Karson Mo
Journal #3
Since writing my last journal, I have done some more researching for my role
of being an editor, this time doing it online, and while researching about being an
editor and how to edit films, I’ve come across some brilliant suggestions that I plan
to utilize when the time comes when I have to put together and perfect the film.
The first thing I learnt was in fact a suggestion to organize all of the footage,
sound files and what not from the shooting of the film by putting them all into
separate folders and naming them. Believe it or not, I didn’t actually think of doing
this previously when I edited all my other films, so this tip was a major life hack for
me. So basically, when I start to edit the film, I’d take all the clips and audio from one
scene and bunch them into a single folder, and then separate them even more within
that folder into folders such as “clips and audio to use” or “clips and audio to be
deleted,” and do the same thing with all the other scenes of that film. Using this tip, I
could reduce my editing time by quite a lot, as I would not have to go through all
sorts of unnamed files trying to find the correct clip, especially when my group is
planning on using a three-camera setup to film the film.
Another thing that I learnt (well, not really learnt, but was reminded of) from
the online research was the jump cut. A jump cut is when two shots from the same
or similar scenes at different times with similar camera placements are edited
together. I realized that I could actually incorporate a couple jump cuts in the film,
especially when we have people pacing nervously all over the place in a couple
scenes. In that particular example, the person pacing would pace around for a
couple steps, then suddenly “teleport” to another spot and start pacing again from
there. If I use jump cuts during those scenes, I think that it would probably create an
uneasy mood, which would perfectly compliment the story of someone being
kidnapped.
One other piece of advise that I’ve gotten through this research is that when I
start to add the dialogue into the film, I could cut out unnecessary “ums” and other
stuff that is said by the actors or combine what they say without it showing by
cutting away to the person that he is talking to so that the actor’s mouth would not
be seen saying words that were cut out. This would a very useful thing to do just in
case the actors were not all that good and couldn’t memorize their scripts.
Researching about editing online was of great help to me, giving me a lot of
new ideas and life hacks for editing my group’s film. I will most definitely do more
research on this topic in the future before I have to edit the film so that I can make it
the best I possibly can.