MAJOR-PROJECT UNIT: Final Cut

After applying some of the changes from Nathan's feedback, we showed the third fine cut to Simon to get any last minute feedback that could be applied to the product in order to improve it to its best possible quality.

Some of Simon's feedback had already been pointed out by Nathan and I had already made these changes but had not had a chance to export the version with these changes. (i.e. Simon pointed out a sound glitch in scene 7 where Luke says "that's so smart Tim" which I had already resolved as Nathan pointed out the same moment).

Simon's feedback:

- The title of VET-MAN could be bigger. We had originally settled on a smaller title as I liked how this looked visually and the director liked the fact that the small title was quite anti-climactic (as Tim bigs himself up but in reality he is not as good as he thinks he is, so the small title reflected this). However, I will be making the title bigger so the name stands out more and grabs the audience's attention so they are clear on the production they are watching.

- In scene 2, I could cut to the glovebox opening a bit quicker - Tim is looking around for a while which could cause the audience to lose focus a little.

- In scene 4, there could be a bigger squelch sound when cutting into the dog which will emphasise the comedy of the blood splatter.

- In scene 9, the audio for "as good as him" needs to be brought up to match the level of the rest of the dialogue. In scene 11, the audio for "the game is afoot" also needs to be brought up for the same reason. This will ensure the audience don't miss any of the dialogue and, therefore, don't miss the comedy.

- It was also suggested we could use the sound of a punch to transition to scene 13 to clearly demonstrate to the audience what happens between Tim and Mark.

- Simon pointed out that the biggest mistake of the production was Tim getting changed out of his vet costume - however, this could not be changed once the scenes were shot.

I implemented all of this feedback apart from the sound effect of a punch as, after discussing this with the director, we decided this was too 'on the nose' in comparison with the rest of the comedy. I also added in an additional piece of audio as suggested by the director. In scene 1, just after Tim runs out of the room and before Tess says "twat", I added the sound of a door slamming to emphasise Tim's rush to get away. Implementing this feedback and adding in a few more changes has allowed me to improve VET-MAN so that it could reach it's best possible production quality.

I also made more tweaks to the colour correction and grade of the production to perfect the shots in terms of continuity and visual quality.

When listening to the project through Mac speakers and headphones, there is still a little static noise in some of the clips - however, when played through proper speakers this noise is not there. This is because the audio sounds like it has slightly more bass through the speakers which reduces this higher pitch static noise. Therefore, I decided not to reduce the static noise further as this could end up decreasing the audio quality by making it too echoey. It could also sound like there's too much bass as the audio has just the right amount of treble / bass balance when playing through proper speakers without reducing the static noise further.

When the final cut was complete, I checked through the entire production to make sure all the visual and audio clips were in the correct places and that the adjustment layers were positioned correctly over the appropriate clips to avoid any silly error like this being made. Once I checked and double checked the timeline, I exported the project in a quality of 1080p, frame rate of 24fps and a H.264 codec. I exported at this quality as some of the 4K footage had been cropped (which was the reason for shooting in 4K as this enabled me to chop around and crop footage without loosing visual quality). I exported at 24fps as this is the same as the frame rate I shot in. I exported in a H.264 codec as this is how I have been shown to export in Premiere Pro previously and it has always produced a good quality, accurate representation of the project.

Final Cut: