Video editing is hard :(

I entered this project with some enthusiasm as video is something I’ve been interested in quite some time but never really experimented with. But was a little worried about the group work side of things, wondering if there would be conflicting ideas or if I would be left whimpering in the corner as my work got trashed and twisted into something else. I worry too much.

Another concern was my insomnia, which insisted on me sleeping at stupid times instead of following a normal sleeping pattern, resulting in me being unconscious in bed while some of the lessons were taking place, and just generally making myself a bit stressed worrying if I was causing the group to fall behind. Once again I was worrying too much! Steve was very understanding of my little problem and never seemed too annoyed when I would show up at three in the afternoon.

But the group work itself didn’t really pose any problems, me and Steve worked well together and genuinely liked each others ideas, and listened to each others feedback. It was interesting to see his take on our idea, which was “anger at technology”.

While we were developing our ideas and getting used to using final cut, me and Steve worked on two separate films, which we were then going to edit into one film. Unfortunately we were supposed to be working in a group of three, but our third group member never made an appearance. But we still had a bit of a democracy functioning, the parts we both really wanted to be included (me – synthy sounds, scary growling man, “techno”, Steve – penguins, fade outs, explosions), were included in the final edit. And we both got a say on the final edit, we’re good friends so weren’t afraid to say what we really thought about the film.

I think our idea development could have been a bit more structured, it was more a process of each other exploring what the theme meant to us and then bringing our ideas together. I’m still having some difficulty with the idea of storyboarding everything first, to me it seems much more effective to try the idea out and see if it works then planning everything before hand, especially since we were using stock film and not shooting anything of our own. I think for the second part of this module where we actually shoot everything ourselves will have to planned a lot more, and not just knocked together on a whim. But for this section at least I think my approach worked well.

The programs we used for this project (Final Cut, DVD studio Pro) seemed a bit overwhelming at first, lots of confusing looking buttons and two preview windows and for quite some time not knowing how to get rid of the “un rendered” screen of agony and woe and the annoying bleeping sound. I found final cut very frustrating to use as a new user, although the basic functions were easy enough to figure out, wanting to make something specific happen or just preview the film without exporting it all was confusing. Hopefully all this frustration will pay off in the second part of the module.

If I was to do this project again I would like to have been able to attend all the lessons I missed from being unconscious, I do have a sense of not really being there for this project which annoys me as I’ve still worked hard. I would have also liked to had a little more time if possible, and seen if I could get myself to storyboard my ideas and maybe even do it in a group.