Production Blog: Inch By Inch, Editing in Increments

    Hello! Today marked our second to last day of editing (our last will be when we finalize changes with the critiques we receive) and it definitely was a doozy. I started off by editing in all of our short film titles. I talked it over with my fellow groupmates and we decided that it would be best to utilize an alarm clock font that I had come across online (very fitting, I know), and to have the titles each fade in and out acting as a parallel to the subject’s unreliable memory. I have inserted a sample image of the font we chose below. We chose white to be our font color, which may seem a bit counterintuitive given that it is such a light hue. However, upon considering that it not only matches the actual color of the clock’s own display, as well as the fact that I made certain to place each title in a visible part of the screen, it seemed to be the best choice.

    After I got all of the titles edited in, I moved on to incorporating all of the new clips I had gotten from yesterday’s filming session. I shortened them and put them in the correct order, which proved to be a relatively straightforward task. When it came to adding in the scores created by my fellow teammate, however, it proved to be a bit of a challenge. I needed to make sure that they came in at just the right time and left the scene just as smoothly. I also needed to lengthen the audios a bit and reupload new remastered copies of them. From there, using the audio editing capabilities of DaVinci Resolve 18 to my advantage, I simply used a slider to change the volume level and worked from there. On the topic of audio, when working to produce the sound effect of the subject’s partner hitting her head, we employed foley sound by having our subject bang their fist into the wall. This audio sound byte is what I then inserted into my editing software and reconfigured with the help of the foley sampler option.

    The rest of the changes that I made during editing were purely cosmetic. I began by having the seven in the time seven twenty-four appear to be darkened once the time changed so that the title of our film is clearly displayed. I was able to achieve this effect by using the paint and masking tools on DaVinci Resolve 18 and tracking them frame by frame to the moving clip, as shown below.

    Aside from that, I also worked on blurring the surroundings of the television so that any photos my team and I were not allowed to move could be obscured. Additionally, I also took care to cover the PowerPoint options that had appeared on the television screen in the final scene, seeing as I had used that program to create the news segment. I was able to do so using the same technique I mentioned prior when working on the film’s title.

    All in all, today’s editing session was not the shortest, but definitely the most valuable. This time around I truly believe that audio was my biggest hurdle, so being able to overcome that obstacle and create a worthwhile film is definitely something I’m looking forward. I've come to understand that "Nothing's impossible (!)" (Depeche Mode, 2005).