Preliminary Task - Post-Production

Once we had finished filming everything we needed, we headed to the media suite to start editing the footage together.

Converting Footage
Before we could even start editing, we had to convert all the footage to a different format in order to be able to edit it using Final Cut Pro. Using a program called MPEG Streamclip, we were able to convert the footage into 'Apple Pro Res 422 LT' format, a format that is easy to use in Final Cut Pro. This took quite a while for all the footage to convert as we had quite a lot, but once it was

Editing
When we first opened Final Cut Pro, the interface looked rather confusing, however once we found the basic tools such as the razor blade, it all started to make sense.

For our film, we wanted to have music in the background which we had burnt onto a CD, and from this we encountered our first problem. Their was no disk drive on the Mac that we were working on, so we had to use another Mac with a disk drive in order to copy the tracks from the CD to a memory stick. We edited the music in Final Cut Pro to be louder at certain points, however we had forgotten to save the music in the same file as our footage, so when we opened Final Cut Pro again, our music wouldn't work, meaning we had to edit the music again. However because we had already done it once, we knew what we wanted and when so we got it done a lot faster than first time round.

In parts of the film, we wanted to make the music a lot quieter so that we could hear the dialogue in the shot. We also wanted to make it louder during the record scratch, and the close up of Guinevere as we wanted to highlight that particular moment in the film,to make it even more memorable. We also made the music louder during an over-the-shoulder shot of Edward to show that he had zoned out of the conversation, and that to him, the music had drowned out Guinevere's voice.

I mostly enjoyed using Final Cut Pro, however there was one thing that became very annoying. As we had multiple layers of editing in our film, when we cut parts and added layers on top of each other, although you would only see one layer of footage, you heard the sound from all layers. It became confusing when we were trying to work out which layer the sound was coming from, so we had to mute layers to find out. However, once we had organised our timeline to only have parts we needed, it became much easier.

Once we had finished editing all of our footage and sound, we had to start letter-boxing. Although it was a simple process, it was annoying that we had to letter-box each individual shot, as it was very time consuming. Also, we had to reframe several of our shots, for example the close up of Guinevere as her eyes were cut out when we initially letter-boxed the shot. We also had to ensure we had the same framing for the same set up, for example the two shot, so that the film flowed, and didn't look jolty if the framing moved.

Effects and Filters
Fortunately, because we had finished ahead of the deadline, and we were able to do some colour grading of our edited footage. We decided to increase the red in our shots, similar to programmes such as 'Made in Chelsea', to connote the feeling of love and romance, but we also increased the blue in some of the shots to create a sense of foreboding, hinting to the viewer that something bad is going to happen. Once we had created the colour that we wanted in the shot, we created a template that could be dragged onto the same shot further on in the film to ensure that the same settings were used in all of the shots with the same set up.

Exporting
Finally, once we had finished editing and colour grading, we converted our film to QuickMovie, and then uploaded it to YouTube.