american snooty

Beth Taylor's uni film blog. Gettin' that BA(Hons) in Creative Film and Moving Image Production at CCAD Hartlepool.

[bilm-flog]

Legal & Ethical Concerns

The only legal concern I’ve encountered so far while editing has been the copyright on the Nat King Cole song. I have spoken about this previously and it doesn’t seem to be too much cause for concern. Issues will only be raised when it comes to sending the film in to festivals and such, as it is possible to use this copyright despite the issue because its in the public domain. I don’t personally know what the plan is for festivals and what the rules on copyright are, so my duty here has just been to raise the issue with the director and producer to allow them to do their own research. 

There have been no uses of stock footage or footage from other films, so there have been no requirements for contacting third parties for permission to use footage or audio, as far as I am aware. 

All locations where further contact and permissions were required have been provided with special thanks in the credits. Exact details with paperwork or any further issues have not been raised with me, all paperwork seems to have been uploaded to the vle appropriately to make this legal and assure we have all permissions for me to use the footage. 

[bilm-flog]

Sync Issues Echoes

One problem I have had particularly coming towards hand in is with gaps in audio recording. There are a couple of examples of this in the film, most prominently in the forest scene but also in the first study scene. Here, it’s clear that the spoken dialogue does not match the actual audio. I’m fully aware of these issues but at this time am unable to fix them.

These partly arose due to our forced reliance on ADR as the locations selected for filming produced poor live sound. A few minor oversights in ADR lead to some lines being left out and because audio for every scene was recorded far later than the dialogue, in cases like the forest scene it was forgotten what was actually said and by the time the edit had been constructed and finalized it was too late to go back and change the ADR in time for hand in. I have done the best I can, particularly in the forest scene, to match audio with lip movement, but “You just have to...” is very clearly said without Julian speaking. One trick I have relied upon is him mentioning friends in both shots and in the audio. This adds a tangential link that makes parts of it almost seem in sync. I understand there are plans to go out and film this again further down the line, in time for VUE and festival screenings, but time constraints prevented this from being done for hand in. 

[bilm-flog]

Avid Attic

I’m generally pretty accident prone and this is true of editing too. I like to avoid making cuts when receiving feedback from the director as I feel the most under pressure to work fast so we can move onto the next point. For this reason I make a lot of notes and do it later. However, on one recent occasion I tried to move a scene to an entirely different location by marking its ins and outs, lifting it from the project and then splicing it back in. Without realising I accidentally overwrote the footage instead and when I went to show the director the new scene I had just finished, half of it was overwritten with another scene. I was totally horrified by this and was concerned I’d have to re edit the sequence. 

With some help from the technician, however, I learned how to operate the avid attic, which I knew from research held old copies of every bin dating back a month or so. As this was an issue I’d only made an hour or so earlier, while I couldn’t undo far enough, I could go in and recover the old copy of the sequences folder. 

The unity attic folder shows a folder for each project active on this editshare and then of every bin used in each project. This picture shows all the different versions of the sequence folder that have been saved. After finding the right one, or multiples, I had to copy and paste the file into where the bins are kept for the actual, current project, which in my case is here 

You can then name the folder and convert it to the right file type by writing .avb and confirming the error report that comes up. This converts it to an active avid bin that can be accessed immediately and without restarting anything. I was first concerned it would overwrite the progress I’d made in the last couple of hours, but this was not the case, though you could only access one copy of the folder at once. For instance, if you had the Sequences bin from 12;00 open you would have to close it to access the Sequences bin from 6:30. Other than that, clips from the sequence could be lifted out of one and interchanged into the other which allowed be to rectify the error by copying the previous, full version of the scene while still keeping every edit I had made in the last hour in tact, which was a perfect and quick solution to the problem. 

[bilm-flog]

Working with a Colourist and VFX Artist

For the first time I had the opportunity to work with a second editor during production. I found this extremely helpful in many instances as it was another thing I didn’t have to keep track of. Without too much audio to consider and without colouring and such to limit my schedule, I could put far more time into actually editing.

At first it was difficult to find the right process to transfer footage back and forth, but we worked out a method that seemed to suit. Whenever I finished a first draft of a scene or any major changes I would export it for him to work with. He would then have footage to draft his effects and colour grading on, but nothing would be set in stone and I would still work with the raw footage. 

This continued for most of production until the last week when we began finalising footage. Here it was imperative for the director to okay footage as soon as it was complete so that there was time for me to send it to the colourist to grade and get back. I would export the finished version to him, he would rework the drafts of the colour grade, finalize that, then export it back to me. There I have been adding in this colour graded footage above the original. 

Adding the footage in a new layer over the original allows me to work around some cutting issues both avid and davinci have introduced as I can make sure that the cuts are all lined up with whats underneath. This helps the most with syncing audio and has rarely been an issue. Cutting a couple of frames and repositioning everything to match perfectly up with the original keeps things running smoothly and means adjustments can still be made to the footage as nothing has been deleted or replaced. 

Transferring it there and getting it back worked pretty well and there has been a good amount of communication. There has been some concerns with time as some emergency shoots have left us extremely pushed for time with getting everything colour graded. The shoot going on on the 11th can only be edited on the morning of deadline and as there has been no time to draft a colour grade and no test footage, this will not be colour graded in time for deadline because I simply can’t edit it fast enough since the shoot yesterday was cancelled and uni closes at 4 today, giving us both a very finite amount of time.

[bilm-flog]

Audio Gates

As much for personal note as for presentation, here’s an example of the audio gate I’ve been working with throughout the film. One issue I encountered was even a low threshold would start omitting some of the spoken dialogue, so I had to work with different settings to what I was used to. I discovered that altering the ratio was enough to let more sound in while still holding back the fizzing. Only a minor one was required as major audio issues were ADR’d over. This minor change can be seen in the graph, which is only limiting the quietest audio recordings and allowing everything over -40db. Altering the release down also helped remove some of the echo on the audio. 

My minor project was really helpful in this facet as while a lot of audio work was done by the sound designer outside of syncing things up, having a good knowledge of how to work the expander/gate was very helpful. 

I also looked at this quick youtube video which discussed how to work this through adobe audition. At first I did some work here removing the lower levels of hissing but this ended up being unecessary due to the work already done by the sound designer. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pFcX0VGo6w

[bilm-flog]

Editing Styles

Something that’s been important to keep in mind while editing Echoes of Silence has been the style required for the film. With working with the director previously on our last project, I understood his preference for long, lingering shots and the DOP’s use of space and knew how to accomodate both of these to create the right style. It was interesting to watch these facets come out in the GoFundMe earlier in the year, although editing the two pieces was completely different. 

The GoFundMe had to be quick and snappy editing to get the point across as quickly as possible. While original running time was five minutes, I knew that people weren’t going to be compelled to watch this video if it was anymore than two or three minutes. The audience to keep in mind for this piece was the general public and while family and friends would be delighted to see their little cherubs (our crew) on screen, we didn’t just want to appeal to them. A professional air was needed, so cutting out speech drops and ums was the easier way to cut it down, along with visual alterations that I mentioned in previous posts. 

In contrast, Echoes has always envisioned a longer running time. At the moment it sits almost complete at eighteen minutes long. This is because of the previous stylistic choices of the Director and DOP. As discussed previously, I’ve had some concerns here and there with this style because shots often linger for upwards of 20 seconds. While this is more forgivable in dialogue scenes, I have worked a little to begin shortening these down to try and impact the overall running time. I believe this will make the film more palatable for a general audience while still keeping true to the style of the director. It’s interesting working with two audiences, one a direct viewer, the director, and one the general public and festival owners who have entirely different things to consider. For a wider audience, its more important to keep things shorter to maintain interest. As pretty as long shots are, I don’t want people to be bored during viewing. 

One of my lecturers raised an interesting point that for festivals, when given the opportunity to run two ten minute films or one twenty minute film, they’ll usually choose the former. Naturally, I would like this film to be shown at festivals, which makes me a little concerned about the running time. Due to time constraints with the cast while filming, there won’t be time to consider cutting the film down any more at this stage. Going forwards, however, the crew will be focusing more on producing the film for a festival audience. Here it will become worth cutting the film down once it is entirely complete, but for now completion and quality are the most important as we work very close to deadline. At the moment our lecturers are our most important audience and the main goal there is to impress them and fulfill everything we promised at the start of the year. 

[bilm-flog]

Avoiding ADR

As mentioned, the sound designer has done a lot to cover tracks with the bad sound to prevent ADR. To better accomdate this, I’ve done a bit of ground work to make the move into the hissing audio as soft as possible. Up to the attack and down from the release of dialogue I’ve added in fades and generally lowered the gain of the audio. This has generally been hard to measure with the audio from the AI as it’s difficult to find the right balance. 

This and a few audio gates that for some reason avid won’t let me access has been enough to keep everything level and without too much background interference and echo. Adjusting the dverb down with a lower threshold and ratio is enough to add a heavy padding to the audio to make it feel like its in a much smaller room. This took some experimenting, but from Alice I’d previously done the opposite to create a soft echo for speaking in a bathroom. I tried the direct opposite of this and it’s worked pretty well for the most part, though once visuals are completed I’ll put some more work into it.

[bilm-flog]

Working with a Sound Designer

This year the sound designer role has really been underlined for all its importance. Shaun’s been performing this role for Echoes and the content he’s producing has been really excellent and great to work with. He’s made my job very easy throughout by consistently providing footage and sound logs on every occasion. Unfortunately many of the filming locations have prevented good sound from being filmed on set, but we’ve both been working on getting around that. 

While I was working with audio gates and dverb to create the right effects, I was growing concerned with the lack of atmos in scenes due to the amount of ADR used. Our sound designer solved this by creating a very effective atmos track for the entire film, synced up to the last edit I provided him with. This only needed a little moving around and it was marked with time stamps to make this as easy as possibly to sync up which I loved. 

He’s created an atmos hiss, rain sounds and futuristic car sounds that cover up the hisses and hums and provide a very comfortable background for the ADR that assures it no longer stands out. I adjusted this in some places to accommodate the dialogue, using a few simple fade outs and adjusting positions. In some instances I have removed the sound work and used an audiogate, though this has only been necessary in one or two places where there was an overlap in audio due to more recent edits. 

Working with someone specifically able to do this job has felt very professional and it’s great to have someone to rely on to perform this role rather than doing it all myself. I did a lot of sound editing for Alice last year which felt way over my head and absolutely exhausting and I believe it was the down fall of the project in general and led to a lot of delays in post production because the visuals and the audio were so much to concentrate on at once. While it’s still my job to sync things up and make a few adjustments, I’ve been really happy with the work produced by the sound designer. 

One thing that interrupted production for Alice was having to work on the sound. I chose to edit audio for my minor project because I had had so many problems with it previously and it hugely delayed production on Alice over the summer which was enormously frustrating. Our sound designers developing abilities have saved my life here and hugely streamlined production. It’s not been something I’ve had to look out for as it’s already covered, which feels so much more professional and organised. 

[bilm-flog]

Echoes Beach Scene Revisisted

Earlier on in production I edited together a quick test shoot of the beach scene to show in production meetings. This exercise gave the camera crew a better understanding of what to do, but also worked to give me a sort of script to follow for editing. I thought it would be interesting to compare them to see how the scene progressed through filming. 

Naturally the draft is much shorter with less of the long, lingering shots that are a sort of style for the completed Echoes. There’s also a lot more of Grace’s stand in than there is in the final shoot. I’m not sure whether this is purposeful or whether it was because the actress was unavailable that day. 

It does contain the same behind to in front angle switch to follow the path of Julian, which was something I enjoyed working with during editing. 

Here’s the current draft of the new sequence to show this. It also uses a lot of the long, lingering shots. Currently the colour pallette is quite inconsistent, though it’s interesting that in contrast to the rest of the film, it is very washed out. It’s completely lacking the high contrast neon colours of the rest of the film, which also marks it out as a bit difference to the narrative portion of the film. 

[bilm-flog]

Echoes Glitch Sequence

One scene in Echoes features the main character, Julian, standing in contemplation in the shower. This was quite a simple scene to edit narratively as the shots follow on in a very linear fashion for the most part. However, to add a sense of conflict and to follow the dream like nature that follows the second half of the film and also something interesting to an otherwise pretty easy scene, the middle of the scene is taken over by a glitch like switch between many different shots. There was a lot of coverage taken of this scene to allow me to swap back and forth to create this style. Editing it consisted of taking irregular numbers of frames to switch between different movements, the empty scene and states of calmness and violence and grief to show this conflict. 

This comes out looking like this for the final draft. The glitch begins slowly, peaks in the middle, then dwindles out again. However, without music this looks a little strange. It benefits from the white noise of the shower which adds a sort of trance like state to it, but it needed something more. I searched online for something copyright free I could use and found several glitch sound effects. The one I liked the most and used contained multiple, mixed electronic glitch sounds over a low crescendo drone. This reminded me of the drone used in Alice to add threat to the scene at her home, which was something I really liked the look of. It was more white noise, but a noted shift from the lighter shower noise. I really, really like the sound of it and over several drafts have altered the cuts to better fit to the sound effects in the clip. 

However, when I moved the scenes into sequence the transition from the dream sequence on the beach into this one seemed a little odd. The previous scene contained a loud soundtrack which cuts off a little strangely. To try and add some connection to that last scene and to create a theme with the dream like sequences, I have added several cuts of the soundtrack from the previous scene. Theme music is very useful for something like this, as otherwise it can be a little difficult to tell whats ‘real’ and what isn’t. 

I tried to create this theme by running the same process with the soundtrack from the previous scene as I did with the original footage, cutting it up into jittery sounding groups. I think this stands out a lot from the glitch sound and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Generally positive, but I’d like to run it by a few people to see whether they prefer both scenes with this connector or whether it doesn’t work. 

[bilm-flog]

Trick Update

Due to time constraints on the Trick of the Dark project, it became clear I would be unable to edit the bulk of the film that was still left to do while still editing Echoes to satisfaction. I was called into a small meeting between a few members of staff and the crew where this was discussed and it was agreed that my editing job should be passed on to someone with more time. This makes sense to me and though I am sad to see the project go, I understand it is much more likely to see completion this way as I would struggle to do both films justice with the slim remaining time frame. 

[bilm-flog]

Trick of the Dark Update

With deadline approaching, I’m planning on being in to edit every day this week so I can work immediately on whats given to me. staying up to date when a project is this behind schedule is the least i can do to assure that as much is completed on time as possible. I’ve also been working through colour correction as I go to assure everything could be presented individually if necessary. 

Yesterday I received the footage for the final scene of the film in the hospital. With a production log, this was quite easily pulled together, however, while I’m aware the TV presenters scene needs to fit in here somewhere I need to wait to speak to the director about how he wants that inserted. There’s no tv included in the scene so I need to check if he plans to film that as pick up shots before I slot the footage in as at the moment it would look very shoehorned in. 

Here’s the skeleton edit; 

https://youtu.be/jhBviEGWEe0

The colour correction was quite simple to do, I made a curve to improve the white balance from the slightly yellow walls and to add some contrast; something that’s always necessary with log footage from black magic cameras as they tend to film quite yellow. I then altered the red colour of cheeks to a slightly blue offset to decrease the blush on show, particularly for the scene with the doctor as the actors chin and cheeks are naturally very red. I did this using the eyedropper tool and highlighted all the colours on his chin before offsetting them with a yellow contrasting colour. 

Here’s the colour corrected edit: 

[bilm-flog]

Professional Review

On Friday we had an editor and a writer come in to view what we’d completed of our films so far to give us their professional opinions and some tips on what to improve. I had fun watching the other films and seeing how everyone was doing, and enjoyed hearing the advice from the professionals. 

For Trick there was only a limited amount of footage to show because of the set backs in shooting time we have had, but I presented everything I had edited so far which consisted of about 90 seconds of disjointed footage. I was advised to check the sync of the audio, which was definitely half a second out, so that’s now rectified. I’d also not included a shot from the first clip which was entirely my mistake, so this also offset the audio sync and has been replaced now. There wasn’t much else to do because of the lack of content, but they were pleased with what we had so I know how to continue going forwards. 

For Echoes they were very impressed with the work that had been done, which really pleased me. Their main concern was the run time which is something to discuss with the director once shooting is completed and a full edit is sorted. It’s clearly something thats being kept in mind as in speaking to the director about newly shot footage, he’s advising for much shorter cuts than before. I’m also going to make some changes to the opening scene to shorten that down as well. 

[bilm-flog]

PC out of action

On Thursday there was an incident in the edit suites where water from one of the exposed pipes overhead dropped onto my computer. I closed my computer in a hurry and may have lost some work in the process, but can’t currently check as I don’t have access to that computer. It’s currently being checked over for any damage before hopefully being returned a little later today. I also discovered that the footage from trick and the audio from echoes has not been saved into the cloud properly, but I want to wait and see from my usual computer whether I’ve lost my editing from Thursday first before I start making reparations. 

Update: got my computer back today, but I did lose Friday working on the edit because the technician in charge of checking the computers safety was off. Thankfully I didnt lose any of the progress I had made on the edit as I had feared, it just wasn’t properly saved to the cloud for some reason, which I’ll move to repair.

[bilm-flog]

Graphics

I made a few changes to to the graphics for the kids show for Trick to see how I preferred the size and movement. I like the idea of a banner look across the bottom or the top so working with my previous design I made the first title scroll larger. I also added a bounce into it to make the movement more dynamic for the little white line that traces up and down, especially as it now overlaps the large orange part of the graphic. It just looks a little better when the graphic is rounded off with the white bars to seperate it. I might try this with the other side of the graphic too. 

I’m a little concerned that the matte orange of the graphic will look to fake on the clip, especially given how much peach and orange there is on the shot. I’ll piece it together once I have a conversation about the visuals with the director and see how it looks from there before making any changes. 

[bilm-flog]

Echoes Copyright

The music clip we used for the “nostalgic piece of music” turns out to still be copyrighted. This is strange as the video I took it from didn’t have this issue, but going forward it won’t actually matter. It means the film can’t be monetized, but we probably won’t be making money from its upload anyway. It just means that under the video it’ll come up with the claim and credit for the music. This is only a minor concern than submitting it to festivals like this may raise issues depending on their policies on copyright. As it doesn’t introduce viewing restrictions it might be fine, but this will require some further research to make sure.

[bilm-flog]

Trick Update

Editing proper has begun for Trick of the Dark and in order to keep with the deadline I need to be really on the ball for this and editing footage as I receive it. At the moment I’ve already constructed a skeleton edit for the first shots of Scenes 2, 4 and 9. 

I’m holding off on colour correcting these until we have some concrete footage from the cave that I can use to take lighting cues from. From there I’ll use what I’ve already created to make them match, using cues from either the studio shoots or the cave shoots depending on what looks best and what can be accomplished. 

I’ll also need to add some effect to the sound recorded in the studio depending on what I receive from a test shoot in the cave hopefully happening this Tuesday. Based on the lighting in there and the sound I’ll make a matching EQ probably in AVID to give any kind of cold tone or echo to the audio recorded there. 

Here’s the shots I’ve editing so far;