Editing Everything Together
Wow, I really didn’t think it would be this complicated!
As I aspire to be a professional editor when I leave University, you can understand why I was eager at the chance to edit our 15 minute tv show. As not only would it give me a specific role in our production, it would give me an accurate taste of what it would be like to edit the sitcoms, talkshows and even dramas I so badly want to work on in the future.
I knew it would be difficult, don’t get me wrong, I was not oblivious to the fact that it would not be plain sailing, I just didn’t expect it to be this strenuous.
The idea was to edit the individual segments then compile them all together, some tweaking might have to be done, but other than that, I thought that’d be it!
WRONG!
Of course because this is a class project I wasn’t doing this all solo, thankfully Heather helped me edit different sections which took a huge weight off my shoulders. However, despite use both agreeing on not colour grading our edits, thinking it would make things easier in the long haul, other problems arose instead. Nothing we couldn’t get round, it was more so the fact that it delayed our progress that was annoying.
However, at this point we were used to being delayed and having work. that didn’t go towards our grade or our multi-cam piece, being thrown on us last minute. So this was nothing new either.
After about a week of editing everything finally started coming together... with one problem- our 15 minute show had been turned into a nearly 30 minute one. This wasn’t an issue per say as it just further proved how capable we all are at creating industry standard, television worthy, content. The issue came from the fact that our module specified 15 minutes not 30, and we had to prove we could work to certain constraints (including time) because even though we had just made an usual length tv show for the likes of bbc and itv, that's no good because if you’re hired to make a 15 minute show they only have time for 15 minutes, they’re not just gonna push EastEnders back by 15 minutes because you produced double the content you were contracted to.
So, understanding why we had to submit a 15 minute version, we got to the chopping block... what was going to be sacrificed?
If we thought our previous endeavour of editing everything together was difficult, this was a whole new level. We had all worked on segments together but some segments were moreso one persons than the others. For example, the adverts, I directed, wrote, produced and edited them so of course I didn't want them gone. But I had to remember other people felt the same about their segments, so we had to be fair.
In the end, we ended up cutting segments we considered lesser worked on, not in the sense of effort, or editing put in, moreso pieces that hadn’ t took people days to write or hours to direct, so pieces like the social experiment and vox pops looked heavily eyed to be cut, alongside some vision mixing pieces.
Overall, obviously were going to favour our longer edit. It showcases EVERYONES work and not just those we’ve picked and chose. I loved working on this module, as I said earlier I’d love to work on a tv show (specifically sitcoms) and being able to produce our own show is phenomenal as its always been my dream. I’m sad its coming to an end, I could easily keep making these for a few more years and make a series out of it, we never know maybe BBC, ITV or Channel 4 might see it and pick us up for a Saturday Night slot... I’m getting ahead of myself, gotta get that degree first!













