Minor Project - Michael Reynolds Edit

During the minor project module I also helped out fellow student Michael Reynolds, edit his final piece for minor. Mic was working on a short horror film, trying to display horror tropes and what scares and builds suspense. He filmed all his shots and got all his footage done quite quick but wanted my help in editing the final piece, due to his lack of experience and knowledge in Avid and editing. I agreed to help him but with his minor work been how to create and build suspense and such, I was only there to assist with the collecting and editing of the piece, whereas Mic needed to make the cuts and let me know exactly what he wanted, I needed to stay creatively bias from his work.

Mic brought me all his footage and I imported it all on to the computer and then into Avid. Once I had gathered the footage in Avid we sat down and watched all the clips so I could know which were the ones he wanted to use and which were useless to his project. After we sorted out a folder with all the useable clips, I transcoded and consolidated and we began the edit process. Mic would tell me which clip and shot we wanted to use and whereabouts in the clip to cut before adding it to the timeline, we then carried this on until we built up a good rough cut of the edit, and played it back and then tightened it up. Certain areas of the video didn't go to as Mic had planned, and so he made changes and cut around bits to improve its quality and make it flow better, but overall the piece still achieved what he set out to do, and was a whole collective piece by the end.

Once the cut had been completed, their were certain effects and titles Mic wanted me to add to the footage before it was exported. We started off with fade transitions here and there throughout the whole video and added a title credit on the intro of the films title. For one of the clips in particular of the grim reaper, Mic wanted it speeded up so I used the motion effect editor to make the clip faster to the point Mic has happy with it. Other work I did on the project was adding and editing audio and sound effects in the piece, making sure it all synced up with the visuals and that it faded in and was to the correct audio level. I also used some superimposing effects over a ghost appearance scene to give the effect there was more ghosts and played a couple of similar clips over the top of each other which gave an interesting effect that Mic really liked. I also added end credits to the piece to finish it off before it was exported. Once the overall piece was to Mic's standards I exported the video and Mic was able to use it in his presentation and to hand in.