Editing the Mill Meadow Video
Editing the Mill Meadow Video
I was never meant to be the editor of the Mill Meadow video, yet I still ended up doing it. Initially, I was purely the camera operator for the project, and I researched Mill Meadow too. It was originally Dan Clarke’s job to do the editing for this video; however, as he was reluctant to drive to Mill Meadow with Myself and the others, Dan was then unable to understand what style of video we were looking for; I did try to help Dan as much as I possibly could, suggesting to use different music, as the original music he had chosen did not match the theme we were going for. I also mentioned some more changes, including swapping some other clips out for others, now when I am getting feedback, I write down every note, every detail. It looked like to me Dan did not want to know what I was saying and just nodded his head, he did not even look at me, so I sat with him for a little bit, but I was really struggling to help, so I asked Jed and Anna to try and help him too, but still nothing. I then requested Jed and Anna to possibly make and edit by themselves, but nothing was moving fast enough. To be honest I was starting to worry as this was one week before a rough cut was due in and our edit from Dan was quite frankly not good enough.
Below is Dans edit that he worked on, it was a solid start but needed some improvement. It was a useful piece of work by him though as I could see what footage that we were missing and needed in the future, which did help us in the long term to create our final video.
I spoke to one of my tutors Gina and she said I should go and make an edit myself; I then also talked to Dan and he said the same thing. I am a little frustrated as my teammates are not pulling their weight. Jack, I have not even been in contact with him since the first filming day back in early November! It just feels like I am the only one making an effort to make a film that is worthy of a distinction, I feel as if everyone else is just happy with a merit, and that is not how I work. If they will not let me help them, then I am going to have to do it myself. Now, I will give credit where credit is due, Jed has been a huge helping hand, he has made it to every shoot with me and did assist with the first half of my edit, I do recognise when someone has helped and he has helped, but I just cannot say the same for everyone else, unfortunately.
With the edit, the first thing I did was back up all my footage three times, once on my laptop then on my external SSD finally on the Weston college computer. I worked on constructing the time lapses at my industry placement workplace ‘Moonraker VFX’ wherein After Effects I compiled around 3000 photos to create 4-time lapses. Each time-lapse was about 10 seconds long in the Mill Meadow edit. The process for creating these time lapses was relatively simple; so firstly, you get all the photos from each time-lapse into separate folders and name each picture in each folder from 1 – however, may there are, using the software Adobe Batch File Rename. After the renaming, I then imported the first photo in each folder and made sure to import, as a sequence is switched on and it will auto-create a time-lapse in a frame rate of your choosing, for our film we chose 24fs for that cinematic look we are going for in our film. After the sequence imported, I then reframed the photo from the aspect ratio 2:3 to 16:9 the conventional widescreen ratio. After that, I exported each time-lapse first as a .avi file which when sent to Dan and Anna who were editing at college could not open the file, so I re-rendered each time-lapse for them in a - h.264 compressed .mp4 file which worked great for them and there were no further problems.
After this and realising we were not going to get an adequate edit from Dan on Monday morning (02/12/2019) Jed and I began editing on Premiere Pro on my laptop. I thought we made a pretty bland edit at the time, the shots just seemed dull and I felt as if the video had no purpose and it was just going to be thrown away by Chris after we had created it, Perhaps this is how Dan and the others who were editing felt? I am an incredibly relentless person and I did not stop editing until the end of Monday and picked the edit right back up again on Saturday the 7th. I finished it, sent the file off to Chris and sent him an email asking him for his feedback.
Chris then rang me after seeing the edit and had straight up asked me how much of the work I had done, I told him my roles and then said, what I had done, which was all of the driving to Mill Meadow the Editing with Jed and supply all the gear for the shoots. It was clear that Chris felt sympathetic towards me, which I found hard to take as this is a team project, the problem was the team, (other than Jed and occasionally Anna) had left this project on the back burner, forcing me to pick up the pieces once again in college. Do not get me wrong I think it is a great experience for me and I love working, but I cannot help but feel a bit used.
Anyway, here is the conversation I had with Chris over Email discussing the edit and possible changes, starting with me sending the rough copy off.
Here is the 1st rough copy:
In this email, I came across as slightly frustrated, and I do apologise for that. It was unprofessional and quite frankly not needed from me to say I did everything by myself as I had not, I have had help from Anna and Jed, giving me feedback and coming on shoots with me.
Chris gave me a call after this email and managed to motivate me, helping me to understand I have been doing well and my work ethic is brilliant we talked for a while about business and working with different people in life. Chris was accommodating and said he would work with me to be able to achieve the highest grade possible.
Here are some of the suggestions/changes Chris said, we should make after the first edit:
Get rid of the landlord in the pub section of the film.
Remove the shot of the Christmas tree and leave the walking shot of the bar.
Soften the volume of the song, bring down the higher pitches, as well as turn the overall volume level down.
Get rid of all internal shots there are already videos of every Loge already, our footage was dark and gloomy, and it was not needed to show off the location.
Also add text over the video, reviews.
End the video with the Mill Meadow Logo.
Here is the email I sent back once I completed that editing with the changes:
Here is the new video (with modifications)
This is the email I received back from Chris; he said the following:
“Charlie
Brilliant and as you say so much better
Chat tomorrow
Well done”
I then received another email in the morning once Chris had had some time to watch the Film over properly analysing each scene.
Here is that Email:
I then proceeded to make the changes listed in Chris’s email, to make the best quality film I could for him, here is the email I sent back with all of the changes I had made to the edit:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Here is the final video I sent over to Chris with all of the previously mentioned changes.
Chris then sent a kind email back to me congratulating me for the work I had put into this edit and giving up my weekend to complete the edit, which I did not mind doing at all.
However, there is still more to do for Mill Meadow, and although we already have a really good film completed, I will not stop, there is still room to make improvements, until our deadline. I want to incorporate some more wildlife into the video, be that in the form of a full bird feeder, dog walker with dog, fishing, the video needs some more people in it.
What I would like to do is go back on a sunny day, so that I can capture all of the nature around the location as well as a few more drone shots. This will happen on the next sunny available date, that will be convenient for our group. I think it would be really nice to at least bring Dan down to Mill Meadow so perhaps he could make the 2D animation we initially set out to do. Also, that would be a bonus.
Finally, in this write up I would like to include some more feedback that I have received from Matt, another one of our teachers in college,
Here is that Feedback:
Matt thinks we have done a really good job, but we should not stop. We could add in some new transitions in the video as well as add the nature clips, he thought they would definitely benefit the video massively and adding people would be terrific too.
Other recommendations from Matt, was to take plenty of BTS photos on the scene to upload to our evidence online which we have done, and they will also be uploaded soon.
I want to do something different and write up about what Matt liked about the edit now; he loved how visual the video was, the drone shots, he thought were a nice extra touch. I also thought the drone shots would be priceless for this project; they add another perspective to the film that has only recently become an accessible shot. Matt even said the music was well chosen, I found it on a show-reel with under a few 100 views on YouTube and the music was created by the guy who created the show-reel, in the description he mentioned music copyright free, enjoy. So that is how I found the music on page 26 of YouTube!
The attention to detail on location helps with the edit; the autumn feel shines through the video, it looks seasonal!
Overall though, so far this project has been tough for me, however, with Chris’s support I have pulled through and created the edit that we have at the moment which has been green-lighted. The film can still be improved, the fact we still have plenty of time left until the end of the project, means that we can do more and that is precisely what I want to do.
My last editing evaluation (including the final edit) will be included in my Final Evaluation blog.
