JK - Film Edit: Lesson 11

Complementary Studies: Liam Marley

Date: 13/06/08 (J Kosminsky)
Editing Time: 3hrs
Importing Time: 1hr
Documentation Time: 0mins


Editing:

Bass lesson eleven with Joseph Kosminsky was edited so that the footage could be compressed with MPEG-4, ready to be uploaded on the web log. After being imported onto the iMac, through Final Cut Pro using a DV to FireWire cable, the one-hour length clip was studied. This was to enable analysis of the footage so each lesson objective could be summarised and edited together to make a smooth coherent ten-minute film of the lesson.


Video Edit:

The footage began with the introductory title screen – stating the lesson number and with which pupil was participating. Utilising a standard text generator, over a black matte backdrop, a title was erected, which read (refer to Figure 1 below)……………..

’BASS LESSON ??

WITH JOSEPH KOSMINSKY’

(Figure 1)

The typeface was filled white, to contrast the black backdrop and the font chosen was Bank Gothic, at font size 46. A black matte generator was then placed after the title screen so a cross dissolve transition could be placed across the two clips (refer to Figure 2) to make the title screen fade out into black.




(Figure 2 – a cross dissolve generator overlapping two separate video clips)


The date of the lesson was left out of the title screen as it would have made the title type too cluttered. The inclusion of the date in the title was also unnecessary because at the beginning of every lesson the date was recorded on the tape by the teacher.

The first scenes of the lesson involved the pupil being informed what the objectives would aim to achieve. Usually a brief explanation of each objective would follow. Each objective had to be compressed and summarised from the hour-long original footage and added to the new projects timeline for further editing. Each clip/scene had to explain and demonstrate the objective, while still displaying a smooth sense of continuity. The clips would show the pupil attempting each objective in the turn, capturing their mistakes, queries and progression. At the beginning of each objective a fade in fade out dissolve transition (refer to Figure 3) was used to represent and emphasise the end of an objective and the start of a new one.




(Figure 3)


For certain parts of the film, titles or subtitles were used either to display subject matter to the audience or depict a symbol or picture. For both of these a text generator was used, either layered over the video clip or the actual video clip was cut away, leaving only the audio and the black matte backdrop. An example of a video clip with a title layered over the top can be seen in Figure 4 below.




(Figure 4)


The footage ended with a title crawl generator, in a roll formation, for the end credits. This simply stated the end of the lesson, informing who the pupil was and who had been teaching the lesson, (refer to Figure 5). The credit usually ran for ten seconds, which was long enough for each part of the text to be read.




(Figure 5)

Audio Edit:

Not a lot of editing was done to the audio on the film footage, due to the frequency comparison between the bass guitar and the speech from the teacher and pupil. This made it very difficult in mixing one without the other being compromised.

However at the beginning a hum remover was utilised in an attempt to get rid of the low frequency hum, which seemed to be emitted from the operation of the tape deck. This was basically a low pass filter and was cut by -60 dB at 60 Hz, as anything higher than this i.e. 80 Hz, would have effected the sound if the instrument.

Cross fade (0 dB) audio transitions were layered in between clips to reduce any audio artefacts and unwanted pops, where clips were separated and re-formed with other footage. They blended the separate audio tracks together for smooth unnoticeable transition. This type of audio transition was also used to fade out an audio track at the end of a lesson objective to aid with the visual fade in fade out dissolve transition. If this did not work then automation was used to simply fade out the end of the required audio track, as shown in Figure 6.




(Figure 6 – a gain fade out)