Filmmaking- Editing (Think!)

When all the footage for our 16mm commercials came back I was extra interested in Think! to see how the quality turned out and if any special editing would be needed when it comes to post-production. I knew been the editor on this production that I needed to be ready and see any problems in advanced because time is precious in the edit suite. There were certain issues with the film footage for think such as certain shots having the camera cover in shot and having crew and extras in the frame which ruled some of these out for use in the final piece. I knew I could crop certain clips down to make them usable and I did for one clip specifically to remove some crew from the shot. Another issue I noticed and was prepared for was the noticeable weather change, It's very obvious the change in day and needed work and colour correction to cover up but still will not go by unnoticeable. 

I started in the edit suite by going through all the clips with Drew (Director) to see which ones he liked and which ones we thought were unusable. We narrowed down a nice collection and these would be the clips we would use to edit the final piece. Early on I wanted to get the special effects and graphics out of the way so I started there and began working in Adobe After Effects on the opening shot. What needed doing was to place the Think! logo and the giant white wall in shot which the character walks along, I found the highest quality and most updated version of the Think! logo and with some YouTube tutorials, forum advice and some guidance from Lee, was able to use a tracking effect and some image stabilizer to get the image to follow the wall and not move with the camera. It tracks a specific point and stays with that at all time, so even when the actor walks or the camera pans, the image stays in one spot. This took numerous attempts and goes to get this right and it still isn't quite perfect, but me and Drew are both satisfied and comfortable that it blends in and serves it's purpose. 

The other effects that needed adding to certain clips were the text message designs that pop up throughout the advert, as he's texting his girlfriend while he walks. This meant that only in certain clips would be need the text bubbles to pop up. Drew had pre-designed these graphics and had them available for me to use. We carefully selected the clips that would need the text bubbles added to them and opened them again in Adobe After Effects. Once importing the graphics, it was a matter of keyframing text bubbles to follow the phone as our actor walks and increasingly get larger and then smaller and fade out of the screen. I had done similar effects before in college so moving and changing the opacity of the graphic was simple enough to complete. 

We added some text to play on the last shot with our tag line to end the advert and I used the tools in Avid to resize certain clips by cutting off the edges either horizontally or vertically with the re-size effect. The biggest effect that needed to be applied was colour correction, to all the clips to give it a consistent look. This was one of my biggest worries because in my experience I've never been able to make colour correction look correct or work, it always seems fake to me. I've seen instances where people have improved their work by using it but I can't quite get the same effect. We started experimenting with the colour correction tool in Avid and managed to find some common ground in the clips and find a colour effect that both adds to the sunny clips and the rainy clips. It is still noticeable the change and weather and if we had more time before the deadline, i'd spend it all on colour correction but Drew is satisfied that this is the best we can do for the moment, likewise am I. The overall cutting and editing process went smoothly apart from a few shots that we found hard to match up because of continuity issues but we were able to edit around it, not perfectly but enough to hide the mistakes that it doesn't ruin your experience of the advert. We added sound effect for some of the guns and also some copyright free music for the intense shootout scene, the rest was Jamie's (Sound Op) foley work and a third party that John (Producer) got in to beatbox over the final edit. Overall I'm happy with the result of the edit, I believe we salvaged everything that was of good quality and improved and made work the clips for the edit, I know and understand the certain improvements that can be made and mistakes that we could correct next time, but I find the piece to be an enjoyable little advert that works well.