Editing is the last piece of the puzzle. It brings everyone's hard work together to create the final piece. Albeit, the editing process may take more time and effort than the pre-production and production process put together. With long days behind possibly more than one computer screen, editing can become very tedious, nonetheless the finished product is well worth the drudgery. Editing is such an important part to the whole process as just filming something doesn't necessarily piece the story together. Post-production takes the work from pre-production and production and finishes telling the tale. In fact, the editor has the power of finalising what the audience will see. There are three types of editing. These are linear which is editing from tapes being replayed into a tape recorder and editing from that. This was the original way of computer editing. Non-linear editing is what is most commonly used now which is all digitalised. No tapes are involved! Finally, live editing, this is mostly done with TV work where what is being shown to the audience is specifically being picked (so edited) and it is happening live. Editing started to make the story more interesting by cutting between two separate but related shots to make the story flow better. The way something is edited depends on many factors. An editor can control the emotion of the filming; the way an audience can be biased towards certain people or characters by the way they tell the story. Using close-up shots of actor's faces can show more emotion on screen as it solely concentrates on them. Editors use information like this to almost manipulate their audiences into thinking and believing in certain ways. Another example would be that a wide shot would normally be used to open a scene as the master shot, the reason for this would be that it sets the scene and doesn't originally single a character out. Editors choose wisely about when and where they use shots to best tell the story. Editors are very important as if there were no cuts between shots, it would make the video extremely boring and audiences wouldn't enjoy it, making it a non-profitable business. When filming a piece, many takes of the same thing will be shot, so it is the editors job to filter through all of the takes to see which are good, which are not so good and the best take to use in the final thing. This is also very time consuming as they will have to watch every take from start to finish to know which is the best one to use. Filmmakers deliberately shoot more than they need to from every different angle in the scene, so that editors can experiment with all the shots giving it the right perspective for the video. Also, editing controls the point of view of the characters. They make cuts in the right places to often show expression from protagonists. Another way to edit is to a backing track and listening to the beats of the percussion instruments or a guitar and change the clip to the pace of the song. This works well in music video structures so that the video clips are cut to a well-timed fashion. At the moment, industry professionals are currently editing with the either the software Final Cut Pro or Avid which are the best and most popular. However, with technology changing everyday, more software will be available and introducing more and effective ways to edit. I have been taught how to use Final Cut Pro and I really enjoy using it, but also I'd really like to learn how to use Avid. To be good at editing, I would say that you would have to be good at organising your files and managing them properly to edit effectively. But, before editing, all of the footage needs to be transcoded. Transcoding means that all of the video files need to be in the same format that the editing software (Final Cut Pro or Avid) are comfortable with. The way to do this is to list all the video files into MPEG Streamclip and then transcode them from the codec H.264 to Apple Pro Res 422 which the editing software can cope with. When filming, the format should be 1920x1080 with 25 frames per second, so the editor should check that this applies. Also when transcoding you need to 'Deinterlace' the footage. This splits the frames apart, enabling the editor to make it easier it move about. All of these stages are transcoding and now you are ready to edit. After transcoding, it is time to edit. Import all if the footage into your project. Then, for easy editing and good file management skills, it is best to rename all of the footage and either use separate folders or coloured labels to differentiate between footage. Again, this may take up a lot of time to begin with however in the long run, will make the process more efficient. Most editors will be given a storyboard that will help to guide them in the edit. The storyboards will have been created in the pre-production process, used when filming in the production process and will be like step-by-step drawings that will help the editor to tell the story. After going through the many storyboards, the editor can start placing the necessary footage onto the timeline. The timeline is where you build your story. By putting clips together and cutting out the unnecessary parts of the footage, your final product starts to become the reality. When editing it is better to make more than one video and audio track laid out, this way you can organise and control your timeline better. It is also better to know that you can zoom in really close to each clip and move frame by frame so that you don't have any black frames at all. To prevent empty frames, the 'snapping' tool allows the clips to almost stick together. Another useful tool is the cutting tool (keyboard shortcut B). As well as placing the video footage into the timeline, music can also be added. Music plays a big part in the edit. It can pull on emotional heart strings to match the storyline, or be used as comedic effect. Editors choose very wisely about the style of music they choose. As well as music, extra sound bites and effects will be added in the edit, either recorded or from archive footage. The music can also help with the way the editor cuts the piece, like previously mentioned. Sound levels are also important when editing and need to be controlled carefully. You can add transitions to hide sound levels that don't match to make it easily flow through the video. Transitions can also be made through the video. In my music video I used smoke as a transition. I had my protagonist smoke a cigarette and the smoke covered the lens. In the next shot I had the band whose music video it was performing with a smoke machine. In the edit, I used a fade to hide the transition and it worked perfectly. Once you have your story laid out on the timeline, with all your music in place; this is your rough cut. This can be shown to the directors or producers if how you as the editor think it should look and for their input to be made before you move onto the next stage. After this you can then add more effects. Adding titles and animations could improve the edit, depending on what it is. The program that is best for this is Adobe After Effects. Editors find this the best and most effective way to create professional titles and animations which can then be imported into Final Cut Pro to add to your timeline. The next stage of editing is colour correcting. The best program to use, in my opinion is Magic Bullet Looks. It enables you to change the way the clip looks. Colour can completely change the mood of the video, darker colours can make it more sinister or sad and alternatively lighter colours do the opposite. Magic Bullet Looks have set colour schemes as a more basic way to colour correct a clip. However, there are many different tools to change things about the clip like the amount of Exposure, the Hue and Saturation. It's a way of experimenting with colours and filters and the lighting in the shot. After editing all the extra effects onto your edit, including the colour correction and you are happy with it, this is your final cut. This will be the last version of the edit that will be seen by the audience. After the final cut of your edit is finished it is time to encode it. This has the flip reverse of transcoding. The reason for encoding is to lock all the frames together and place it back under the codec of H.264. This means that it can be shared on internet platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. The way I do this is by exporting your video to QuickTime and making the movie 'self-contained', this way only the footage used in the video will be needed to upload the video. To make sure it has the correct format and codec for YouTube, I import it into the application called 'Compressor' and choose the option 'YouTube Sharing' and after waiting for it to all finalise, it is ready to be shared with the world. YouTube is probably one of the best sharing platforms out here at the moment as videos can potentially go viral. From working on the feature film 'The Guvnors' there was a major fight scene involved. From watching other films that have large action scenes in, editors use more cuts to hide the choreographed side of the fight and make it look more realistic. Using fast paced music makes adds tension and makes the cuts look more natural. In fact, all of the special effects are done in the editing stages, a film such as Avatar could not have been filmed without the technology of post production.Quite often, editing and cover up mistakes made by the filmmakers and sometimes save a rubbish film. Speeding up or slowing down footage adds tension to the clip and makes some scenes more atmospheric, both of these effects are generally done in the editing stages of production. Throughout all of my college projects I have been heavily involved in the editing side as well as the filming. Every project, I've tried to learn something new that I can incorporate into the video and I hope I've shown that in my work. I tried motion tracking with text in my trailer which I think looked effective. I recently watched the film The Fault In Our Stars and I liked the effect of the text or email appearing as an animation on screen. This would have all been done in the post-production process. Having never edited anything before this course, I definitely feel I have come on leaps and bounds in these past 2 years being able to edit professionally and feel comfortable in knowing what I'm doing. I continually learn new things when editing, including keyboard shortcuts to make the process more efficient. Plus finding good effects that I can use in the future. Also animated films would cease to exist if it wasn't for the technology of bringing someone's skilful drawings to life. A company like Disney make millions if not billions of money on their popular animated films such as the newest ones being Frozen and Tangled. Well editing played a huge part in the display of these films. Editors can be very influential and manipulative in terms of how the film is shown to the audience. They can completely change the ambience by using extra effects like colours so easily. The way it can make people feel a certain way is a powerful concept to grasp, however is an extremely clever skill to hold.
