Editing our film...

Having shot all of our footage the next step in the production process was editing. This would prove to be the longest and most challenging section of the process.  The editing process took us three weeks in total. The editing took place in the school’s Mac suite and to edit our films we used Final Cut Express on the Apple Mac. One reason the editing was so difficult was that we had very little knowledge of Final Cut when we started using it and it was quite complicated but as time went on and we got more used to the programme we found the editing quite easy and fun.
 Our first task when it came to editing was to sort through our raw footage and decide what clips we wanted to use. During the filming process we had taken well over a hundred so it took us a while to separate the useable clips from the not so good shots, mistakes and outtakes. Once this was done we had the upload our chosen clips on to the mac. With all the scenes uploaded we placed each scene into the timeline with a gap of about 20-30 seconds between each one to make them easier to work with, once we were done with one scene we would simply move onto the next. After the first week however we had only managed to successfully edit the first two scenes.  

During our second week of editing we began to look at adding sound effects and music to our film. We wanted to make sure that the sounds we used were as accurate at possible, for example if a character fired a gunshot indoors we would want a sound that mirrors that rather than a sound of a gun being fired outside. We also tried to match specific gun sounds to the model of gun we were using as a prop in order to make the film more realistic. An example of this is in the drug deal scene where Freeman uses a Colt model handgun to shoot the dealer and we sourced the sound of such a gun being fired. This made the process last slightly longer as we were very meticulous about the sounds we wanted but as you can see from the finished product our attention to detail really paid off. All our sounds and music were royalty free so we didn’t have to deal with copyright with the exception of one song. For the end credits of out film I chose to use the song Rainbirds (Instrumental) by professional recording artist Tom Waits as it really fits with the genre as well as the ending of our film. Since this song is not royalty free I had to seek permission from the publisher to use it. This led to me sending an email to Island Records, the company that published that song, although I received no response from them. It was also during this week that we recorded the two monologues we would use in out film. We also had to do some sound editing for the scene where Sylvia is talking to Rex on the phone. We wanted to make it sound as though Sylvia’s voice was actually coming through the other end of a phone line rather than it sounding like she was in the same room thus making it unrealistic. We achieved this by using a sound filter in Final Cut which gave us the desired effect.
 

 The third and final week of the editing process consisted of editing the last two scenes and putting the final touches to the film such as cutting scenes down for time, adding missing sound effects and adding credits to the beginning and ending of the film. We premiered our films on the Thursday which meant we had to have them finished and polished by Wednesday at the latest. This gave us three days on which to work on polishing off the final product.

Overall the editing process was long and arduous task but was without a doubt my favourite part of the entire production process due to the skills I learned and the fun I had putting the film together. I am incredibly impressed with how Daniel and I performed during this task and I am  very proud of our finished film.   

Final Cut Express on the Apple Mac. This was the programme we used for
editing our film noir.