Throughout the course I have edited various media pieces which has allowed my editing skills to improve over the year and allowed me to be experimental and try new techniques. I am going to revisit each piece I have edited and evaluate how I edited each one.
The first thing I edited was my short film 'The Door'. This was our first 4 hour film challenge where we were given the title 'the door', and asked to plan and shoot a film in four hours using continuity editing. In our group we struggled to decide on a narrative so ended up filming individually. I chose to do a short narrative video showing someone coming home and feeling watched in their own home. When editing my short film I used Premiere Pro to edit and this was the first time I had used the software so I found it quite challenging and was only able to use it on a basic level. I used the song 'Somebody's Watching Me', by Rockwell, and tried to add horror style music in one part from the Premiere audio library to build up suspense and tension. However, they didn't have a track that was quite right so the one I used I felt didn't work as well as I had hoped. I also felt that transition from my main song to the horror music felt a bit awkward and therefore wasn't that successful, but felt that the horror music was necessary to create a more creepy atmosphere. When it came to exporting the video I discovered that it wouldn't let me use the track for free so I had to screen record my film rather than exporting it meaning the audio and video quality was not the best.
I felt that I successfully used jump cuts to show the same scene from two different angles such as the opening shot of me walking through the door also shown from the perspective through the key hole and similarly in the later shots through the bedroom window. I felt that I lined these up fairly well so that the scene looked seamless. I also felt that I successfully used continuity editing which was part of the brief.
As a beginner on Premiere Pro I didn't know how to crop or rotate shots so felt that the framing was off in some clips and looked a bit unprofessional. If I had the opportunity to re edit I would have asked for help or watched tutorials on YouTube to learn how to crop and rotate the clips to fix this issue.
My next video I edited was another four hour film challenge. For this task we were asked to create a music video using found footage (rather than filming it ourself), so the task was purely focused on editing rather than camera work etc. I chose to create a Peaky Blinders edit as this is one of my favourite shows. For the song I chose 'Arabella' by Arctic Monkeys, as this song is featured in the show and I feel definitely captures the vibe I wanted to go for. I used a lot of slow motion in my video which I felt worked well with the beat of the song, but potentially got a little repetitive at points. I did use normal speed clips as well to give some variety and these also worked well with the faster paced parts of the song. My overall editing in the video was very basic and I just used standard cuts from one shot to another, partially due to the time limit but mainly because I didn't know how to use a lot of techniques on Premiere. I could have improved it by experimenting with other techniques such as using transitions or layering shots etc to make it more visually interesting and impressive. I cut the song down to around 2.5 minutes instead of 3.5 to avoid it getting too repetitive.
I didn't particularly aim to create a narrative with my editing, and instead focused on the aesthetic, so the order of clips feels a bit random, however I tried to match the visuals in some clips with the lyrics which I felt worked well although it may have been subtle.
Our next 4 hour film challenge was to create a 2-3 minute silent film based off a fairy tale. Our group chose to do a short film loosely based on 'The Ugly Duckling'. I feel that the silent film looks more professional than my previous two pieces, but this is probably more down to the camera and lighting than the editing.
I screen recorded title cards on YouTube to use but there was a logo in the corner which I didn't know how to remove on Premiere Pro so this was frustrating as it made it look less professional and authentic. I used fade transitions when editing, for instance from the first title card to the opening shot, which I felt looked like a real film opening and worked well. I also used fade transitions between shots in the shopping scene to suggest the passage of time. To improve the film I could have added a grain effect to make it look like a real silent film.
Finally, in my music video I was really pleased with my editing, and think it definitely shows my development and progression as an editor. Due to being more familiar with the software and also the nature of the task, I was a lot more experimental with my editing and tried new techniques. I experimented with colour grading more than I had in previous work, changing some clips to black and white, and increasing the saturation or hue on others to make the colours pop which I felt worked well. I contrasted very extreme slo-mos with standard speed clips which matched the tone of the song and gave variety to my video. I also overlaid multiple clips over one another by reducing the opacity, which looked very artistic and abstract. I feel that I edited really well to the beat and successfully captured the rhythm and essence of the song.
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