Final evaluation of editing skills throughout the year.
Throughout the year I feel that my editing skills have developed and improved by becoming more high quality and by being more appealing to the target audience. When looking at some of my very first productions to the last a clear improvement can be shown as I have started to experiment more with how I edit, and the techniques have become more noticeable and advanced.
When looking at my very first production of ‘City Waves’ a new wave film inspired by Wong Kar Wai some of the techniques were lacking as I hadn’t had chance to develop my skills and was still learning how to use different techniques. One of the techniques I hadn’t full developed while editing was being able to blend different audio channels and at parts the production had a clear cut in the audio when it changed from music to the voice over as it didn’t seamlessly blend together. However, one part of the editing I feel worked successfully was how I used a mixture of clips in colour and clips in black and white as having a strong contrast in colours to convey different emotions if extremely conventional of Hong Kong new wave films. This can be shown when there is a clip looking towards a shop front and the clip blends from colour to black and white as the audio says ‘And the sky is grey’ as it helps to connote feelings of sadness into the clip.
Another part of editing that I was able to improve from this first production to the last is being able to add a warp stabiliser to hand held clips to make them look more professional. In some clips such as where they are walking through the city / town are very shaky where as when making my music video with some walking clips I was able to add a warp stabiliser in order to look more professional and less confusing / difficult to watch for the audience.
As well as this another part of the editing for ‘City Waves’ that worked well was using the ability to edit on the beat of the audio of which I was able to continue for all of my productions such as my music video and promotional video. This worked well as it made the production seem more professional and made it much easier for the audience to follow as they knew that something would happen on the beat.
One of the editing techniques that I was better able to develop throughout the course was being able to experiment with colour for different productions following on from using black and white in ‘City Waves’ to using colour gels in the four hour film challenge and finally to using a colour overlay in my music video of the colours yellow and blue to connote either happiness or sadness. When using the coloured gels of purple and blue in the four-hour film challenge for ‘Possession’ the experimentation with this colour improved when it came to editing as the brightness was turned down it gave the clip a more effective look and allowed the colour to show through more. Although the colour turned out more purple it was able to better connote to the audience that this girl has an ambition of being liked by her peers.
Then when it came to using colour to experiment in my music video, I decided to just use a colour overlay and add in the colour during the editing process. I decided to do this as I felt that it gave the two scenes e.g. the past and the present and huge contrast in the emptions that was being portrayed. In one scene (the past) I wanted to connote happiness and did this by adding a yellow colour overlay as this colour has strong connotations of this emotion and allowed the audience to understand that the clips with a yellow overlay were positive and happy memoires for the protagonist. When it came to the second scene (the present) I decided to use a blue colour overlay as blue has strong connotations if sadness and isolation of which the protagonist is feeling in the present. These two colours worked well in being added in the editing process as it allowed me to show a strong contrast in the emotions of the scenes.
However, I skill I still needed to better develop when it came to my music video is the ability to blend clips together, for example in my music video when there was the mid shot of the protagonist walking up and the other protagonists hand reaching out to him even though she isn’t actually there. Although the scene was effective in showing to the audience that the girl is no longer there for whatever reason and may be perceived as a ‘ghost’ I feel that the editing could have worked a lot smoother. This is because when the colour overlay first changes from blue to yellow when the hand reaches in it blends so far then suddenly jumps to the yellow overlay. Although there is still a fade when this first starts, I feel that it could have been edited more smoothly like when the colour overlay fades back to blue.
* Sudden change from this to this.
A skill that I was able to use in editing throughout the year was the ability to edit on the beat of the soundtrack as I was able to do this from my first production to my last for my promotional video. Being able to edit on the beat meant that when the audience was watching the promotional video they were able to pay better attention to the video as it wasn’t confusing and meant that they were able to get the preferred meaning of the promotion video of ‘Puppy School Atherstone’ being a happy and friendly place to train and socialise as puppy.
Finally a big editing skill that I was able to develop throughout the year was being able to add writing onto the videos that were produced in order to allow the audience to understand what exactly the video is about and for the promotional video to allow the audience to know exactly what the puppy is doing and what things they are learning in puppy training. When adding writing to the text I was able to get them to fade onto and off the screen is a seamless way that the audience can easily follow and blended effectively.
Overall, I feel that throughout the year my editing skills have shown a great improvement allowing me to create more professional and effective productions that better appeal to an audience as they are more actively watching the production and are better engaged. All though some skills could still be better developed such as being able to blend clips together some skills are very effective and well developed such as adding a colour overlay in order to encode specific feeling into the production for the audience to decode.
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