Chris Holloway Media

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Editing Essay

Editing is defined as “choosing material for (a film or radio or television programme) and arrange it to form a coherent whole”. That means taking footage you may have filmed, audio that you may have recorded, backing music, titles you may have created and archive footage you may have obtained and edit through final cut, avid, premiere pro or even movie maker and creating a video for the purpose that it is needed for and it makes sense.   When we first started I had done a tiny bit of editing before. Mostly it had been in movie maker and one project in premiere pro so when I joined the course I knew a tiny bit but over time and through many project I have learnt the craft of editing something together that in turn, tells a story to it’s audience and do the work efficiently by keeping my file management tidy allowing me to access to clips I need quickly. At first I used to just leave the clips unnamed and have to try to just remember which one it was likely to be when I was looking for a clip whereas on the last project I did (clare priory) I make bins to hold the interviews in, another for the inside cutaways and another for the outside cutaways with each named as to what happens in that clips and what take it was if there were multiple. By doing this it has allowed the process of editing to become so much easier and quicker.   Back when film was first beginning though transcoding wasn’t something that was ever a thought in the editor’s mind. That was because he knew he had to go through hours of reels of film and edit it by literally cutting the sections of film that he wanted. Playing it through and going back to find the right frame to quite literally ‘cut’ on. Also in early editing it was thought to be weird to cut together different shots from the same scene in different angles and positions. They thought it would confuse the audience as they were seeing the same thing from a different perspective. They did soon realise that actually cutting to different shots kept the audiences attention and helped to make the film a lot more tense and allow the stories being told to be a lot more complex.   This is a run through of the basic steps from the start to the end of editing. I first create a folder that is name related to the project I am editing for. I then make a folder called RAW and another called Transcoded. I then get the footage I have recorded and using a SD slot copy it into the RAW folder. Then using MPEG streamclip I batch list all the video files I just copied and select the destination of them to be the folder I made called Transcoded. I make sure that the compression is Apple ProRes 422 and the resolution is 1920x1280. Normally when filming in the UK you film in 25fps because that is what TV and cinema’s play at so I set it at that and click Deinterlace. This is the process of making a deinterlaced shot from one that is interlaced. The camera actually records 50 pictures or fields a second because it takes two and deinterlacing is the process of correctly merging them so that the two fields don’t overlap. Once it has transcoded I then create a final cut project with the same settings as I just converted the clips to be and import all the transcoded footage into the project. If I have any music I have to make sure that it is a WAV file. If it isn’t I then open it in Adobe Audition and export it out as a WAV file.   I tend to find that most of the takes I shoot the final take of the shot is the best because I decide that it is the best and move onto the next shot, this makes naming the clips a bit easier. Then it is all down to the edit. I go through the clips and start to use the treatment and storyboard I created before filming to cut together clips to create the different scenes of the project. I find it a lot easier to sync up the external audio before I start to cut the clips apart because then the entire clip is synced up and I won’t have to do it afterwards for each individual clip. When using music I try to place the music onto the timeline early on too as this allows be something to cut to and create some sort of pace to the film. The music that you use is key to the video; you have to choose something that matches up with the video you are making. For example if it for a nightclub it needs to have a fast beat and be very obvious that it is playing but if it for a church for example then it has to be slower and less obvious that it is playing in the background as the key focus of the video is the interview audio.   While editing you have to make sure that all the clips fit together without any empty frames, to easily achieve this I use the snapping tool in final cut (shortcut n). This snaps the start to the end of clips together when you move them close to each other. Sometimes it can be a bit too sensitive and snap clips together that you don’t want to so I just turn it off move the clip where I want it then turn it back on. When cutting the clips apart I sometimes use the preview window to prepare the clip before putting it into the actual timeline or sometimes I place the clip into the timeline and then cut it using the cutting tool (shortcut b) to get start it with the right frame and finish it with the right one too. Once I’ve started to place together the clips the edit starts to come to life. Sometimes I do find I walk away from the edit and come back and watch through something I just edited and find actually I don’t like the way I’ve cut it or the clip’s I’ve used and so I change it again.   When I first started to do editing at the college I kind of just edited quite randomly, there was never really a reason other than that the shot I was using had finished it purpose so I went onto another. Over time I realised that actually there is a lot more behind the reason to cut a clip to another and how the next clip can’t be utterly random it has to fit into the previous shot so the cut flows through. Also I've found now that I find it actually hard to not edit to a beat now. It gives you a rhythm to flow with and helps to give the edit you’re doing a pace to it keeping the audience intrigued.   After I have gone through and edited the video together with the sections of interview I want to use to explain my storyline I basically have my rough cut done. This means I can now go through and use the cutaways I filmed to cover up any cuts throughout the interview I have done to jump to different points or even when I have cut out a long pause by the interviewee.   An example of when things haven’t quite gone to plan editing wise for me is when I was editing my trailer. I wasn’t overly happy with some of the footage that I shot and I wasn’t able to re-shoot anything due to time constraints and the fact that one of the main actress’ lived in Maidstone and so whenever I needed her for a shoot one day I'd have to pay for her expenses to get to the shoot. This meant that I didn’t have a great mindset coming into the edit and kept putting it off because I knew I wouldn’t be happy with it. I soon started to work on it in small chunks, slowly going through the story I was telling working out what shots I could use. Since the beginning of the project I had been listening out for music I could use as background music. I knew that it had to be calming at the start and eventually found what I wanted and started to cut around the beat of the music and piece together edit bit by bit.   I then came to a major part of the storyline which is when one of the main character’s is in a chase scene and then run over. I knew I had to change the music so found something with more of a upbeat nature to it to add even more tension to the scene. When I put it into the edit though I found there were too many beats for me to fill over, this meant the chase scene would have just dragged on too much and so I had to take my wav file into Adobe Audition and cut it down to the minimum amount of beats I could without the jumping around the song sounding too weird.   Even though I had the storyboard to work from I found whilst editing that sometimes the clips I thought would work together just don’t and so this means that I kind of have to play around with clips and see what fit together. Once I had done that with my trailer edit I ran through it to check it all worked well and was reasonably happy with it all and so I got onto the last stage which is colour correction.   Personally I find colour correction quite hard. I find it hard to find the imperfections in the colour, I see problems with the exposure and can easily deal with that but its adjusting the colours I find harder to do. In a scene in my trailer I had the chase scene filmed partly at night and so some clips were quite dark and others quite light from when the actor’s got too close to the light, at the end of the scene the actor gets run over by a car and due to time constraints this bit had to be filmed at day time and so I had to try to colour correct it together. This I thought wouldn’t be too hard to deal with but when I came to colour correct the whole scene I came across quite a few problems. I tried to colour correct a shot and then relay this onto another shot but found that each shot reacted to differently to it and meant it became overexposed mostly, this meant I had to shot by shot colour correct which took a lot of time. Then trying to make the daytime shot look like night time meant I had to bring down the exposure a bit and add blue’s into it but then trying to match it up to shot which were actually from the night time and so mostly black and I had to add some orange in to give my character's some colour to their faces. After I had finished I was completely happy with the progress I had made but I knew that with the time I had before the edit had to be done I had to just hand it in.   I think all this experience I've had from having not done basically any editing at all to where I have got to now I am very impressed by and pleased with. I definitely know I have a lot more to learn and I am looking forward to it.

[chrishollowaymedia]

Hang the Bride Productions Press Conference Evaluation

Before the press conference I was worried that i wouldn't be able to get any questions in. I was then surprised when I was the first person to be choosen to ask a question. The problem I found was that many of the questions that I had written to ask about Paul and Lee had already answered when doing their introducion talk. I then came up with questions like 'Do you tend to source your props from online or try to make them yourself?' I sadly wasn't able to then get a second question in as the rest were shared to others that hadn't asked any yet.

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Our Way of Life

Directed by Annie Hopkins and Tyler Burnell

Sound by Chris Holloway

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Final Animation

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Evaluation

My first bit of feedback: I liked the fade out of Luke,and i liked the change in depth of field with the gravestone shot. The music went well with the morbid mood of the video. The things i didn't like, were the font's used in all of them as it was a bit too basic

The second feedback I got was that it was good but it could have done with a bit more than some text as I didn’t use any rotoscoping in it.

I personally am reasonably happy with it, I would have like to do some rotoscoping but none of the shots in my trailer really had some action in it too allow me to do that and it look good. I am really pleased with the Luke fading out shot as I know how much work went into doing it and it looks pretty much perfect. I agree maybe i should have used more types of font’s but I find there is just so many built in that it’s hard to actually find one that you like when you go through them all.

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My Storyboards

The music playing will be a slow piano music to continue on the theme of how sad all of these are.

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Production Log

Today i was creating my last sequence for my animation. I was going to track some text on a pan over a character.

I found it very hard to track on the footage as it just didn't seem to be able to track the points i was using even though it had 3 different colours.

I eventually found one that worked and so attached the keyframe information onto the null object that i then attached the text onto that null so it tracked with the pan of the footage

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Production Log

Today i was creating text on a piano that would blur as the focus of the shot changed in the shot.

This was actually quite easy the way i did it, it was all about timing really.

I created the text and then made it a 3D element so that i could slightly rotate it meaning it would fit onto the piano keys a bit more naturally.

I then had to apply a gaussian blur to all the text layers and then work out the timing keyframes for it so that as the focus went down the keys the blur was in time with that.

I then found the problem with that text further up the keys was then overlapped by some fingers from an actor, i could have masked around the fingers so that the text was subtracted as the mask pasted over them but i found there was just way too much movement and too many fingers to mask around. I finally i decided to just fade out the two back titles to just leave Louie's name on the screen as it looked better that way

[chrishollowaymedia]

Production Log

Today I was working on getting the name of one of my actors onto the back of a gravestone as the shot panned down onto it. I had a lot of things to work out as the focus of the shot changes from the beginning on my actor to as it pans down onto the gravestone.

First i had to work out how to get the text to move with the gravestone as it came into the shot. I first tried to do point to point animation putting the text where it begins and then where the grave stops moving but i found this worked terribly due to the speed of the pan varying throughout the shot. I then tried to use motion tracking and found it hard to find a point that throughout the video it could stay tracked onto. Once i had i then applied that tracking information onto a nul object.

I then made my text and linked that to the nul object so it moved with the tracking information. I then had to work make keyframes for the gaussian blur i applied to the text so that the blur was in time with the focus of the camera shot.

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Production Log

In my own time today i made a title for my animation for my film.

I used the help of a YouTube video to create a title using effects such as Mr Mercury in after effects and fast blur

I found a problem I had was that i couldn't find a colour that really made the text, i tried red and bright colours like white but i couldn't make it any clearer

In the end i realised that i needed to add the effect of curves to help to bring it up and make it brighter so i add the effect and played around with it and eventually was happy with it

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Title Sequence Analysis

Chuck

In this title sequence we see a guy running through lots of different situations, the guy reflects the character of Chuck in that he is just a normal guy who is thrown into dangerous situations by the US government.

It begins by zooming in on Chuck’s staff badge in which then holds the name of the TV show, it then moves up the badge to the logo of the electrics company he works for and the little silhouette of a man with a briefcase then pops out of the logo and starts to run across the screen, the background then fades to a shooting range target which reflects that it is just a normal guy with a normal job being shot at as he holds a briefcase and it shows the danger of the line of work that Chuck is in within the show. There is a level of exaggeration to the movement of the character as there are lots of bullet holes yet none hit him.

There is quite a lot of syncing up between the music and sound effects with the actions on the screen, for example whenever the camera zooms in on the character there is a whooshing sound inwards and outwards that is synced to that movement. The actual music itself is very basic, it seems to just be a bass guitar and drums and near the end a couple more instruments but it isn't there to distract the audience just to kind of guide you through it.

Throughout the video there is a lot of rotoscoping of the main actors’ faces that are used as backdrops to introduce the actors’ names with the little character interacting with them something like when he falls out of the main character’s nose.

There isn’t a lot of colour in this title sequence, it’s mostly just black, grey, red and white that are used to cover everything from the character to the background rotoscopes.

I quite like this title sequence, it is very basic and quick but that is all you need sometimes, all it needs to be is an easy way to introduce the actors and then get back to the episode.

Mad Men

The title starts with the character walking into an office scene and placing his briefcase down and then the whole scene starts to fall apart as if the characters life is also falling apart.

The whole movement of the title is very slow as everything falls plus when the character starts to fall he falls very slowly past buildings with old fashioned photos

Yet again there is not much colour, there is more in the background than the foreground in which is mostly black, white and grey and the background has a theme of red. The music itself is synced mainly into the cuts of the title, it is quite basic at the beginning with just violins but then as the character starts to fall a drum kicks in to speed thing’s up a bit and to show that the character is actually moving at quite a bit of speed. Any form of anticipation on this video is wrong due to the fact that even though he is falling he always then appears higher than he previously was and he never actually hits any ground.

I find this one a bit more weird due it doesn’t seem to have much relation to anything and the pictures in the background are a little creepy.

Physco

The Physco titles were created by Saul Bass, who commonly used straight lines in the title sequences he created. The Phycso title sequence is a great example of old title sequences that were actually about celebrating most of the people who helped make the film compared to now when it’s something that is skimmed over very quickly so the film can begin.

In the title Saul uses horizontal and vertical lines to transition between names, sometimes when it changes between names you can tell the continuity is out as the words jump a little as the next part of the sequence begins. The title sequence is very basic as it is all about the music playing, the screechy violins that help to build the tension throughout the whole film.

Catch me if you can

In catch me if you can’s title sequence we see a lot of influencing from Saul Bass as lots of straight lines are used. The title sequence amazingly captures the films storyline and easily places the idea of who the characters are before the film has even begun. We already understand that there is a man that is able to change is persona very easily to get through doors and there is somebody else chasing after him that there everything isn’t able to catch him.

There is a lot of syncing to the music in this, when graphics flash up it is timed perfectly to the music adding a great subconscious level to it that is just clicks together well. The music in it is very upbeat, its not that dark always higher happy notes.

There isn’t a great deal of fast movement in the title sequence, everything is very slow and smooth, you don’t see much running, the character just kind of slides from scene to scene with clever transitions between them.

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Wednesday 19/03/14

In today’s lesson I was creating the fade out effect for Luke at the piano. At first i thought this would be a lot easier to do but soon found that actually i had a lot more work to do than i’d thought.

I started out with the original video and masked out only Luke’s half of the video.

I then placed the clip on again and masked out Becky’s half of the video.

I soon realised i actually needed the two video’s playing different parts of the clip so that the actor’s reactions fitted together, luckily the camera stayed still throughout the clip meaning that the two half’s lined up. But i then discovered that once luke’s half faded out it went to black and so i needed something to fill that with meaning i then took a screenshot of luke’s half of the screen once he’d left the shot and had to use photoshop to crop down to the size that i needed.

I then found when i put it back into after effects that it didn’t line up with the original clip and had warped so i had to the resize it in after effects and line it up perfectly with the original clip so that when the top layer faded to reveal it then it wouldn’t seem out of place.

Once that was done I did the keyframing for the fade to time it with about half way through Luke’s line, I then also added Luke’s name and had it fading out at exactly the same time as Luke.

This was what it finally looked like

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Production Log 24/03/14

Today I was doing editing on my trailer. I also did a bit of experimenting with a title tutorial i found on Youtube

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Production log 24/03/14 TV Show

In Tanya's lesson today I didn't have much to do as it was kind of a planning day to get scripts finalised for the coming weeks. I did find that Callum and Leonie had a finished script for their section about uni tips so i put together a small crew of people to shoot this as it was actually only about a minute long and there wasn't much cutting to do. We first had them sitting behind the desk that had been used for the news report but we soon realised that it made it looked too formal plus was too similar to previous segments and so we just had them sitting next to each other on some comfy chairs. All in all I felt the day went well as we now have another segment filmed ready to be edited for the go live show

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Photographer, James Wicks. 

Model, Conor Ellicott. 

'You are my muse'. 

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Autocue Task

Hi i'm Chris Holloway, and today I'm going to be talking about a subject most people around my age or just a bit below go through thinking about, University.

But if you're heading to Uni what are the sorts of things you should be thinking about. Well will going actually benefit me? Which one? Catered or non-catered?

So lets break it down, We'll start with “Well will it actually benefit me?” Well it depends on the field you want to go into. If its film like me then yes its useful as you can continue to expand your knowledge, but say you want to be a handy man then it won't be as useful and so maybe an apprenticeship would be better suited to you.

Next is “Which one?” Well you should really try think about this early. Its best in your first year of college or sixth form to be looking around for the year ahead because you won't be as busy as you will be in your second year. If you haven't really got time to look around or can't travel as far as the uni, then a good website to look at is unistats, they have done surveys of nearly all courses in all universities in the country about how the course is, how much practical there is, what the student union is like and what the employment rate after the course is. All of it is really useful information to know and make a decision from.

But do you wanted to be “Catered or non-catered?”. Well you might find if you go for a London University you might not actually have the choice as quite a lot of them are just self catered because there are so many student's and so little space. But if you do get the choice be careful because you are paying for breakfast, lunch and dinner but that does mean that you won't get a kitchen to use if you get peckish for a late night snack. And also some universities don't have the greatest canteen food so be careful of that too.

That's all I have time to talk about today, I just hope you all make the right choices and remember to enjoy university, yes it is about the work and the grades but it is also a chance to meet new people and make lifetime friends. 

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Today 11/03/2014

Today I didn't get in till late as i felt ill, once i was in i found out our music video group had picked two songs, we were stuck for most of the day as to what to choose for our third song as we couldn't work out what songs would go with the stories were appearing in our head. In the end we picked the song "let the sun shine on me" by Perfectly Normal. We finished up all our proposals today and are presenting them to the bands tomorrow morning.