Post 17 - Post-Production Report

Post-Production Report

The first step when editing was to capture and log our footage. We worked as a team here to be selective, and only capture the takes which we could potentially use and didn’t bother capturing the ones with disruptions or mistakes. We did this so that not as much disk space would be wasted on the computer.

Once this was complete, we started to edit the footage together using the software Adobe Premier Pro, making sure that each take was on the alternate Video/ Audio layer to avoid any mistakes. We began editing in chronological order, and so began by editing the two shots of Scene 1. When editing, we noticed that the framing was slightly off, and didn’t abide by the rule of thirds, and so we decided as a team to re-film this scene. Therefore, so that we didn’t waste any time, we moved onto editing Scene 2.

Scene 2 is one of our longest scenes and had the most takes collectively of all of our scenes. Therefore, this took the longest to edit together. We worked well as a team whilst editing as we were all making suggestions as to how the match-on-action could be improved, and we all took it in turns to edit. We did encounter one sound issue whilst editing Scene 2, as whilst we were filming we didn’t realise that the cleaners were working above us, and so some of their noises could be heard in the background in one shot, but not in another. Therefore, we had to use a section of ‘clean sound’ from another take to cover it up. Luckily, there was no dialogue in these two shots, and so masking the sound was successful.

We then revised our decision to edit in chronological order due to the need to re-film quite a few scenes and so to avoid wasting time, we decided to just edit the scenes as and when we had them to work as efficiently as possible. Therefore, the next scene which we had re-filmed and was ready to edit was Scene 6. I edited Scene 6, and fortunately didn’t really encounter any problems. Matching the action within the shot reverse-shot sequence was quite a challenge because whilst the actors were delivering their dialogue, they sometimes moved differently, and so I needed to be really careful to make sure that there were no match-on-action issues.

The next scene which we edited together was Scene 8. We encountered one small issue whilst editing this scene, as there was an extremely loud ‘bang’ when the changing room door shut. Working as a team, we quickly resolved this issue by editing the sound by first locking the Visual layers, and then lowering the sound levels at the point of which the door shuts in order to make it quieter. 

Next, we were about to edit Scene 10 but we noticed that there were framing issues, and so we decided to leave this scene, re-film it, and edit Scene 5 in the meantime. I edited Scene 5, and fortunately there weren’t any issues. This was the largest amount of varied shots which I had ever edited, and so I feel that my editing skills have improved significantly as I have learnt how to deal with editing a large amount of footage at once, and my accuracy and judgment skills have also improved as a result of editing all of the different shots together but with the same dialogue.

Once we had re-filmed Scenes 1 and 9, we then edited these. These are the two scenes which have a super imposed text message appear on screen, but we decided as a group to leave adding text until last with the Credits. Scene 1 didn’t very long to edit at all, as it consists of only two shots. At the opening of Scene 1, we added the effect of a cross-dissolve. We decided as a group to make the film ‘fade in’ as this flows nicely with our selected music, and I felt that having Scene 1 open with a hard cut would negate the soft guitar melody. The editing of Scene 9 was also fairly straight forward, as all of the shots are quite simple and there is no dialogue, as well as only on character’s action to match. It was instantly clear that the re-shoot of Scene 9 was much better than the first one, and we could really see how we had improved from first shoot by learning from our mistakes with framing and format.

Next, we edited together the two ‘football scenes;’ Scene 4 and Scene 7. We had to capture a lot of different footage for these scenes as we really wanted to track the action of the football as it was being passed around the players in their training session. These scenes have a lot of very short, only seconds long shots due to the fast-paced style of editing which we wanted to used for this to relfect the atmosphere of a football match. Once all of the shots had been put together, we then added a cross-dissolve to the end of Scene 4, to fade up to show James walking out of the changing rooms. We felt as a group that this was much more successful than a hard cut as it shows the jump in time to the audience a lot clearer.

The last scene which we edited was the re-filmed Scene 10. We made a group decision to remove the final shot of the camera tilting up to the sky for the end credits, and instead changed this to a 'pull focus' effect, so that the film fades to black. This was because when tilting we could never get a perfectly smooth tilt without a single wobble, and so we felt that the pull focus effect at the end would be much more successful. Additionally, we also felt that this would be more successful as our piece opens with a fade effect, and so we have now matched this transition with the fade out at the end.

We then added the text-message text in Scene 1 and Scene 9. We chose to use the font we did for the text message as it is clear to read, and resembles the type of text which would be displayed on a mobile phone screen, along with the messenager symbol which our target market would most likely be familiar with. We left the text on screen for the duration of 2 seconds, as this gives the auidence enough time to read the message clearly, without it being on screen for too long.

Finally, we added the opening sequence of the title of our film, ‘Status’ in the same font as our postcards, and mixed the audio tracks together.
When making the opening sequence, we changed the shots in time with the beats of the music to create a smooth transition, and we wanted to make the credits look realistic, and so we used our own names under the titles which we originally gave ourselves. However, during the production, pre-production and post-production we all chipped in and done our fair share of everything. For example, all of the group done some directing and put their opinions accross, all of the group had a chance to film some shots, and all of the group put their opinions accross regarding sound. Therefore, I feel that it is important to point out that the credits that we have all been given are not the only jobs which we all did.

To mix the tracks together, we first locked the visual layers, and then extended the audio layers by a few seconds on the alternating layers. We then edited the levels so that as one sound is faded out, another is faded in, which mixed the sounds from the two different shots, and creating a smooth transition with no sound continuity issues.