Connor's Film Blog

I want to be proficient in working with the cameras that I have never used before, I want to pass all the practicals on the first try, and I want to start being able to make films with the cameras. I plan on focusing on the task and working on the assignments and making sure I am paying attention to the task at hand and taking in all the information.

An editor knows when to cut based on their instinct. The editor has to be able to instinctively know when the right cut is based on the emotion, story, and rhythm. They can learn how to figure out where the right cut is after a lot of practice with the techniques. After years of practice, the editor can figure out where is the best place to cut. If the cut is done wrong, it can affect the whole feel of the film drastically.

My montage edit is about the gap between the wealthy and the poor and how the wealthy can easily help the poor out, but are never willing to. I am still currently looking for the rest of my photos. I believe I can complete it on time because I have the whole concept in my head so I will be able to execute it quickly when I get all the pictures.

Emotion-makes sure the cut is following the same emotion found within the scene. Story-advances the story along. Rhythm-cuts are at the same tempo the story is at. Eye trace-following where the audience is looking. 2-D plane-representing a stage and actors looking at each other. 3-D plane-actors are moving the correct ways on set. Emotion and story are the most important of the six, because if one of the two is messed up within editing, it will change how the whole film will be perceived. The other 4 if messed up, will be a little distracting but not to the point where the whole movie is changed.

She taught how to slow down footage using the rate stretch tool, using the speed/duration tool, and reversing the video. With the rate stretch tool, you can drag on the end of the clip and it will make it longer or shorter, if it is made longer, then the clip will slow down, but if it is made to be shorter, then it will speed up. The speed/duration tool is used to slow down or speed up the video by typing what percentage speed you want to play it at (above 100 is faster, and below 100 is slower). Reversing the footage is also done using the speed/duration tool, and to use it, you have to put a negative sign in front of the percentage number. I can use these techniques in the videos I make by using them in action sequences and speeding up or slowing down what is happening in these sequences.

J or L cut is when the audio and video do not split at the same time in the transition. The cuts introduce that a character is talking before they're seen on screen, or the opposite, and they are seen on screen before their audio plays. It makes the edit more clear and real. It can improve my edit because it allows for dialogue to stay the same from one shot to the next, keeping the continuity of the shot.

A natural transition is a transition that is used to seem natural and make it very hard to see where one scene ends and the other begins. Three different techniques are switch pans, zoom transitions, and cross dissolving. These all made the transition from two clips or locations feel a lot more natural and make the cut in the video a lot less harsh and apparent to the viewers.

Cutting action is when an action is being performed in a shot, and it cuts to show a different angle of the action. It blends the shots together because it is still a shot of the action, but just at a different angle. When cutting action, you have to make sure the actors are doing roughly the same thing as the last shot, or else it won't be as smooth. Also, you have to either make sure that you're on the same location as the last shot, or make it impossible to tell whether you are or not.

Mise-en-scene is all the details within a certain shot. It includes the duration of it, the focal length, lighting, props, camera angle, camera movement, and everything else within a shot. The term is used in the film industry to describe what is put in to one specific shot. It's so important because it represents your filmmaking style, and makes you think long and hard about a shot to make sure everything is perfect and appeals to the audience.

Time code is the measure of time when editing a video. It is measured in hours:minutes:seconds:frames. Frames is the amount of images inside the video. For example, the popular frame rate is 24 frames per second, so that means that every second, there are 24 images being captured. It is very important because it can be used to get to a very specific part of the video to make sure the cut is just right.

When you're editing a video, the resolution of the video is very important. It means ho many pixels there are within one clip. With the more pixels, everything will look a lot sharper and be a lot clearer. One important part of resolution, is that if you shoot video in a higher resolution than what the end product will be, you can downscale it and crop all the way in to fix the framing if it was messed up on during filming. Cropping in is also very important if you want to stabilize your footage, and will make it look smoother.

Codec is the order of the layout that the media is recorded with. Codecs are used to organize media data. The way that the data is laid out, makes it be able to be used for playback, editing, or transcoding. A container basically wraps up all of the files together and determines if the files have both audio and video. A container also has metadata, which has information on the file, such as what the frame rate was, or what resolution it is. The main difference is that codec is very specific to the individual file being recorded, and the container is what holds the codecs of the media all in one place.

Griffith produced the "cut-in", the 180 degree rule, intercutting, the establishing shot, reverse shot, and matching eye lines. Continuity is maintaining smooth sense of continuous space and time, within a movie. It is important to a film because it makes sure the audience doesn't get confused and makes sure that there is nothing out of place.

I noticed that with early film makers, there wasn't much editing, it was a lot of long similar shots, or just one continuous shot. The Great Train Robbery was why the shots have became different and would change viewpoint of the camera. I noticed that both early films and the films we have made so far, all contain the same type of shot, a wide angle shot showing off the whole scene, not showing any dramatic effect of some sort.

I have edited with premiere pro many times before on some of my own projects, so I have not been too surprised about what we have done so far. I learned more about the organization with the files however, and that has been a very useful lesson. I also found it interesting how the windows are organized, as I usually have the effects or lumetri color on the right hand side, but we were taught most editors don't have that open all the time. The most difficult part about editing to me is audio mixing, but I am hoping to get better about it.

Organizing your footage is very important because it will speed up one's workflow and will make editing a lot easier. Editing is a long job, especially if it's a professional shoot, but it can be a lot shorter with organization. If you know exactly what clip is where, then you will be able to take the clip right away and put it in the timeline easily. Two things that I learned that are very useful are the creating of bins, and the labeling used to mark clips. Creating bins is really useful because you can put a bunch of clips under a folder for quick access when you are editing. The labelling is also useful because it makes it easier to find clips within the bin as well.

I noticed that in the boulder scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the editing was very fast paced and had a lot of cuts. This style of editing is used to provoke an emotion of intensity. When he was running through the hall back to the entrance, the constant cut after cut made it so that the viewer felt anxious and had them wondering if Indiana Jones would make it or not. This played a key role in opening the film because it expressed the feeling that would be provoked throughout the movie and it also showed the first trait of the main character. It showed that Indiana Jones was daring and how he could get himself out of danger no matter what.