From the beginning of the year, I established my editing capabilities through the combination of Unit 1: Contextual Studies, alongside the four hour film challenges. If we look back at the final production's of my Contextual Studies unit, we can see a distinctive difference in editing accuracy and style - part of this is due to the genre I was focusing upon, which was Wong Kar Wai's visual influence in Hong Kong cinema. However, I noticed that my editing did not match up perfectly with the voiceover that I did for my video essay, alongside the occasional stuttering of words which caused the clips to not align perfectly. If we look at more recent productions that involved a voiceover such as 'Mind.' (my Unit 11 - Film Studies, final production), we can see that the footage shot, alongside the audio matches perfectly, this is due to the thorough planning of the editing process, such as the script I wrote and prepped for, alongside filming based upon areas of what I have written in each paragraph - the process has allowed me to successfully produce a short film that considers audio, camera and lighting techniques; alongside a thorough editing process.
I have managed to learn and expand upon my knowledge during the year with various editing techniques/styles - to extensively improve my editing language between non-linear editing softwares. An example of this would definitely be the use of the Colour Key tool in Premiere Pro, that I used for my Unit 36 - Music Video. I wanted to imitate the use of a green screen, but instead on a white background to imitate the post modern/early technology of the green screen, commonly used in the 80's. I did complete a blog post on the full instructions to how I managed to achieve this (under the Editing label, alongside Music Video), however, this is the before and after:
before . vs . after
color key
I did also experiment with the colour balance of clips, allowing them to appear either lighter/darker or desaturated. I did this with my Hong Kong new wave production, where I imitated a short film of the isolation of the Hong Kong residents during the handover of the nation from the US to Mainland China. I used the Color HLS tool to do this, decreasing the saturation and adjusting the hue to a colour to emote the mood of the film, just like Wong Kar Wai does in his projects.
Editing on the beat to a song was vital for my music video production, however, despite doing this successfully in that unit, it was not the only time I have practiced such methods. Within one of the 4 Hour challenges, we had to edit a production using stock footage. I did this with the song 'Dreams' by the Cranberries, allowing me to portray the messages of Love, Freedom and Youth which connotes throughout the song.
Applying theories to editing was limited, although there is a few examples that can be taken from my blog. The Kuleshov, reaction theory was used in one of my 4 Hour Film Challenges - 'Behind the Door V2', conveying the character of Charlotte to be frightened when a cupboard door opens by itself, despite having a blank expression initially - creating an allusion to what she feels in that sudden moment.
To conclude, I believe the editing skills that I have acquired throughout the year have allowed me to produce projects reasonable to a cliental standard. It has allowed me to create and experiment with new styles of editing, allowing me to widen my horizon but to also engage with various demographics. I believe that the projects I have produced throughout this year, can be successfully decoded with the intention of the directors subliminal/connotation messages that they wanted to portray, thus being myself.
