P5 : Editing The film

The first step of editing pineclones or any movie was to import all media and audio off the SD cards from the cameras and microphones used on to the editing software, which in this case was Final Cut Pro. The reason this is such a vital step is that it makes the job easier for the editor as he can watch the clip by just hovering the mouse over the clip and then also allow it to be cut into the section of the clip that they need. This speeds up the process of editing as it means they can find the clips they need quickly as well as not having to drag it onto the timeline and then edit the clip which may lead to confusion if others were to edit. Also by importing media onto the Mac and then Final Cut Pro meant that should someone accidentally format the SD card the clips would not be lost and finally if we were to edit the film directly off the SD card this could lead to the clips getting corrupted.

The next step in the editing process, was to insert the clips into the timeline this was done by dragging the clips we wanted on to the working timeline. Once the clips were in order and cut into place we then dragged on the audio files. As we were filming on the moors the built in mic on the camera would not be able to pick up all the dialogue so instead we used an external wireless mic, this meant more effort and time was going to be needed in the editing process but we took the risk as it meant clearer audio as well as less hassle of a wired mic when filming. To sync up the audio to the clips when recording I myself (Aalyan) clapped at the start of the clip so that when editing i can just line up the clap on the clip to that of the audio file. So that is exactly what we did when adding in the audio files. Thus leading to a much clearer sound than what was recorded through the camera.

Once all the clips and audio had been synced, cut and put into the correct order that the director wanted. We proceeded to the after effects, as pineclones is set in the late night / early hours of the morning there is limited to no sunlight. Thus meaning it would be incredibly difficult to film a movie in these lighting conditions as the shot would be left grainy and pix elated leading to  very poor quality. Thus leading to the director making the executive decision to film during the day, and then asking the editor to modify the clips to make it seem it was shot during night time. So when arriving to this problem we realised that Final Cut Pro had a feature called 'Day into Night' this allowed us to make the movie seem like it had been shot at night. The specific settings that we had set this feature to can be seen above. These properties of the feature had to be correct to meet the vision of the director so when doing this we sat down with the director and made sure that he was happy with the final colours of the movie.

The final step to our editing process was to add the finishing touches to the movie. We felt that the ending and credits had to transition smoothly to give the best viewing pleasure and to also leave a lasting effect on the viewer as well as coincide with the horror genre. This lead us to making a simple but effective credits scene, by just using a black screen with the blur effect, and the white font for the text.