Edit Workflow – Circles

Straight after filming the very first thing I did was to transfer all of the rushes over and organize them effectively. I had a folder laid out for everything within this project including individual folders for each camera, these included close, wide, steady cam and slider. Each clip was also labelled with the take number, this was to make sure that when editing I could find what I wanted but also to stop me accidentally matching two different takes together. The sound recording however was done in one long take, this wasn’t really a problem as we only did 3 takes in the end and the gab between them was clearly distinguishable, also I was very happy with the quality of the recording.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Next I created the project file and imported all of my rushes, possible fonts and sound recording into the project. By placing the file in it’s own individual ‘Project folder’ I find that it minimises the risk of Premiere losing footage or pre rendered files, saving me trouble down the line. 

I also set up the multi camera sequence. Doing it this way allowed me to greatly speed up my workflow and make it more effective. Rather than individually syncing audio and choosing shots I could set it up to work much like a live edit system. It also made syncing the audio and shots together much easier as I could tell premiere to match up in a variety of ways, in this instance I chose to use audio as each camera had an audio track it could use. This seemed to work flawlessly and matched my footage up seamlessly.

unfortunately however there was an issue with the footage from the Canon 5D, all of the footage had been shot in 720p at 50fps.This meant that the frame size was too small but also that the footage seemed a bit too sharp and looked odd next to 25fps, which supplied a slight amount of ‘motion blur’. All of the cameras should of been properly checked prior to filming but it was too late to reshoot, meaning I would have to see what I could do with it.

Thankfully scaling the footage up to fit the screen made the footage much more useable as the slightly lower quality gave the impression of a lower fps. This didn’t fix it entirely but in the end I only used a small amount of footage from that camera as a lot of it was unusable anyway. This meant that the final shots didn’t look too out of place with the other cameras.

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Once everything was set up and synced properly I began by effectively doing a live edit. I played the sequence through and selected clips when I thought they were appropriate paying attention to possible cuts and key moments within the shot. This left me with a very rough ‘live’ edit of the film. working in this way allowed me to quickly and easily run through the footage and get a good idea of how everything would fit together.

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The next step I took was looking back over the initial edit selecting moments that I thought worked well and those that didn’t. I then began to chop and change things paying closer attention to where I cut and the timings of the shots. The Rolling edit (N) tool was very useful at this stage as it allowed me to quickly change where the cut took place in one smooth motion, greatly speeding up my workflow. Another thing that was incredibly helpful was having my timeline colour coordinated, this allowed me to easily see which camera each shot was from and to locate specific areas I was working on.

Once I was happy with each shot chosen as well as the cuts and timings, I exported another rough copy. In the industry this would be useful to the producer/director to see a running workflow of how the film was progressing and be able to give feedback without me having to redo massive sections. In this instance however it acts as a checklist for me and also a documentation of how my project went.

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The next step was to look at colour correction and the levels of the track. This would also have been where I added any effects I was going to use; I didn’t however as we had discussed about the style of the film being very clean cut and ‘homely’. The actual shots themselves were also very aesthetically pleasing so I didn’t want to run the risk of over doing it and making it seem garish.

I started by going through the film and looking for any shots that needed adjusting in terms of colour. This was a fairly quick process as I was able to take mental notes of what I would have to come back to while I was choosing my shots. For this edit I decided to use the Luma and RGB curves. The Luma curve allows me to artificially change the exposure of the image either over all or specifically in the Shadows/Highlights.

The RGB curves allow me to adjust how much of each colour is let into the image as well as overall colour. Much like the Luma curve I can also adjust this more specifically in the shadow/highlight areas of the image.

After looking back through the edit I found that the majority of shots that needed adjustment belonged to the steady cam. The other cameras were well matched and exposed due to the identical camera settings. The steady cam shots were slightly over exposed with a surprising amount of red in them.

For this example I first added the luma curve to adjust exposure making sure it matched up with the other shots as closely as possible.

This left me with a lot of red in the image which I then used the RGB curve to adjust. brining everything down to a more pleasingly level that matched with the rest of the footage.

I then looked at the levels of the track. Thanks to Satt I had a very clean recording with well balanced guitar/vocals and a healthy amount of ambience. This meant I just had to make sure that the levels were set correctly so that it didn’t clip out at any point. 

To do this I set the level to what I thought was appropriate and payed attention to the db meter making sure that the peaks were around -6, from past experience i’ve found that this is a good level to aim for as it means that the audio isn’t too quite but also isn’t uncomfortably loud and doesn’t clip out.

I also added a fade on the audio track at the beginning and end in order to insure a smooth entry and exit of the track, this was quite simple and done with a combination of the pen tool and key frames.

Once all of my colour correction and levels were done I then exported my third rough cut.

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Now that I had the meat of the film finished I turned my attention to the Title/credit sections.

I had already compiled a selection of fonts that I thought might be useful and so now began going through them and making test titles to get a feel for how they might look in context.

 

Once I had decided upon my fonts I wrote down exactly what I needed to include in my credits and how I might arrange it.

I decided to use these fonts firstly because they are easily legible but also because I think their style reflect the film well. The song is quite a laid back slightly rough round the edges acoustic cover with an element of simplicity to it. In my opinion these fonts are exactly that and display the style I wanted well.

I also decided to display the titles on a white background. I did this because it was in keeping with the style of the film but also added an element of contrast as the footage itself is overall quite dark.

Once I had made my titles I then had to add them into the timeline. Rather then having them abruptly appear I wanted to add a slight fade to each of the titles and in some cases separate the text. I did this with the use of key frames to set the opacity for each moment to create a fade. Also by having the titles set with no background so that I could add a white background underneath, this meant that I could have different text fade in at different times within the sequence without it being blocked by the previous title.

I then exported my 4th rough cut and began my final check through everything.

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After Looking back through my film a couple of things jumped out at me, one being that a title was transparent where it shouldn’t be and a continuity error in the credits (cinematography instead of cinematographer).

I was now happy with the film and ready to do my final export. when exporting because render time wasn’t an issue I decided to export as uncompressed as possible this would ensure that I didn’t loose any quality but the file size would be considerably larger, slowing upload times.

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