Hey there! Today my group and I moved on to the editing phase of our filming project. Before we began, we decided that we would mainly be focusing on acquiring both our dietetic and non-diegetic sounds and adjusting our clips to ensure that they were consistent throughout each scene. We also dabbled a bit in smoothing out transitions; however, that was not our primary focus at the time. Regarding the diegetic sound, we remained in agreement that we should use the chirping of cicadas during the panning that takes place in Scene 1, but we are still unsure of how to tie all of our sound elements together. I suggested that we have the cicada sound play during the panning as planned, but then have it gradually fade out as the dialogue and background music commences. On the topic of music, we decided that it would be best to work with instrumental versions of songs that we felt were either popular during the summer months or reminiscent of the summertime, so that the lyrics did not divert attention away from our product. During this step of our editing process, I focused mainly on finding popular, but relevant songs, and settled on the following as my top three choices for the video:
- "Heat Waves" by Glass Animals: This would relate to the commercial because it emphasizes how hot it is outside. Moreover, because it is a recognizable summer hit, even with its vocals removed, the audience may subconsciously connect the song to their own pleasant memories; thus, making promotion easier through positive association.
- "Gravity" by Brent Faiyaz and featuring Tyler, The Creator: The beat is slow and, as such, can represent a relaxing summer's day, one where the audience may feel at ease knowing they can drink a nice, cold Arizona Iced tea to cool down. On the other hand, it could also be used to underscore the length of a hot summer's day, being that the beat is long and drawn out. That, in turn, could potentially make the viewers crave an ice-cold beverage to quench their thirst.
- "Location" by Khalid: This song was quite popular a few years ago and I found it interesting that the title correlated so well with the ongoing skit playing out in our commercial, where a conversation concerning where our two subjects would like to go occurs. Moreover, the song has a simple melody, which means that it would be able to provide musical substance to our commercial without subtracting attention from the main product we wish to advertise.
After settling on a couple of songs each, I used two websites to begin working on converting YouTube video files to MP3 and then having them stripped clean of vocals. After that, I shifted my focus to combining our scenes in order and removing unnecessary parts that might cause us to go over our allotted film time. To do so, I essentially looked for areas where I believed that either the lack of action consumed too much time, or places where I found that the deduction of some seconds may eliminate choppiness within a scene. During that time, I also cropped the videos to all have similar dimensions and framed them according to what our storyboard laid out. Unfortunately, we were not able to stay true to the entire definition of a medium shot by filming our subjects from the waist up because we needed to guarantee that our main prop, our true subject rather, was still visible within the frame. However, all things considered, I still feel as though it met enough of the criteria in order to be considered a medium shot because it gave an equal presence to both the subjects and their surroundings.
All of my editing work was conducted iMovie as pictured below:
Overall, I would say that today we had a very productive session, sorting out a lot of the minor details so that we can focus on refining our commercial as a whole next class. Since I am having guests over for dinner, I feel like I should quote Anthony Hopkins and say the following, although I mean nothing of it as a double entendre as he intended: "I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner...Bye" (The Silence of the Lambs 1991).
No comments:
Post a Comment