Editing Blog: The "Key" to Success

    Welcome! Today we decided to begin working on phase one of the editing process for our music video, which we executed entirely on my laptop for organization's sake. As you may recall, my previous blog mentioned that we had completed filming a little under half of our total scenes, so it may strike you as odd that we've chosen to start editing so early on. However, to me at least, the production process is like cooking, you clean up as you work to save time later on for smaller final touches to be put into place. With regards to our editing session today, I found it to be quite helpful being that we were able to overlay our song onto our video, after having converted it from a Youtube video file to an MP3 of course, allowing us to gain a rough idea of where we fall with our current pacing and look for scenes that we could afford to allocate extra time on once we take on filming again. Prior to doing so, I made sure to mute each of our clips so that our nondiegetic music would be able to play over each scene without interference from external sounds that could distract our audience. Likewise, I was also able to set the stage for future editing by making sure that I could easily superimpose sound effects, such as the slamming of a car door, without having to go through the hassle of arranging the scenes and music in the correct order again. In doing so, we were also able to adjust the timings of each clip so that each cut and blink was on beat. That, in turn, makes our video more aesthetically pleasing as it will simultaneously engage our audience both visually and auditorily. Having said that, I also worked alongside my groupmates to make our transitions smoother by shortening some of our clips to have each scene flow smoothly together. This became especially important when it came to our action match cut and cutaways as we wanted to ensure that we did not confuse our audience, so that they could easily follow along with the plot. During filming, we chose to shoot some scenes multiple times in the case that we ever needed a clip of equal quality to use as a backup when attempting to remain within our tight time constraints. As we edited today, it became apparent that we had made the right decision in choosing to do so. When it came down to the final scene we revised today, the closing of a car door, we needed it to work as an action match cut, meaning that the action within the scene needed to follow through on the previous action of the scene which proceeded it, which in this case was the shutting of our subject's front door. By using a clip in which we quickly slammed the car door shut, we were able to a seamless transition between the two scenes.

For the time being, the editing work we've conducted has been restricted to ClipChamp due to my familiarity with the platform, which is displayed below, but I do plan to branch out and experiment with other online editing applications, such as DaVinci Resolve 17, if time permits.

To end things off for today, I would like to acknowledge the fact that we were able to accomplish a great deal of work today and that our performance on this project thus far has seriously surpassed my expectations. I can admit that there is still room for improvement, but we've certainly come a long way from our commercial and I cannot wait to see what our final product ends up looking like! With that said, I can find no better way to close things off than by saying that I "Always had high, high hopes..." (Panic! At The Disco 2018).