Practical- Editing Experimenting

Practical- Editing Experimenting

I decided to practice editing techniques on Final Cut Pro. After having discussed the plot with the rest of TDAC, we decided to use flashbacks as part of our film opening. I wasn't quite sure how this would work so I decided to give it a go and have a practice. Firstly however I watched a couple of tutorials on Youtube to give me some ideas and inspiration and then I started my editing experimenting for flashbacks.

Firstly I needed some footage to work with so I used the shot of Charley that we had filmed for our GCSE Elastic Heart music video. She's looking at the camera, then looks down, and then looks back at the camera. It's very simple but I thought that it would be a gapped starting point for me to build a story around by including flashbacks as the shot looks like Charley is just thinking (dramatically). 

Then I came up with the concept of a flashback to a car crash where she loses someone she loves. I went onto Youtube and looked at different POV car crashes and chose one. I then put it into Final Cut and got rid a lot of the lead-up footage. Then I used the blade tool and interwound small snippets of the car crash footage into Charley's shot, which was the 'present' in my sequence. After watching it back, I felt like it was missing something so again I went onto Youtube and looked for POV shots of the passenger in a car looking at the driver, who was smiling and talking to the camera. It took a while but found a sing-along video of a man singing a song with different cars on the road. Although it was completely out of context, there were second-long shots in which were usable. 

I then wove some of these shots throughout which showed the love one who died (and the character Charley was having flashbacks about). The flickering flashbacks worked really well because it mirrored the pace of the car crash and then every time it jumps back to Charley's face which is completely still (I also but it into 25% slow motion), it creates a really effective juxtaposition between Charley and her memories. On Youtube I also found a car crash sound effect and I used the song 'Time' (which I obviously couldn't use on the real thing because of copy right, but for practicing editing I don't think it will be a big issue). I then layered up and timed the tracks perfectly with the footage and I added a filter called 'Burnt Sun' which just differentiated the present footage from the flashback footage. 

Then I just faded out the music and uploaded it to Youtube and here is the finished result: