Final Task: Comedy Editing

The Task

When we were first given this task, I was a little worried as I had been struggling slightly to edit on Avid for the past 2 films and wasn't sure how I would manage to edit this task in time for the deadline. As I wasn't in Sheffield over the Easter Holidays, I decided to start editing 'Out O' Date' as soon as I got back in the new term so that I gave myself enough time to get used to Avid's editing features. I am more confident editing on Premiere Pro but throughout this task I built up my confidence with the program and feel more comfortable than the beginning of the module.

Setting Up

I began with looking through all of the footage on the shared network so that I could choose which specific shots to import. I was aware that this would take a lot of time, due to the importing duration in the last 2 projects, but I found myself searching through folders of very similar footage with the slightest changes; either ruining the shots or making them the most suitable. As I was looking for footage to import, I accidentally got the brief wrong; thinking we had to edit 1.30-2 minutes of all of the footage. Although this mistake hadn't sank in when importing most of the footage from the whole film, I actually ended up familiarising myself with the whole story, which in the end helped with editing the chosen scene. I also took the time to rename all of the footage I had imported and when I was eventually ready to start editing, it began to sink in the confusion of my error.

                              

Before this realisation, I began by creating my bins for the rushes and first assembly, and changed the timecode from 01:00:00:00 to 10:00:00:00 in the general settings. The first shots that I began to edit were the opening scenes, as this seemed to me like the most suitable opening of the film. However, as I reached just over 1 minute of editing, I began to worry how I was expected to create a story with all of the footage under 2 minutes. I realised I had become confused with the brief and was back on track with the brief of editing one scene in the whole film. Luckily, by this point I had already edited most of the beginning scene and decided it would make sense to use this as my chosen edited scene. I also found the plot in this scene one of the more entertaining moments in the film. I enjoyed the end scene of the film but due to this being a comedy film, I felt it would seem more like a drama/romance if I focussed on that part.

I enjoyed editing this more than the other projects due to the light-hearted and entertaining feel so I was more comfortable experimenting with the editing of this piece. I felt the smooth crane shot from high up made the opening of the scene appropriate the begin the story with; as they are putting the sign up on the door.

Title
I was hoping to place the title in the right hand corner of this shot, where the sky is white, and eventually disappear when the camera has moved to focus on the sign. However, the more I experimented with this, none of the texts that I tried seemed to look appropriate so I changed the title to appear on it's own at the beginning.

Audio
When I watched the opening shots, I noticed there was no audio with it so found some atmospheric sound from other scenes used in this location. I am satisfied with the quiet and calm audio, with faint bird noises, to play along these shots as it is a relaxing way to begin the film as audiences are focussing on the actions occurring. At first I was keen to use some copyright free upbeat music, truthfully a typically comedic tune that spoof-type comedies use for introductions. However, the more I thought about this, the more I realised it would cause to film to seem stereotypical and possibly not taken seriously.

Conversations
This scene features various dialogue between characters and I wanted to capture the right moments between reverse shots in order to convey the comedic genre of the film. The first scene that audiences see both characters in the frame, Tony looks pleased with himself while Alf is looking disappointed and takes his 'disguise' off. The shot then changes to a close up of Tony's grin, to emphasise how proud he is; despite the obvious spelling errors. Then after another mid-shot of Alf angrily pointing out the mistake, I edited the dialogue into reverse shots with close ups of each character.

After this dialogue, I used a shot where a black car is seen driving up in the background and this shot then changes to the perspective from the car so that Alf and Tony are in the background of the frame. Unfortunately, when Jane is walking up to Alf the shot is out of focus slightly and I would have taken this out, as we were told to never use shots out of focus. However, when I tried to change the shot to the camera behind Jane, I didn't feel it looked suitable as it was a long shot that could become boring for the audience. I also saw the shot of Jane walking towards Alf as slightly out of focus in terms of her deliberately coming into focus as she makes her way closer. When Alf and Jane are talking, I used reverse shots again but I wanted to use footage where the camera was on the correct shoulder of the opposite character (diagonally placed on the other shoulder; e.g the right shoulder of each character). However the footage we were given didn't contain this so I had to use reverse shots where the camera is on the same side of both characters. Also, when Tony interrupts Jane's complaints by defending his sign I was going to have this as a close up of his face but felt it would be slightly more entertaining if it was a long shot. This is so it makes him seem like he is defending the flawed situation while holding tights in his hand and awkwardly speaking in the background.

In the final scenes when Jane rips down the sign after hurting Alf, I wanted to make the scene more interesting by having him featured bent over in pain in the foreground of the frame. As he is in pain, Jane is still seen throwing the sign at Tony in the background and this took a while for me to edit the correct timing when she throws the sign at him but eventually did it. Overall I found editing on Avid to gradually become easier as I worked with the specific tools but there are still certain ones that I struggle to figure out. I also wish the program had a 'split' tool that is in Premier Pro and I kept struggling to move/delete clips without messing up the rest of the timeline but I eventually dealt with these struggles to finish the edit.