Questions an editor should ask themselves while cutting a scene

Today in Kylie's lesson, she set us up into pairs in order to complete this task. Me and Elesha worked together and we had to write down questions an editor should ask themselves while they are cutting a scene.

Here's a list of the questions that we came up with:

1. Am I telling the story from the right point of view?
2. How does the scene impact the plot? If I cut, would it matter?
3. What's the goal, the intense? What's the main plot?
4. Do I help provide context for my readers?
5. What does this bring to the story?
6. Emotions What’s the mood of the scene? Thinking of audience response.

After coming up with few questions, Kylie showed us what she had written down:

Question List 

1. What is the emotional tone of the scene? Would it be appropriate to the emotion of the scene to cut now?

2. Does this cut advance the story? Add new relevant information?

3. Is the pace of the cut appropriate for the rhythm? Is this rhythm interesting?

4. What is the audience focal point? Do I need to match movement in the frame?

5. Is the eye line or stage line of the characters on screen correct to cut with the next /previous shot?

6. Does the cut reflect the three dimensional space? Does it provide a correct sense of perspective within the location?

Our next task was then to pick a scene from any film we wanted to and screenshot, write down then explain to the class why we think the editor has cut to this point, why they done this etc.

We chosen to watch Jurassic World and the scene I chose to show in front of the class is the end scene of the fight of the T-Rex and I-Rex. The reason I have chose the scene because I find it amazing to watch and the editing done on it is brilliant and there's loads to talk about on why they have done that.

Here is the shots we screenshotted and what we wrote about them and told the class.

I enjoyed this lesson today as it helped me think more for when I come to editing my films.

Titling for News Report

Titling for News Report

I found this pretty hard to do as I'm not used to After Effects. After 100 turns of making a title, it turned out ok but I think it could be better and this is what I need to take on board with me next time in order to learn for next year if I need to use it or do it again.

I watched a few You Tube videos online and I struggled to keep up with them but at the end I managed to get something out of it.

I started to create a red sold and compressed it in a long rectangular shape and place it in the bottom left corner. I then dragged it out of the shot, positioned it, stopwatched and pulled it back into shot for it to look realistic coming across the bottom screen like you see on the BBC news etc.

I then wrote the text on to of the rectangular shape of the name of the reporter in my groups news report and underneath I will have 'reporter' as when the audience watch this, they will know who they are watching on screen.

I went onto Google images and got an news logo to stick next to the name to make it all look realistic like a proper news report. Here are my final results of titling.

As I said, I found doing the titling a bit difficult to do but I'm happy on the way it turned out but I could of done a lot better. My aim for next time is to practice more and ask for help to me become better at doing this.

Experimenting new ideas for News Report

New Idea - Spinning Globe

For my final edit of the news report, I wanted to do something different that I haven't been taught in lesson with Adam to try it out and put it in.

My idea was to have at the beginning of the news report before the anchor comes on to talk, to have a spinning globe with music playing in the background to make it look a bit more realistic.

In order to create this, I spent time online researching and then came across a step by step guide on You Tube on how to create it. My first general thoughts were that it was going to be hard to make but overall in my opinion it was pretty easy to make which I was happy about and the results.

I firstly got an image of Google of the world and started to create it on After Effects. I then clicked on effect > perspective > CC Sphere to make the image into a sphere shape making it look like the globe.

I then started to play around with the rotations to make it move around in a circle for the opening title.

Final I just put a text underneath the globe to make it realistic like a news report followed by music for the opening.

I enjoyed making this as it was something new, different and creative. Not knowing before about this, it now has given me ideas of what I can make and do with it when it comes to projects in the future.

My Edit of Green Screen for News Report

Green Screen

When we made our News Report, at the beginning for the Anchor part we had a green screen in the background because when we come to editing, we will need to place a background of a news studio like we see on TV.  Here are some shots of the filming we took for our News Report with the Green Screen behind.

Before I started doing anything with the green screen, I noticed on the top right hand corner shows the bit of the lights that we used in the studio is in shot. I went onto After Effects and simply cropped the light out because it can affect when I make the green screen and become very noticeable.

During one of Adam's lessons, he taught us how to place the background on the green screen and he gave us a step by step plan to help us. I basically followed the instructions to get through this. I firstly went on keylight because it helps to fix and faulty problem with the green screen footage and also get's rid of noise. 

Once I was happy with the keylight, I then basically went and got my studio background from Google Images and placed it on to make it look like a real News Report Studio.

I am very happy with how the background turned out and it makes it look realistic like your actually watching a news report live. I am also happy as well that we have gone over green screen and Adam showing me how to edit and place a background picture on. This is very useful and very important to know for the future for upcoming projects in year 2 and 3 as we will be doing more green screen and also I can have fun with and make up things the practice along the way to become better at it and experiment new things.

Final Edit - News Report

Final Edit

In my honest opinion, I enjoyed making this film while in studio and on location but I didn't enjoy the editing part. I have had so many problems trying to edit this film with the green screen and also the titling. As I'm not used to After Effects or Premier Pro, it took me a while to figure out everything and the things that I wanted to create. In the end, I slowly followed the step by step plan Adam gave us and also a You Tube tutorial on how to get the background on the green screen and make the titles flow across on the bottom like in a proper news report. I am happy on the way my final edit as turned out as there was a lot of stuff to take in and some stuff were bit complicated, but I managed to get over it and ended up with a result that I am happy with. 

I will take all this information with me as next year in year 2 and year 3, we will be be doing more green screen work so it was very useful to get to know of how to do it. This has definitely developed my skills using After Effects and Premier Pro.

Due to blogger not letting my upload my video, it will be available on my memory stick. Here are some still shots from my film.

Keying Process

Keying for Green Screen

Not knowing at the start when Adam introduced us to what Keying is for Green Screen, I was very confused on what it meant and what you actually do with it but when Adam went over it with me it makes more sense which has helped me a lot to understand more about it and why it's important.

Keying is basically helping you fix faulty problems with you videos or your green screen when it comes to editing. When I started to edit the green screen shots, I firstly went to Keying > keylight (1.2) to start. 

From watching tutorials on You Tube to help me, I clicked on Screen colour eye drop then clicked on my video and it made the background go black instead of green. The reason why I have done this is because as you can see from the picture below, there's quite a lot of noise shown so my job is to get rid of that.

After I have done that, I then bumped up the screen gain to make the noise disappear and to make sure that my background now is completely black. In order to know if the noise has gone, I went and changed my view and clicked on 'scale' instead of 'final view' as there shows the amount of noise that I need to get rid of.

Finally, I went onto Screen Matte and started to decrease the white area to get it perfectly keyed. The picture below now shows that there is no noise at all in my video clip and that I'm now ready to edit to put the background on the green screen.

Learning and knowing now what keying is has definitely helped me as I can see so much improvements made on the clip now and hardly no noise shown. This is very useful to use all time when I do more green screen in the future.

Final Edit - Two Way Conversation

Final Edit

While editing this, I found is easy and quite difficult at the same time. The reason why I found this difficult is because some shots don't go together and there some obvious parts where you can see that some don't work. I found it easy as I stuck to following the camera and sound paperworks to find the correct shots and sounds to use to edit this film. If I had more time, I would of looked into further more things to change such as the colour grading, transitions and probably more sounds to add the effect to it. 

Overall, I enjoyed making this film with my group as it has a good story line but the editing was ok but for next time, I know I should make time and look further into more things to add on.

Due to blogger not uploading my video, it will be available on my memory stick to watch.

Here are some stills from the film.