Scene 34 & 37

We were given rushes for two scenes 34 and 37 to edit. The first scene i worked on editing was scene 34.
The first thing i did before even opening a timeline on final cut was to read through the script pages for both scenes a number of times. This was in order to get an understanding and a clear perception of the scenes in my mind in order to visualise an edit layout in head. The next step i went about doing was looking through each parts of the footage carefully, noting down the best takes and creating a rough edit decision list. I did this for both of the edits so i would make it easier for my self when editing the footage together.


I started with my initial rough cut, focusing on getting the shots together making sure the pace between shots was there and that the narrative flowed.

I made sure when editing both scene 34 and 37 that my edits applied to the rule of six.
Now this is the six forms of criteria that editing is broken down into.

This can be found in The Conversations and the art of editing film by Walter Murch & Michael Ondaatje

The edit is broken down into six pieces

Emotion 51%  - the cut is true to the emotion of the moment
Story 23%  - The cut advances the story
Rhythm/pace 10% - The cut maintains a rhythm
Eye Trace 7%  - What the audience should be focusing on
2D Plane 5% - So we know where we are looking, 180 degree rule
3D space 4%  - Continuity of the actual space

Persevere the emotion of the scene. If you have to sacrifice any of the rules, go from the bottom up.


So with the rule of six in mind i applied this to both my edits



First Scene 34.

Emotion. Within the scene we can see that the female is there to spy on a couple, using the male as a decoy so she remains unknown. What we see by the emotion within the scene is from the connection between both the male and female character, and their dialogue between one and other. I kept in certain facial expression to show reactions to dialogue which is said. For example when the male says the line "I'm a shoulder to cry on" the female tilts her head and raising her eyebrows suggesting that she might need his shoulder to cry on. This then sparks the next piece of dialogue, purely from her facial reaction, "Not you, i hardly know you", progression of emotion adds to the progression of character development and story.


Story. The story to this film is that the female who is a private investigator is hired to spy on a couple by her employer. In this scene we can see that the male and female characters are at the beach because the couple is there.  Now this also links in with eye trace. When the female gets her camera out, due to spotting the couple, she begins took take pictures of what would look like, to surrounding people, of the male.

We can clearly see in the audiences perspective that she is focusing on the couple. This is set up in 3 parts. The first wide shot establishing that the couple are in the back ground and that our characters in the foreground have spotted them.






The next shot we can see that she is clearly taking pictures with the camera aimed in the direction of the couple.










 Finally is the revealing shot which we then see her camera is focusing on the couple. Allowing the audience to focus on what is happening within the story in order to advance it.







The pace is set in this sequence between the exchange of dialogue of  both the characters.
This allows time to show the impact of the conversation on both the characters, by seeing little micro expressions and reactions to what has been said, advancing character development adding to the story.

Second Scene 37





Scene 37 takes place later on in the story. So by this point we know that the P.I. is still following the couple.

The following shots show both a progression of story and emotion between the characters.

 We can see here that the P.I. is in this location not by coincidence but for spying. We can see this by her eye line, that she is looking right at the direction of the couple while remaining inconspicuous.
The emotion the derives from this sequence is when we see the woman spot the P.I. and she recognises her face.  This is tension begins to raise in the scene as we as a viewer see that she begins to suspect who the P.I. is, therefore engaging the audience.

The tension rises between them until the P.I. gets herself out of danger by spotting a friend of hers. This is where the tension builds more as we now know the she suspects her.


Later on in the scene we can see that the P.I. is being closely watched in the distance while in the diversion. This is where the eye trace comes into play.

This first shot extends the tension as we see that she knows that she is being watched.

We then cut to the second shot showing the women behind her pretending to look away. This allows the audience to follow her eye line from the first shot into the second in order to know why she is glancing behind her.







Now during both of these edits i came across an issue which was the audio. Because of the quality of the audio it added more time to the editing, perfecting it in order for the video to be to at a standard that the audience would except. Now the issue was that the audio in scene 34 was poor, this was from the microphone being knocked creating a rumble noise, the intensity of the wind on the microphone made the dialogue hard to hear and the audio levels fluctuated between each shot.

The audio for the dialogue in scene 37 was a lot better as it was a lot clearer and the audio levels flowed.

If i had the chance to do both these edits again i would spend a lot more time in soundtrack pro, fixing the audio making sure that it flowed between each shot. The dialogue from the audio counts towards the percentage of the emotion as it is an audible embodiment to the visuals.

Colour Grading

Colour Grading is the technique in editing by changing the colour of your shot to either alter or give effect to the scene.

Now this can be done in a number of different ways, for example boosting or lowering your contrast or hue depending on the conditions of your shots, changing the colour temperature to give the image more warmth and depth. The are many softwares that you can use to colour grade. Final cut has a basic form of 3 way colour correction. Along in the final cut package is the software Colour, where you can import your timeline from final cut and grade it from there, but the software i personally like to use is Magic Bullet looks. Now the reason i use this over final cut or Colour is it has more variety and more tools for grading.

In our colour grading tutorial, i used magic bullet looks to grade my scene 34 edit. The colour in the original footage was way off between the shot of Catherine and the male escort.

Now in the original edit the sea in the background was very white. I lowered down the hue and increased the gain to a more blue look to make the sea look more real than out of place.






The male's face in the original shot was very orange. Now this can be caused to the wrong setting of the white balance when filming. To adjust it to a more flesh looking colour i altered the curves on both the highlights and the hue until the image looked more real in colour. When i was finished with this shot, i then went through matching up the colour for Catherine's shots.



I then went through wide shots of the location making sure that the colour of the sea matched the dialogue shots.

I think of an edit in three parts in order for it to be successful and work for the viewing public. The first part is the visual image and the composition of the scene,  you look at a film like Drive and this achieved highly with composition compared to a film compared to a film like Batman And Robin. Second is sound, the audience wont mind if your image is bad if your sound is good, if your sound is bad however, you will loose connection with your audience. Thirdly is Colour grading. The audience will able to tell if your shots don't look the same in colour and will be taken away by it.

Example Montage Hot Fuzz Opening Sequence

A montage is a series of images or clips cut together in a quick or rapid succession.

The example that is shown above is from the opening sequence of Hot Fuzz directed by Edgar Wright.

The sequence is used as a way to set up Simon Pegg's character in a quick way to the audience so they have all the relevant information about him before the story begins to unravel.


The pace of the sequence starts off slow as we see Simon Pegg progress closer down the hallway to the camera, increasing the atmosphere of the scene for the audience.

 The pace of the scene changes rapidly from a slow pace to a quick succession of shots after we have established who the figure walking down the hallway is and then knowing his name.

Within the montage itself are a number of unique cutting methods that Edgar Wright used to cut from one shot to the next in a stylistic way.

For example
Here we start off with a shot of Pegg talking with two elderly women.

 The shot is then distorted by someone walking in front of the camera.

We then see that the image has change now to Pegg talking in a different location to tow chinese pedestrians.





Notice how in the first shot you have a band stand in the background, and in the second shot there is architecture similar to it. This is a very subtle way of keeping the shot look the same but moved to a different area.
This way off cutting is by using the environment around you as a cutting point making the image and the cut feel more alive.

Edgar Wight is non for his quick cuts which have been used in this montage. Two more examples.

Shaun of the dead




Here the quick cuts are used to show the progression of Shaun's routine as he gets himself ready for work, by rapidly cutting recognisable images together to show progression in a fact pace, moving the story forward.



Here the quick cuts are used to show Scott getting himself ready, similar to Shaun of the dead. However the quick cuts are brought to an abrupt holt when we see scott tighten his shoe laces.
Tying shoe laces is a common chore that takes up the best of 10 - 20 seconds of our time, the editor used this to the advantage of adding humour to the cut by dragging out this shot, which as soon as he is finished tying the rapid succession of shots continues.

Each of these videos shown are a form of montage. Used in the case of progressing the story within a short period of time.

The Dark knight Linear Editing

Linear Editing of The Dark Knight

Now there are two ways in the order to tell your story. In a linear and non linear fashion. 

Linear. This is when the events that are occurring in the scene are happing at the same time in the story. They can be used to increase tension like in the case of the Dark Knight or to unveil a new part to the story or plot. 

Non linear is where the story's events flow out of order or in reverse. A great example of Non linear editing of a story's events flowing in reverse order is Memento, like Dark Knight directed by Christopher Nolan.

This prime example of non linear editing goes for the entire film. The start of the film is intialy the end and the end is the beginning, the whole way through from start to end the film is working backwards in a non linear fashion.


Now for Dark Knight




This scene takes place 44 minutes into the film. In the scene we as an audience are told that the Joker has targeted 3 of the films Characters. Judge Serillo, Commissioner Loeb and Harvey Dent. Now by us as an audience knowing this piece of information it creates suspense and tension. This is where the linear fashion of the scene begins to play. The scene takes place in 3 different locations showing all the targeted characters, the pace of the scene is established between cutting back and forth from each location and character. This quickly establishes the whole purpose of this scene and the reason for the Linear editing, to show to the audience that all of what we are seeing is happening at the same time. This adds more suspense to the story, incidentally adding more of a meaning to the audience of how much that the Joker can do to inflict his insanity to gotham.

Ghostbusters Be Kind Rewind

We had been set the task of re creating the Opening sequence from ghostbusters.

Before we began filming we looked through the original scene, noting down all the different shot types, which we used when it came to filming our version. We kept the shots mostly the same as the original, only changing a few.

When it came to editing the video, i looked at the original film to see how pace was portrayed in the edit between characters. The pace is set in the original by it being evident to the audience that Bill Murray is fixing the experiment for the girl (Jennifer) to do better than the nervous guy.
This is reflected in my edit by cutting to the nervous guy when she gets it right to show his emotion, that he is not really enjoying being on the loosing side.

There is a quick cut in the video at 00.19. This is where the male participant gets an electric shot.
This sequence shows 3 individual shots cut together in a quick succession to show the initial reaction of the shock to the male

This first shot shows the reaction of the tester when the participant gets it wrong. Conveying a false sense of empathy towards the participant to comfort him, but we as an audience see this as him not caring.

This is then followed by seeing the tester put the card down, evidently reaching for the button, to shock the participant. 

The next shot shows the outcome of the tester pressing the button, seeing the arm begin to vault in a spasm. Quickly followed by seeing the participant lurch back from the shocking feeling. (shown below)
















There where some issues though during the film shoot which reflected back on the edit, making the process longer to perform. These issues where sound and head room.

First the sound. I'd like to point out first that the issue is not with the quality of the sound,thats fine. The issue is the syncing up of the sound due to an external sound device of the zoom h4n. The main issue was that there were no audio markers to let you know when a take had finished and a new take had started. This made the syncing process dragon as i had to listen all the way through each sound file then back at the sound from the video and match them up by pitch volume by ear. In future the best way that this issue can be resolved is by the use of a clapper board and someone reading or stating, scene, shot, take. Giving easy cues for syncing in the edit.

The next issue is head room. Now this was easily resolved by fixing it in final cut by resizing and re centring the image. In future though i would suggest to the camera operator to always reduce the amount of room between the top of a subjects head to the top of the frame so the image doesn't look out of place, unless there is something worth focusing on in the background that is integral to the scene.