Post Production Blog

Introduction

I was in the production group working on 'Maladjustment', I wrote the script, partially directed, recorded and operated the boom mic. Every member of the production team then had to edit their own version of the film, we used Adobe Premiere cs3 to put the film together, colour correct and to add titles and credits. I used Adobe After Effects to apply special effects including replacing a mirror reflection, adding a fly and making a character appear to pass through a wall.

Organising the edit

In preparation for the edit I created a set of 'bins', these are essentially folders to store footage, soundtracks, titles and special effects, this meant when I went to put scenes together I had already selected the clips to put into those scenes, I named the 'bins' scene 1-8, soundtrack and special effects, this meant when it came to putting in special effects or applying a sound effect I wasn't searching through all my footage, which consisted of over 350 clips, I could instead just go into either the relevant scene 'bin' or soundtrack 'bin' and select the desired clip or sound, this process speeds up the editing process and creates a much more organised and professional looking edit.

Edit decision list

The edit decision list involves going through footage ans selecting footage that is suitable for use, reasons that footage may not be chosen can include poor framing, poor acting, lights or other equipment in shot, poor sound levels etc. The clips that are seen as unusable are then either put aside in a 'outtakes bin' or deleted.

Putting together the scenes

When putting together the scenes instead of creating on long sequence as my entire film I made a sequence for each scene, this allows modifications to be made within each scene. This makes the edit much tidier and makes the scenes more accessible as the sequences are much shorter and contain less clips. When the scenes are all put together correctly I made another sequence called master, this will contain all the other scenes sequences and act as the final edit, because I made sequences for each scene if i wanted to change anything I simply had to open up the desired scenes sequence and make changes in there, this would effect the master sequence.

During the edit

While I was editing i came across some problems, which were expected from a first production, most notable was a boom mic in shot, we had no other shot to use to replace this and so I had to try and hide it through editing.



This is the original clip, the boom mic is clearly in shot and is unusable, to fix this I had to find a point in the clip where the boom was least visible, i then cropped as seen on the left.






I put this cropped image on top of the clip which successfully covered the boom, the clip is now usable.





Colour correction and special effects

In my film i wanted to create a gritty feel which was not achieved through just lighting alone, I used a effect called fast colour correction, this gave me lots of freedom to change my film yet the interface was simple enough that i could easily reverse anything i didn't like, I also did a few special effects, the most time consuming and most believable effect was the mirror reflection replacement, this was done in after effects, I took my original clip of Jacob in the mirror, the camera couldn't move otherwise the effect wouldn't have been done, without moving the camera or tripod Fran stood in the same place Jacob had so her reflection was there, I then filmed her doing her actions. In after effects I stitched the 2 clips together so that Jacobs reflection was Frans, I used the pen tool to draw around Jacobs reflection and cut it out so that Frans can be seen beneath, I then applied my colour correction to the scene, I dropped the saturation, darkened the whites and pulled up the blacks to give the colour seen below.