On Wednesday, we finished editing, screened and got feedback for our videos. My group already had an assembly line in the timeline. We finished off the rough cutting of clips and went through it again to find awkward pauses or parts where the actors may have gone out of character and smiled towards the end of the take. Thanks to our rough cut, we did not find any of the latter, however there was one take as the Cheat stands up that seemed awkward to me. We couldn’t really solve this problem however, as it was impractical to cut between shots while an action is being completed. In the end, we simply left it as it wasn’t horrifically disturbing. The other problem we found in our film was a continuity problem. From when I enter the room, to when William says his line, the door jumps from closing (halfway) to fully closed. This error was not obvious however, and we only spotted it through careful scrutiny as we played through the film one last time before the screening. From this, I learnt to really filter through the clips in an earlier stage so that adjustments can be made where necessary.
After the fine cut of the video, we moved onto audio editing. I noticed that William spoke in a lower octave compared to my voice, and so the microphone did not pick up his voice as well as it did mine. As a result, when the clips were put in sequence and played through, William’s lines were soft whereas mine were louder. What I did to fix this was really an accident of my exploring Final Cut Pro. After double-clicking the soundtrack of the clip, I was met with the sound mix of that clip in the viewer panel. The control that stood out was the master volume of the clip. I simply dragged the bar to the right and the entire clip got louder. For the three lines William had, I turned the volume up between 3dBs and 15dBs. The problem with turning up the overall volume up of the clip however was that background noises both from the environment and the camera (a slight buzzing) were amplified accordingly. In the time we had however, the final product was still of a high quality. We considered adding music to the scene; however the almost comical acting of both William and I rendered dramatic music ill fitting, but we were unable to find a suitable “troll” song in time of the screening. Instead, we left the music out completely and allowed to dialogue to be the sole audio source. From this, I learnt about audio editing, Final Cut Pro’s tools, and how to make the video flow better both graphically and audio-wise.
To complete the video, we created a simple title page and a scrolling credits clip. In both cases, we created a black clip and added white text to the center. For the credits, there was a ready-made option to add in the scrolling effect. Simple practice will help me familiarize myself with the innumerable tools available in Final Cut Pro. After adding the final touch-ups to the video, we exported the sequence as a Quick-Time Media file to the public folder of Justin’s account. From there, Ms. Rosati had easy access to the file and screened the clips from her Mac.
The feedback given was brief due to the limited time we had. Our video was generally good, however Ms. Rosati was keen to see more of any ideas we had. If we want our video to be comical, it should be blatantly obvious. Similarly, filming and framing adjustments should be made large, for example if you wished to get closer and closer to the subject, you wouldn’t go in stages of Long shot, Medium Long, Medium Close, Close etc., but skipping steps in between: Long shot, Medium Close, Extreme Close-up. In addition, any angle changes should be greater than 30o, or else the audience may think it was simply an accident. To summarize it, if you want to do something, do it big and make it obvious. From the review session, I learnt about the 180o rule of sticking to one side of the subject while filming and not suddenly moving to the opposite side and having the two characters swap position. Relating to this, you want to either lead the audience’s eye to a specific location, or simply have them keep looking at one area of the frame and not jumping from place to place. I will keep and try to apply this knowledge to any future filming we do.
In conclusion, I was able to achieve my goal today of completing the video and having it screened by the end of the lesson, but in the future, would it be necessary, we may have needed background music, and more importantly, we should be scrutinized the sequence earlier on so that adjustments could be made. In general, I’m happy with my performance today as I worked well with my teammates, was an active learner (listening, watching and experimenting) and got the work done.
No comments:
Post a Comment