Editing and Final Tweaks

I'm not too savvy with Final Cut, and tend to find it a little bit frustrating, however my edit didn't need to be cut too much due to the 'one shot' format, so the main narrative editing was done through the selection of footage before even using the programme. Since I'm becoming more comfortable using After Effects I found I could create some extra effects and colour change before importing into Final Cut, which saved me a lot of time.

Something I tried out in Final Cut was the Video Filter 'Bad TV', as I wanted to camera to become a little faulty and slowly respond to the 'electricity' of the Test Subject's side-effects. However I had a lot of trouble using this effect as it slowed down the programme a lot, needing time to render, and often 'blacked out' my footage or spontaneously appeared on others. This caused a lot of hassle and in the end, didn't seem worth it. Though I would have liked to have this effect, it took far too much time to render for me to see any progress with the alterations I had made.

Instead, I decided to create a 'static' effect in After Effects by following this tutorial: http://youtu.be/9t4iri8Q48w.

Which was simple enough and proved very useful in my edit.


I'm aware I still need a lot of practice with editing as there are certain aspects of my film that could be improved, for example the colours could still be altered to create a more atmospheric mood and the sound isn't as smooth as I would like. As much as I can blame time restrictions I realise I really should take sound into consideration a lot more and save time for it. Though we recorded most of it on set there are still some extra effects I could have created in a sound booth etc.

Something I should take into consideration for future projects and edits is the idea of 'pick-up' shots. In a crit it was suggested that the camera should be knocked down at the end of the film, which would cause a little more panic and destruction. This is an idea I quite like and would possibly have helped end the film. Whilst editing I gathered feedback from some of my peers in order to get a 'fresh pair of eyes' on the work, as it became easy to doubt whether the content worked due to replaying it over and over. Since their response was positive I decided I'd finally 'finished' the film.