Editing Process

We have all returned back to school with a memory card full of the footage we filmed in the holiday, ready to start the editing process. We imported the footage from the memory card and the sound recordings from the device on to Final Cut. After this, we looked through the clips and discarded the ones that we didn’t need, we also did the same with the sound clips. Once we had the clips we wanted we started to drop them in and got together a rough idea of the sequence of shots.

Once we had a rough outline of the sequence the shots, we started to change the lengths of the shots and stuff to make sure they followed on well, for example we had to make sure we got the match on action as the mother walked through the door just right. The one thing we found most challenging during the editing process was the through the wall shot. Because of how we had filmed it, we had to flip all the shot from after the through the wall shot. We also had difficulty when trying to make a smooth transition between the dolly back from the mother making tea to the through the wall shot, this was difficult as we had to use two different dollys and the dolly from we used in the kitchen was bigger than the table dolly we used to film the through the wall shot so the two shots where filmed from different heights. Therefore after trying many different filler shot and different things we could think of we came to the conclusion that showing the mother putting the lid back on the teapot was the best way to have a smooth transition and stop it looking like there was a big drop between the two dolly shots.

Once we had the film together how we wanted it, we had to add titles and sound. The sound that we recorded outside the house of the mother walking to the door was very muffled due to the wind. So we used the sound from the camera as once it was turned up, it sounded much better than the sound from the recording device. However we had recorded some good sound of the tea being made and the dialogue from the mum. Once we added this sound in and made sure it was synced properly with the footage, we started to look for music would could add to create more of an atmosphere in our film. We found some music we liked on Sound Cloud but were unable to download it as it wasn’t royalty free. However we did find some music that was perfect for the first half of our film opening on Sound Cloud that was royalty free and therefore okay for us to download. We also added music from audio network and some of the sounds that were already on Final Cut.

Once all the music was added and we were happy with how our rough edit was looking, we started to look for fonts we might like for the credits and main title because as a group we were unsure about the first title Chloe made in motion, the one that is at the end of our rough edit. We found a font we liked online called ‘DK Qilin’ and were then able to download it onto Final Cut. We have started making a new title page in this font, in the title, the words ‘Mummy’s Girl’ will appear as if it is being written on a chalk board background. We will then export this to Final Cut and add it the end of our film. However we did not have time to finish this for it to be part of our final edit.

We also added multiple fades throughout our film on the footage and the music as it creates a much nicer and smoother transition between the idents for example. The fades on the music also makes it much easier to move from one track to another as it is less abrupt. Overall I am very pleased with what we have achieved in a week and how our rough cut looks. However we are aware that it is far from perfect and hope that the constructive criticism we receive from showing our rough edit will help us to further improve it.

Here is the rough edit of our film, Mummy’s Girl: