Editing our Film Opening

    My group and I have officially begun editing our film opening project and though we still have work to do, we have laid the groundwork and I think it will turn out great in the end.

    One of my group members, of course, Melanie (pictured below) is doing the majority of the editing. Tori, being the person whose camera we borrowed to film this masterpiece on, sent over the clips to her to begin the process. Considering that she is the one with the most editing experience out of all of us (still not much) and the fact that she was not able to join us for all of the filming, this task was given to her so she could contribute in some way. What a job being in charge of editing is!

     Here is a picture taken during editing of the software Melanie is using. 

    Before I get into what the group has accomplished so far in terms of editing and planning of the editing, I need to mention that there were cast changes made as we approached our final day of filming this past Saturday. Amberina Khoja was no longer available so Tori took her place as Betty, but James and August's roles remained filled by Daniel and our friend Ashley.

    Although we had issues in the last session of shooting with the last couple of scenes, the car scene and the sky tilt, we were able to film it on our last day with great success so that Melanie could start editing and compile all the footage together.

    Prior to even filming, we chose a cut to be our main transition for this opening, mostly because to fit all the scenes and the title sequence in a clip that is under 2 minutes, we can't take up time with transitions that would slow the order of events, such as dissolve or fade. Plus, because the plot of this "film" is one that revolves mainly around dialogue and the characters, we didn't think we would need transitions to actually help tell the story.

    But during this whole process, we decided to use the font Great Vibes or maybe Satisfy (on Google Docs), for our title, "The Hope of it All" which will be displayed over the sky at the very end.

    When it comes to the audio effects, as I have previously mentioned, we are going to have diegetic sound that we will have to edit into the opening such as the sound of Betty's alarm and her doorbell being rung. There is also going to be a voiceover, done by Tori as Betty, at the beginning of the opening and a song that plays in the background as well as one that plays at the very end when the title is being displayed. 

    As expected, editing this footage, with all the fix-ins, transitions, and effects we are trying to include, has proved to be a challenge, from what we understand from the problems that Melanie is facing and from how we try (and fail) to communicate our vision, you might say, to her. This hasn't taken too much time for her to do so far but I do also think the worst is yet to come. I would probably say that planning the editing process out a bit more thoroughly ahead of time would have helped this go a little smoother but this is a learning experience for all of us.