing we viewed all our material and we noticed that all the shots from one set up were unfocused and therefore we had to re plan in a way that we would be able to produce a good piece of work without that shot. Also as you put you material into the 'Log Bin' you rename it to make it easier for you to find it quickly as you are editing the movie. I found this very helpful because it enabled us to make quick decisions and then move on rather than having to search for one shot for ages. 

First we started by putting all our shots together so that they were as close as possible to the storyboard and after we were happy with that, we went over the whole thing again and tried to put in different shots to make it more effective and give it an interesting spin. For some of these shots we needed to do sound bridges so that we could use one image to work with a different sound to its original sound. We did this when we wanted to show our actress playing with the Rubik's cube, and show her hands in a close up whilst the other actor was saying something to her which did not fit in with the point at which we filmed the close up of her hands. We also tried to put all our shots together to make sense, effectively always looking at our continuity and making sure that the audience knows what the space looks like, which is why we need an establishing shot. We disobeyed this very common rule by having our first shot of our actor's shoes walking into the room, then leading to the establishing shot which was therefore a bit delayed.