When I initially received the test shoot footage from Harrison, I was concerned that the colours looked muted and unrealistic. He said I would need to colour correct each clip individually which felt intimidating as I had never done that before; however after doing research on YouTube I discovered quick and easy ways to make adjustments to the exposure and saturation etc. I originally wanted to have the first two scenes in black and white film, to reflect her depression and anxiety, and then the final scene in colour, to reflect her freedom and grown confidence; however I realised this was too cliche and obvious. I also felt the black and white footage would not give me the opportunity to express my makeup and styling ability as I would feel limited. I therefore decided to keep the colouring of my film predominantly neutral and dark, but still allow me to add colour as emphasis, for example, the red around She's tired eyes.
I was already confident with many aspects of editing, including fading and blending footage, synchronising music and cutting clips to size. However during this process I learnt many new techniques, including how to make the footage shake, blending additional layers over my footage to create effects like electrical disturbance, adding credits and how to zoom in. I found YouTube tutorials extremely helpful when discovering new techniques. However, I found it frustrating when some tutorials only worked if you purchased their packages, as I was not willing to do this. I enjoyed researching methods and found I was able to implement these new skills within my own footage successfully and efficiently.
There were a couple of effects I wanted to include which did not have tutorials, so I booked a tutorial with Ken Stuart. He gave me footage of electrical interference that I would have to add sound effects to, which I was able to layer over my footage to create my desired effect. This is an example of the type of package I would have had to purchase from a business providing tutorials online for Premiere Pro. To create masks around a moving subject we studied an online tutorial together and my third query, achieving a more subtle shake on the screen, was unfortunately outside the abilities of the Premiere Pro programme.
An aspect of editing I particularly enjoyed was combining the music and sound effects I had created with the footage, especially the sound effects in scene 2, where they emphasise She's movement. I found it extremely rewarding to synchronise my model's movement to the accuracy of 0.01 of a second as I wanted to make them visually as realistic as possible and discovered that even 0.01 of a second could make a real difference to the final outcome. When I first edited my original footage, I was pleased with the story I had created, but it was exciting to see the film develop by adding both sound and visual effects; it was very rewarding to see so many small adjustments work together to bring atmosphere and drama to the footage. For example, I thought adding the sound effect of electrical interference throughout my film was very effective in adding atmosphere, but adding shaking visuals as well emphasised the effect even further.
On a few occasions when I was editing on Premiere Pro it seemed to suddenly shut down and lose my work which was extremely frustrating! Thankfully Premiere Pro automatically saves your work periodically so I never lost all my work, but I lost edits I had been working on for the past 30 mins to an hour, which was demotivating. I was particularly worried because I was unsure why this was happening, so I just had to make sure I kept saving my work so I did not lose anything when it happened again. Another thing I found frustrating was that I couldn't keep my footage on an external hard drive because when I unplugged it, the programme would not be able to film the clips and would therefore not work. This meant I had to keep all the footage in specific folders and I could not move them from their location. This was frustrating because I did not have enough storage on my laptop to keep importing more footage; I therefore had to move the majority of my other work to an external hard drive.
Editing was one of the challenges of my project I found most enjoyable and rewarding. It was a time when I saw all aspects of my film, including lighting, makeup, model movement and sound effects, all work together cohesively to produce an outcome derived from months of planning and experimentation. I was delighted that my editing turned out successfully and how I had envisaged, as I felt it was vital in producing a professional and effective outcome. I enjoyed it so much that I am now considering applying to do a Masters in Film and have already been offered work experience in this field. I am grateful that this opportunity to edit my film has led me to pursue a possible career path that had not previously been obvious to me.
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