Once I had captured all of my footage, I began to assemble it into a rough cut. This involved using my storyboard which I had created in the pre production phase and assembling the clips into the order in which I wanted them.
To begin with, all the shots were separate from each other on the timeline. I knew this would not be how I wanted the finished product to turn out, however, I needed to get the clips into some kind of rough order. Once they footage was all assembled, I could then begin overlapping some of the dialogue and inserting reaction shots in over the top of some of the dialogue.
When gaining feedback from my rough cut, Mike suggested that overlapping the shots would help the flow of the edit and make the conversation appear more natural. I therefore continued overlapping pieces of my audio and video.
The next thing I did was apply video effects to the wedding video in order to make it clear that it was a recorded video. I used a black camera frame effect in order to give the impression of watching the video on a laptop screen and I used a camcorder frame effect in order to give the impression that the video was shot on a camcorder.
Once these effects had been applied, I decided to adjust the exposure and add a glow effect to the wedding video. My aim for this was to create a glowy, dream-like effect in order to convey the romance of the wedding whilst also conveying Mark’s feelings for Juliet.
The edit for the wedding video is quite rapid to give the idea that Mark was just filming snippets of the wedding. This fast editing also makes the characters’ reactions more immediate to the footage (this was some feedback I received from Simon when showing both my rough and fine cut).
After the wedding video footage was complete, I decided to apply some colour correction to the other footage that takes place in Mark’s flat. Due to the varying levels of natural daylight, some of the footage turned out a lot darker than other parts. I decided to increase the exposure for the darker images in order to make them match the brighter images - this helps with the continuity of the editing.
Sound is something I struggled with all the way through the production. I managed to reduce some of the background noise but the voices are still slightly echoey - something which unfortunately cannot be resolved. I decided to compensate for this by really focusing on the sound design for the rest of the product.
One of the first pieces of sound design I focused on was the sound for the wedding video. I found a rights free track that suited the wedding video perfectly. I then adjusted the audio to make it quieter and applied a muffled audio effect to give the impression that the music is playing from the laptop. As well as the music, I added sound effects such as the wedding bells and atmospheric sounds such as birds.
I then moved on to the sound design for the scene at Juliet’s doorway. As there is very little dialogue in this scene, I muted all of the clips (leaving just the few lines of dialogue). This meant that the background noise which was reducing the quality of my work could be eliminated in this scene. I replaced the sound with atmospheric sounds e.g. outdoor ambience, bird song, dogs barking and the sound of cars. I also re-recorded the sound of Mark tapping on the laptop to move the slides on. I did try leaving these sounds out but the scene ends up looking odd as it just feels like there’s something missing. With the added tapping, it now makes more sense to the audience that he is manually moving the slides of the presentation on.
As feedback from my fine cut, Simon suggested adding background music to the scene before the wedding video as the mood is rather flat. I didn’t totally agree with this suggestion as every piece of background music I tried seemed to distract the attention away from the conversation between the characters. However, I eventually managed to find some calm, ambient sound which helped to lift the mood whilst not distracting the attention away from the conversation.
Overall, I am happy with my edit. I think I produced the best product that I could with the poor quality sound and varying levels of light. I resolved many of the sound issues in post production but the dialogue is still left with an echo and a low level of background noise / static.
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