Background/Objective
What makes any video look truly great? Answer, the editing. A great editor is esential for any video. The editing is like the puzzel to the whole thing. It is what sets apart a great movie from a mediocore movie. For this project I am focusing on the editing rather than the filming or the pre-production. I want to push the limits of my editing, to make something worthy of my portfolio.
The Process
Post-production starts off with one thing, orginizing all the file. Honestly, it’s a bore fest, but it is ecential to keep everything running smoothly. For this I start with creating five folders, project saves, footage, audio, graphics, and exports. Then I make sub folders under each of the main catagories. After this I open Davinci Resolve and set up the project. With in this I create bins for audio, footage, graphic, and timelines. With in the bins, I make sub-bins for each scene.
Up next is where the fun begins. After transferring footage to my SSD I can import it into the project. Transferring the footage took a like 30 – 45 mins after each shoot. This took a total of 6 hours. From there I got to start sifting through the footage for the best takes. I get to decide which takes flow the best. After all every take is different, so some bits from one take are better than from other takes. When I think that something looks good, I mark in and out points and drag it onto the timeline. This allows me to see how the clips work together. From there I can make small adjustments pushing the clips forwards or backwards a few frames until they run smoothly together. In total this took me around 20 hours.
After I sequenced enough scenes together I added them into a master timeline. From this I could make small adjustments until each of the scenes flowed together. I added things such as keyframes, transitions, and speed changes. With the key frames I did things such as resizing the images, adding in digital zooms, and digital pans. For transitions I added in cross-dissolves where needed, and speeding up whip- pans until they flowed correctly. I also had to fix cuts to time with the beat. This took me around 10 hours to complete.
The last things that I had to do were motion graphics, and color. The motion graphics involved overlaying text and images for the opening title and the end credits. One of my biggest challenges was a ghost fade that I took me forever to get rid of. I finally had to create two seperate compositions so they could counteract each other and make the correct fade into the beggining image. This took me 2 hours to complete.
Lastly I had to color everything. In my oppinion coloring is the best part of editing. It starts with my blasting some music, and opening up the color page in Davinci Resolve. I usually start with color corecting. This means making the image look normal. After I added a color grade. This gives the image it’s look (EX: The Matrix look). It took me quite a few hours to edit the color, because in addition to coloring I added in flares, halation, and masks. This gave my video the best possible look. In total I spent 14 hours making everything look perfect.
Throughout each stage I had to constantly get feedback from my director. I had to go back and change small details that he wanted and what the client wanted. Getting feedback is the most crucial part of editing because it is how I grow as an editor. I get to see where I am making mistakes, and how I can grow. In addition, we would talk for hours about how we thought the video would flow, and which segments to put together.
Below is a timelaps of me editing, and my time log.
Final Product- The Music Video (Text Me Back)
The final product is a music video called “Text Me Back” for a band named Good Ol Days. How I meet this group was through my director KC Tillitt. He was roomates with the band. He reached out to them and they said that they had a new song. The music video is being used as a way to drop the song to the public. Other than the band, our production crew, and the teachers at BYUI, no one has heard the song. Getting to meet the band and edit the music video was an honor, and a lot of fun.
What I Have Learn/Challenges
The hardest thing I had to do was the multi-cam for the last scene with the band. This was difficult because of how many times I had to restart. I had to change the entire thing about four times. In addition I had to fix minor adjustments on the multi-cam about 20 times.
In the end, I was able to fix the multi-cam and finish the video. I learned that editing is not just about the technical. It is also about the feeling. I learned this from how many times I had to make minor adjustments to the video. I learned that I also need to be good at taking criticism and feedback. As an editor it is my job to make the video come to life, which means I need to figure out what the director wants. I learned that even through all of the feedback I still love editing, and that I want to go into this line of work.