editing part 1

It’s time… EDITING. 

Since filming this weekend, I’ve gotten started with editing all the clips together for my final film opening. Before I could even begin editing, though, I had to find the perfect app that wouldn’t be too difficult to use or too simple (cause that’s boring boo). In the past I’ve used the app iMovie and yes this is a great editing app, but I wanted to explore a little into more difficult editing platforms. I’ve also used Premiere Pro during the sound project, but that app is a little too crazy for me. Plus, it isn’t compatible with my iPad, which is my main device that I do all my work on. So I got to researching various editing app that would align with what I wanted. 

I watched this video that gave examples of editing softwares and the pros and cons of each. The one app that caught my eye was Davinci Resolve. This app would allow me to be able to edit the videos together and do all the things that iMovie could do, but even more. But… after downloading the app onto my iPad, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. So I went back to YouTube to find some tutorials to figure this monster out. This video really helped me. It broke down each feature of Davinci Resolve in a clear way and explained the basics really well. I’m basically a pro now. 

After understanding the basics of the app I got to editing. I first started with finding the perfect music for the beginning of the opening. I went onto the website Purple Planet, which has TONS of royalty free music. After an extensive browse through all the music available, I finally came across one that fit the vibe of my opening. 

Now that I have the music for the beginning portion of the opening, I started to edit the clips to match the music. After finishing that, I went to a bunch of sound effect databases to start to add various sound effects that I wanted to include. I didn’t want the only sound to be the music, so I looked up different background sounds that would be normal in the setting and what was happening in the scene (like pencil scratching or papers rustling). I went to the YouTube Audio Library (this is a godsend) and found a bunch of sounds and then I went to Pixabay for the ones that were left. Here’s a little clip of some of what I have so far:

Then I got to an obstacle. The text message part (where Iris gets a message from her “friends” asking if the project is done yet and her response). I wanted the text messages to appear on screen, instead of on her phone cause it would just look cleaner, kinda like in The Fault In Our Stars. But figuring out how to actually do that was insane. I went back to my trust friend, YouTube, and found this amazing video that taught me how to create this effect on Davinci Resolve. And here’s the end result:

Anyways, after finishing about 40 seconds of editing, I decided to take a break, but I’ll start back up on that tomorrow cause its a half day in school (thank god it’s almost spring break). But, there was one thing that was unfortunate during this editing time, I realized that a couple of my shots just did not look good. It was mainly because of the lighting, like in this shot where you can’t even see my face cause the lighting is just terrible. 

This is basically all my own fault cause in some of the shots I kinda forgot to change the position of the ring light… so ya this is my own downfall. So now I gotta re-film a couple of shots tomorrow. I still included the dark shots in the opening for now to act as a placeholder so that when I re-film, I can just place them into the spots. It’s not terrible though, there aren’t that many, it’s just so ANNOYING, like damn if I had just remembered to change the ring light this would’ve all been fine, but no I have the memory of a goldfish.