Editing Process

To edit our opening sequence we used Adobe Premiere Pro CC. To begin with I sat down and reviewed all the footage we shot on the day and pulled the shots we thought looked the best onto the timeline in a rough order. Normally you would keep the rushes in the bins and then just rename them to what they are and the shot type, but because i only had a short time to edit we had to do it this way instead. I split the clips up along the timeline into two groups, all the footage inside the van and all the footage outside. This made it much easier to find the clips I needed to start creating a sequence.

I then started clipping shots to the correct length and piecing them together to create a rough cut. At this stage I wasn't focusing on sound and mainly trying to just get the correct shots and would focus on sound when we finished the video sequence. I did keep the sound linked to the clips so when it came to editing the sound it made it much easier to trim or extend sound we needed that the camera mic picked up. The first  One of the tools i used to slowly fade into the first shot was a cross dissolve, I did this because I wanted the sequence to start of slowly rather than it kicking of straight away. I also had to reposition some shots because I wanted to have a close up of our main character but all the footage we had was mid shots so I used the motion tool to scale in and create a close up. When creating the sequence it was important to remember to place each clip alternately along V1 and V2 to keep the sequence organised and easier to pick errors out.

When the first rough cut for the video was done I went through to see if any changes needed to be made to the cut, this allowed me to revaluate what I have cut and see what didn't look right. The second cut changed a lot, for instance we decided that the action sequence needed to be faster cut and more intense so the shots became much shorter and hectic. A way that helped make the action much faster was cutting mid movement, this also makes the film run smoother.

After finishing the final cut for video it was time to start work on the audio. What I did first was to go through the current sound linked to the clips and unlink them so i could cut them without cutting the video as well. I cut out all the sound from the camera mic that was not needed such as directions and unwanted background noise. From the picture above you can see all the dark blue is the audio that I reorganised and cut down to stuff that we could leave in the final product.

Once that was done it was time to start finding some sound effects to really enhance the atmosphere we were trying to create. To begin with I search through the sound effects they had on the computer and picked out the best ones of what we needed a placed them roughly were we thought they would go in comparison to the video, you can see these on the left in green. After doing this it was time to start making the audio sound more realistic, first the van engine noise sounded way to sporty and loud so we turned it down by turning down the volume level to -15db which is what we worked out was a good level from inside the car. Next we had to make it sound less sporty and give it more bass, to do this I had to add an audio effect and equalize the sound. I also added some constant gain so when sound needed to merge together it didn't sound so sudden and slowly faded in and out.

Last of all it was time to add in the titles which was a quick job and wasn't to difficult to do. To do this you would go to the top tab and click title then insert still title, this then brings up a title tab and allows you to reposition, resize and do much more. All I had to do was add a few titles of peoples names and place them on the timeline in a good place and make sure they don't cover the action. To finish of I added a letterbox to make it more cinematic which you also drag down to the timeline.