Digital News: Process of editing || Rough Cut to Final Edit || Helen's feedback

Editing the rough cut

What did we do?
Since me and Saskia chose to be the editors, our first steps after receiving all the footage was to decide who would edit which part. We sat down and created a hand drawn list of all the elements our package consisted of. The list is as follows; 

Footage

Promo Video- Cheyenne

Presenter/Studio-  Saskia

Live Segment - Saskia

Wilson's interview- cheyenne

Graphics

Timeline Graphics- Saskia

Lower thirds- Cheyenne

100 chinchilla illustration- Saskia

90% caged foxes illustration - Cheyenne

Make up/ fashion typography- Saskia

Website - Cheyenne

By laying things out like this we were able to get a clear view of what we needed to do. This also saved us from wasting time importing files onto our hard drives that we wouldn't need. We were now ready to start the process. Saskia had already started piecing together the studio presenter parts and so I just needed to continue filling in the gaps with my edits. I decided to start with the "90% caged raised foxes illustration" because I wanted to get all the after effects out of the way. But whilst doing so, I noticed that I did not like the colour scheme at all anymore because for the animation that I was making, it finally dawned on me how babyish the entire colour scheme had been the whole time. Meanwhile Saskia was getting started on the Fashion/makeup typography graphics, as I showed her the issues I had with the animation colours, she found a free animated background that I immediately loved. Thats when we realised it was time to change the colour scheme up a bit.

Unfortunately I did not save the graphic that I didn't like but here is a still of the background that she found;

I really loved it because I could see that there would be lots of colours from this palette to choose from to incorporate into our other graphics. I immediately saw how much we could expand on this and that is exactly what we did.

In order to get the specific colours that are seen in this video, I screenshot it, uploaded it to photoshop where I was able to use the colour picker tool and pick out the most prominent colours that I could see.  I jotted down the colour code of the purple we found (AA58AC) and by jotting down the colour code of all colours used, it enables us to confidently create effects and colour schemes which we know would be exact. We ended up merging the colours found from the previous colour scheme and this one. 

(AA58AC)

From the new colour scheme

  (597DA4)

From The old colour scheme

We knew that if we did this, We could still most probably use the old face value animation that I made but just change the colours. 

We were both happy with the changes and wanted to have a proper play around with the colour schemes of our animations before we showed the rest of the group. We wanted to provide 2 separate pieces for them to have a look at and give their opinions. In the mean time, We also started editing our sections of the footage because we needed to know how long we would need the graphics for so we put those to the side for a while and got stuck in. 

What did the videos consist of?
The Process of Editing Wilson's interview

I first started sifting through the clips and was really happy with the shots that saskia had lined up. She had great framing and great focus which you could really tell made all the difference. This helped me choose shots that I needed with ease. However, aside from the good shots, the edit became a problem for a multitude of reasons.

reason1: The point of our timeline was to illustrate how drag make up has been around for way longer than when it was being glamourised by the Kardashians. However, Because we were rushing on the day of the shoot, we were unable to get a proper answer from Wilson that we could use. His answer was pointless in my opinion because it did not take the interview anywhere. So I now had to find a different angle and create a sequence that will fit the way the studio presenters introduced him and outro'd him. I begun feeling flustered as we had asked him quite a few questions and there were many options for me to choose from, especially with the wide variety of cutaways we had taken on the day. Here are a few of the sequence options I came across; 

• Wilson Introduces himself - Speaks about how he wants to be identified - Why he wants to be drag
• Why he wants to be drag - What challenges he faces - What changes does he want to see within the community.

The main reason why I became frustrated was because we wanted to create a video where his full drag look was only revealed in the end but it ended up turning out to be the opposite because we interviewed him whilst he was in his drag attire. There fore it looked very odd when I tried to have cutaways covering the video whilst you could only hear his voice. 

The order I went with was; 

Wilson introduces himself - Talks about why he wants to be in drag - How does the public react when they see him - What changes would he like to see within the community. 

The reason I went with that was because we managed to get a really natural answer to "how does the public react", You could almost feel his emotion as he said it so I thought this would be a really important thing to show people. We also managed to get a really emotive answer as to why he wanted to see a change. He spoke about how he wasn't accepted by his mother and that people need to realise that drag is just personal self expression. Again, this was another great moment to show what it's like to be in his shoes. Since our channel is supposed to be looking at the underbelly of all trends, This sequence seemed perfect for me to portray that because not a lot of people know these things still happen. 

So, after completing all of our separate segments, it was now time to put them together to create the full time line and sequence of our package. This posed a few issues because me and saskia had different footage and so when transferring, it would say media offline because I don't have the clips on my computer and I don't have a hard drive either. This just meant that we had to make sure each segment was edited as best as we can so it can be imported into a MOV file and put into one big timeline.

One of the ideas i had for the style of editing for Wilson was this; 

I just loved the way you're made to focus and watch the process. Of course Wilson's transformation wouldn't be as dramatic as this but it is definitely something that was at the back of my mind, even before filming. I just wanted Wilson to be the main focus of the video. No distractions, just Wilson. I think we did very well.

Saskia and I came together, sat down and edited the rough cut together. We made all the necessary alterations that we needed to in order for all our segments to fit together seamlessly. 

what went well?

• Saskia and I got the OK from our group to change the colours and so we continued to incorporate that into the edit.
• There was a consistency between all of the graphics that was created. Allowing consistent branding  
• we had brilliant sound for Wilson's interview as we had all the right equipment that we needed
• Once I had an idea for the order, I was effectively able to put the footage together with ease
• Being able to work alongside saskia in the editing process made me more efficient and motivated than ever

What didn't go well?

• The only difficult thing about editing wilson's piece was that it took me a while to get the order of it sorted because he hadn't answered the questions properly.
•  When the full sequence was put together we realised that there were real issues with sound and they were very hard to fix but we left it alone so Helen could tell us what she thought.

Helen's Feedback after Rough cut viewing

We showed Helen the rough cut and I was really pleased with her reactions and also agreed with her criticisms. It was amazing to me how she was able to notice the same things that both me and saskia did in the edit. Her comments are as follows; 

Compliments 

• nice colours 
• nice stories/ sequence 
• great contributors 
• nice graphics
• wilson's parts looked great, nicely shot
• White background works really well for presenter parts

Improvements

• Sound design needed some work as we had not touched the sound at all
• Get rid of the sliding transitions as we are way too edgy for that style
• too much head room for the presenters, must scale it down as much as we can without losing quality
• We still needed to enter the lower thirds for the presenters
• we needed to change the logo position from the bottom left to the top right and make it consistent
• Insert a coming up segment when introducing the topics
• put the photos of kendal and kylie fully covering the frame instead of the blurred background
• level out the audio
• Shift the "live" graphic to the other side of the screen and also change the colour as the blue we had didn't stand out as much 
• Change the font to something that will suit it better
• Remove a segment from the timeline so that 
• add a twitter account
• Create credits

Editing the Rough to the fine cut
Both Saskia and I sat down together and made ALL the changes that was asked. The thing that gave us the most trouble was the editing of the sound and trying to create a balanced level of sound. Since we had issues with not having the right equipment and also levelling not done to the best of our ability on the day. We paid the price in the edit because it was very obvious  how bad the sound was. We used the pen tool to play around the levels as the live segment was peaking so much but then the second interviewee was too quiet. This was a real challenge. 


Examples

Here is an example of what our audio track looked like. As you can see we tried to split up the points where it peaked and where it was too low. This helped a little bit but we still needed something extra. 

We then came across a "Denoiser" effect which we could play around with to try and eliminate the background noise. This did help a lot more that the pen tool in a way because it didn't just bring the audio level down, it took away some of the noise. What we really needed was the adobe audition programme to really eliminate the background noise. Here is a video of the Fine cut when it was completed. 

Here is an example of the colour correction that we did on the Live segment; 
 

I played around with colour correction levels where I moved around the blue levels and red levels. This improved the overall look SO much and I was really happy about it.

We needed a little help with knowing how to insert the sting for the package so we thought it would be a good idea to have a look at another news channel to see how they did it. The first one that came to mind was Newsround because I know that they use graphics and also target a younger audience. Below is the video we used for inspiration and guidance;

 

This video helped us because it allowed us to see how the placement of the sting was and how often it would be featured. It is really useful looking at other news packages. After watching this we were able to comfortably create and insert the stings in the appropriate places. 

Here is the Fine cut after Saskia and I made all the correct changes. We were really pleased.

What went well?
I think that me and Saskia did really good amending all of the things that needing improving. I was really proud that we took the time to carefully go through and put our all into the edit. It was very rewarding to see at the end.

I loved how we were able to find all the appropriate sounds for the timeline which was one of the main elements of the news package. 


Next Steps
We need to produce this to Helen and see if there are anymore improvements to make
Finish creating the Promo video
Finish creating the website.