2/11/09

I learned a lot about editing today, especially the terminology that described various editing techniques, which I couldn't really describe using words in the past. It was more of an intuitive thing that I picked up over time, so during the lesson I had difficulty trying to explain the "action cut" when I tried to.

In the remaining forty-five minutes of the lesson, we had to engage in an editing exercise, but as there were no raw footage for us to edit, we had to film a scene ourselves. I was aware that a cinematographer has to follow shooting guidelines/rules carefully, or else the editor would have trouble making the footage flow seamlessly because he would have to go through lots of errors that the cinematographer had made. Solutions for this?
Here were some solutions that I thought of:
- the editor would have to keep in touch with the cinematographer and communicate frequently;
- the cinematographer has to know what he is doing, and must take into consideration that the editor's reputation would be tarnished if he makes too many mistakes that can't be erased during post-production;
- a person takes up the role of both the cinematographer and editor
Put short, an editor is almost entirely dependent on the footage that the cinematographer provides him.

Filming the scene and setting up the shots did not take long. The most important aspect of this exercise was the actors' actions and line delivery. As I had taken up the role of the cinematographer and the editor, I had to carefully instruct them to take up the same positions and deliver their lines in the same fashion between different shots from different angles (a director's responsibility?). This was to ensure that the scene would actually flow, even when I cut between shots.

After a couple of importing problems (I forgot about the correct FCP settings), we finally managed to assemble a rough cut after deciding where to make a cut with other team members (Julien and Camille) and fiddling around to get the best action cuts out of the shots we had. I was glad that there were no continuity errors by the end of the assembly, but I was worried about the audio that we would have to get right before the next lesson. The shotgun mike picked up a lot of ambient noises and the audio levels between different shots differed. I plan to take the audio from one shot and apply it to every shot in the cut; with some minor tweaking (by making the audio levels stay consistent) and audio smoothing (by applying cross-fade transitions between audio tracks), I will hopefully achieve decent, consistent audio throughout the scene.

The teacher gave us feedback and thought that we should attempt to place more cuts into the scene. But I felt that the number of different shots in the rough cut was enough - it was functional and effectively portrayed the mood of the scene. The emotions involved in the scene weren't particularly extreme or turbulent, so I felt that cutting down the number of cuts would keep the scene from getting too rhythmic. For lack of a better way to put it, I feel that getting too rhythmic would make one feel like they're watching a TV series complete with formulaic cuts. Of course, quick cuts could be utilized, but only when it parallels a character's state of mind, or in situations like chases.