editing.

On Monday morning I came into Uni to start editing.

I started by going through all 86 clips and giving them relevant names. This was to make it easier for myself at later stages of editing as it meant I didn't have to waste time looking for a clip. I then colour co-ordinated the different types of shot into the following categories:
Scenic
In the Duck
Interview
Duck on the water
Duck on the road
Cut aways
Office
Misc.

Later on in the day our director, Dani, joined me. She started to draw out a rough timetable (left) so I had some sort of idea as to how she want the documentary to be structured.

I began the editing process by watching each clip and getting a sense of what sort of footage we had. This took ages as we had loads of footage.

I then decided to put together any sequences which became obvious, for example, the office scene was fairly easy to put together as we had to establish a sense of place, and given the footage we had, this was a simple job.

After putting together a few sequences I decided it would be a good idea to focus on the main interview.

This included removing the sound of Dani asking the question, and any unwanted atmos. I also had to break down the sound and cut out any dead-air.

With Dani's direction, I was able to create a clean cut interview sequence, in which I started to add edited clips which held relevance to what Tony, our interviewee, was saying.
After a long day in the edit room we have started to create a clearly structured documentary.

On Tuesday morning, our sound editor Chrissie, and I met to continue editing.

We had some problems exporting single audio files from SoundTrack Pro and then importing them into Final Cut Pro which is where we were editing our footage. Because of our problems we ended up having to export all the audio tracks into one continuous audio track, import it into Final Cut Pro and cut it down using that program instead.

This wasn't too much of a problem as Chrissie had already edited and adjusted the audio so it sounded fine.
 After collecting all of the audio from Chrissie I was able to start adding life to our documentary.

At this point I had already edited most of the footage and created sequences with the footage. However, it wasn't in a specific order yet.

Having the audio files made deciding on an order a lot easier as we were able to choose what sounded good and where.

We decide to use the audio footage of a tour guide providing the historical story of the Duck's as a main storyline throughout the documentary. This is to accompany our interview with Tony, which equals out the informative nature of the history interview, by adding a lighthearted take on the Ducks as well.

We also realised that the audio Dani and Charlotte had collected from the actual tour was of much better quality than we had expected. This was very useful as we could use this over certain parts of our footage to add an entirely new layer to the documentary.

We also decided that the vox pops Chrissie and I had collected had no place in our documentary. We decided that a main interview, a historical interview, and the tour was enough audio to create a storyline throughout our doc.

On Tuesday afternoon, Chrissie, Dani and I had a tutorial with Debbie. This was to show her how our editing was getting along and ask her how we could improve. Also to answer any queries we may have had.

During this tutorial Debbie offered a suggested structure, which we all agreed sounded good. This was to intertwine both the historical interview and Tony's interview instead of splitting the two and having two separate blocks of interview, which is how we had it originally. She sat with us as we changed the order around, and overall helped us structure our interviews in a much more appealing way.

Debbie also suggested that we start the documentary with a lighthearted quote from Tony instead of diving right in and having him introducing himself. She said this would set the tone for the documentary as a lighthearted, family friendly piece instead of something which would be heavy with historical information.

Also, after putting the audio tracks into place in the documentary we noticed that we were missing a strong atmos track, being left with a poor quality piece which dragged the documentary down.

We decided that we would focus on this on Wednesday, the next day, in order to give ourselves the whole day to sort it.

After an 11 hour day on Tuesday, our documentary was looking more and more like a final piece. With only a few things left to do on Wednesday, me and Chrissie called it a day.

On Wednesday morning, Chrissie and I came into the edit suit to make the final touches to the documentary. At this point the piece was looking strong and only needed a few changes.

After discovering that our atmos track was of poor quality, we were left to depend on the different sound recordings offered to us by SoundTrack Pro. These included foley sounds of waves, seagulls, a light wind, and traffic. We spent a few hours choosing the audio which sounded the best, and creating our own atmos track from scratch. We were able to incorporate children's laughter, wind, water, traffic, seagulls, and waves crashing.

On Thursday morning, myself, Dani and Charlotte met to watch the final piece and burn it onto disks. Unfortunately I had to leave to do other work so left them to burn the disks.