Imaging reality - Editing Week

Now that Filming Week is over we can finally start on the edit. I thought that this week would be a good redemption week for Adelaide as she was absent a lot during filming and I feel like this week is her time to shine as she was adamant from the start that she wants to edit.

To start off the week we were told by our documentary tutor to write up transcripts for the interviews we filmed. Not going to lie but this was a complete shock to me and I had no idea we were going to have to do it. As a group we got together and split the interviews between us in order to speed up the transcribing time. Following how we've been working in the pre production we set up a Google Document from which we could all transcribe our interviews into one space that we could all access in the future. For my transcribing I wanted what I wrote to be exactly as the contributor said so it'll be easier for us to pick out key quotes that we want to include in the film.

Small segment from my transcript

After a day of transcribing, Adelaide was able to move on to actually reviewing the footage and getting a very rough edit together. Adelaide kept very organised and ordered the footage into different folders of what the footage was n whether she found it to be usable or not. I thought this was great too keep organised as it streamlines the editing process. As myself and the rest of the group worked on blog posts adelaide was handling the edit. The agreed upon goal was for Adelaide to crate a rough arcing narrative and we and work out the smaller details in further cuts.

I think this cut was great at creating a generalized tone to the film and works a a strong base to build off of, I know that Adelaide went through the transcripts and looked for interesting clips from peoples interviews to work with and I think this cut is a strong start.

Our first social bump that we had as a team happened during this cut as Adelaide mentioned that she thought over half of the footage was unusable, this by its self wasn't that disruptive even thought it was a real hit to team moral seeming as we all worked very hard during filming week which Adelaide was barely at. The main problem with the the discussion we had was Adelaide presentation or at least how she came across over instant messaging. As a group we managed to sort through the miscommunication.

After this cut was developed We all gave feed back to Adelaide as a group as suggestions for aspects to change and add in. Adelaide then used this feedback along side her own creative freedom to create the next cut that we've all be calling the skeleton of the documentary as it perfects the narrative structure.

After this cut I watched it through and created a list of changes that I thought should be sorted in order to progress the film. I gave a lot of my points time-stamps in order to make it easier for Adelaide to find and carry out the changes.

Initially I had a section about the intro as I find it quite jarring and impact in a negative way, this is because it all just suddenly starts at once. I also added points about swapping the voice over and vox pop around to see if that would calm the intro. I also had point on the sound bridge over the title, I felt it ruined the impact of the title and buried it in sound. Then I moved onto my time-stampped notes.

Screenshot from my Ipad of the notes I wrote for the second cut 

I took these notes to the next meeting I had with Adelaide and the group and used them as a guideline to talk to Adelaide about my concerns with the documentary. We watched through the film together and I would pause it on each not and suggest ways to fix the section. She noted this down and said that she would be able to take all the notes and make all the changes.

The next day Adelaide sent the video above to our documentary instant message group chat and at first I was disappointed, mainly because she assured me that she would get the notes done, I realise that some of the notes couldn't be done without filming extra footage. This ended up leading into a small arguments that we manages to sort out the next day. I happy that we got to sort it out quickly and we ended up as a stronger team in the end. Because this edit wasn't as much of an improvement as I would have liked it to be we planned to out out filming the next day to get extra footage that we can use to bulk out the film and improve the introduction. After this filming session I had a one to one with Adelaide where I sat with her for a few hour to help edit. I really enjoyed doing this as I was able to communicate my ideas for the edit easier and I was able to construct the Introduction in a more successful way. Editing is my favourite part of the film making process So it was great to be able to partake in the editing itself rather then just telling Adelaide what to do.

This is our final edit before the final export, This edit is a combination of everything I did at the one  to one with Adelaide and some extra notes I gave her verbally. I think its is leagues better then the previous as it has more of a professional and finished feel to it, the only problem I have is there are some people missing from the credits and the ending song makes the documentary have a really depressing vibe at the end. For me this is a problem because the whole point of this task for me was to learn and I wanted to have fun doing it so I wanted the credits to leave the viewer feeling happy.

Overall I think the editing process went well, any disputes hat happened we managed to sort out as a group and I think this week has been a fine way to end off this project.