Philosophia: Aaaaaand that’s a wrap on editing!!

Hey hey hey!!

Guess what? (I’m pretty sure you can do so!)

I finished editing my film opening!!!

(Source: Giphy)

So here’s a recap on my process!!

I can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse that I overfilmed, as it did happen to give me options, but I did also technically had to export and convert everything I shot on the camcorder, as when I plugged it into my computer, it was all .mod and mixed up (the same issue I mentioned in a couple of blog posts ago). After I was able of having all those MP4 files in my hands (my laptop), I started to work for real!! Shout-out to Cloudconvert for helping me out!! (I did have to create an account after oh so many videos that needed to be converted, but you gotta do what you gotta do!)

I organized these videos in a folder this time so that I could avoid the hot mess that happened to me when editing my CCR #2. This made it a lot easier of locating my files when editing, for sure!

Then, I got in, arranged the clips in the order I desired, so that I could have a rough idea of what to shorten, add, and basically edit. To my luck, of course, I lost a clip that was supposed to be the second to last scene :( It was on my camcorder, but when I would connect the camera to my laptop, it would not appear! I was pretty upset about it and tried several ways to retrieve it, but it did not work. So, I recurred to the “third to last” scene, as that final scene before THE last scene.

Luckily though (for real this time), since I was using a camcorder, there typically is a bunch of jumpcuts when looking back at videos on it. I, though, although it seemed natural, I just tried “rounding” the corners and added a film dissolve transition (tried to make it as minimal and less cliche as possible) to kind of jump that. Most of the editing really, although I was really nervous about it (as I mentioned in my CCR #2), it was pretty simple. It was a bit iffy though, when “rounding” those corners and shortening certain clips as I meant for them to be somewhat sequential, but I felt that I was able to!

The main thing, and what surprisingly took me the longest, was the credits. Yeah, words with fonts and in colors and that show the jobs of people during a production, I knooooooow.

Here I was messing around with the fonts, colors, etc etc. I ended up going for DIN condensed, with a color emboss effect on top of the burgundy/dark red type of color. For the process of arriving to this combo, I first dove into the font, as I believe it is the most tedious part. There’s just SO MANY OPTIONS!!! Last time I was in class (more like a couple of classes ago), we did get told that font choice is actually very very important, as it can also aid in emphasizing the tone of a piece. So, I tested out all of them on screen, mainly the options I had in mind, and landed on a more simple font that looked like it blended into the camcorder quality. It was simple, yet meant business (scary), hence why its on my piece! The red color, besides the intensity of it, was also placed in there to break away the very white and airy background, as really the only other colors is the dark blue of the jean jacket and my friend’s dark hair. I felt that the red really broke up the simplicity in a sense. The color emboss, added this nice effect and richness to the red which I ended up key framing on the title scene!!

Besides that, I was really indecisive on the last two scenes, especially the last scene, as it felt empty. Sooooo, since it was meant to be spooky (not the right word), I decided to add a sting!! I was in between these two, that also happened to be free to the public, copyright free etc etc!