Evaluation of Editing Skills

One of the major aspects of this course was the concept of editing film in order to produce finalised pieces of work from many practical segments. By the time that the course came to an end, I had developed two large pieces, as well as four additional films that were purely designed to advance my practical skills.

My first and main editing assignment involved filming and editing a short film capturing the visible and audible style of the British new wave genre in cinema. In order to create my film to be as accurate to British new wave cinema as possible, I made sure to use as many possible editing techniques that are in favour of such a style. Although the footage was all filmed in colour, during the editing stage, I changed it to appear in monochrome, as it made the British new wave aesthetic even more prominent. Despite some films of the genre having been filmed in colour - such as Tom Jones (1963) and Alfie (1966) - it seemed wise to follow the colouration of the majority of British new wave instalments, many of which few people today will be familiar with. To further relate to the period of filmmaking at hand, all the shots contained within the film are long, and progress from one to another through jump cuts. Such cinematography was commonplace in this genre, as the long shots helped to mesmerise the audience, whereas the jump cuts worked to make the audience remember that they were watching films. Essentially, most films of the new wave genre, regardless of their country of origin, have a visual, static effect to them, due to the cameras used to film them being cheap and underdeveloped. Therefore, although my film was not recorded with any camera that would cause such an effect, I did apply a similar texture during the editing stage, in order to capture the same aesthetic. Through detailed research into British new wave editing techniques, and the clear organising of footage into bins, the piece proved itself to be rather commendable and honourable in regards to the subject matter.

Whilst I was planning my British new wave film, I was required to record footage that would used in four short films. For a certain day in each of four weeks, in order to improve my practical skills, I was provided four hours to film enough footage which would then be edited throughout the rest of the week, to produce a finished product. Such products would present new editing techniques that I had learnt in order to improve upon my knowledge of film development. For my first challenge, I filmed the college in a mysterious and haunting manner by not including any people, to give off the appearance of all previous occupants having suddenly vanished. Overall, since I had never used Adobe Premiere Pro before editing this video, I learnt the basic concepts of the software, such as importing, structuring, snipping, and reversing clips, as well as overlaying and fading music, all before exporting the completed video.
The second challenge involved me spending a few seconds filming four other students located in certain positions within one room. Each time that I stopped filming, the others would move to different locations or alter their poses for me to record. The camera would remain in the exact same position so that only the people within the film would represent change. In terms of editing, I layered the Nintendo Wii theme music over the footage, before cutting the length of the clips down, and structuring them so that each time that a new note began to sound, a new clip would play. Therefore, the main lesson learnt was how to match footage to music.
My third challenge was editing footage consisting of two students within a chase sequence. During the editing of this film, I learnt how to create iris shots, meaning that a black circle opens within the middle of the screen in order to begin the film, whilst another closes to end it. I also learnt how to input still images - in this case, title cards - as well as text, which was used to present the characters' speech, and narrate a part of the story. Additionally, discovering how to remove the colour from the footage helped keep the film remain true to 1920s cinema. The final technique that I gained understanding of was overlaying multiple pieces of footage, as the whole video plays with a film grain effect present.
To complete the fourth and final challenge, I needed to gather footage found online, before editing it to play in sychronisation with music. Ultimately, I would not say that I learnt anything new from this project, but at least I was highly satisfied with the outcome.

At a later point in the year, I was tasked with creating a music video for a song that did not already have one. To execute my overall ideas for the visuals, I decided to film and edit the video in a style of stop motion animation. Ultimately, the main aspect of this project was the practical work, as almost all materials used in the video were crafted and manipulated by hand. It would seem that the only editing aspects were the organising, snipping, and structuring of clips - none of which were new to me. This did, however, take an very large amount of time to execute, as most stop motion animation projects do. Also, it is important to remember that segment of the video is a general reflection of the song lyrics. Therefore, the segments had to begin and end as soon as the corresponding song verses do, which means that timing is key. Overall, my video has been edited to meet this requirement very well, due to careful resizing and placing of each frame.