Editing Practical - Freeze Frames

For my editing practical, I wanted to try a technique I hadn't used before. To do this, I found a freeze frame tutorial on YouTube and taught myself how to create the same effect on Final Cut Pro. I then found a short video of a snowboarder completing a forwards flip off of a ski jump and decided to use the freeze frame to stop the boarder at different points during the flight.

Firstly, I imported the video into the software, and chose specific points where I wanted him to freeze. I wrote down these times and then went back to the footage, stopping it at these times. I then took a screen grab of the point at which it had stopped and saved it to my desktop, with the file name of the time at which it was taken. I repeated this until I had all the different freeze points that I wanted.

Then, I imported all of the screen shots so that they started at the points which they were taken, and dragged out the duration to match the original footage. At this point, when the project is played, the flight stops at the first freeze and does not continue. 

First, I needed to change the filter of all of the screenshots, and then adapt this to enhance the darkness of the figure, so that there is a large contrast between the snowboarder and the background of the sky. I added the filter to all of the screenshots and changed it to 'darken'.

I then needed to use the mask tool (located on the far right of the screen) to highlight only the snowboarder in each of the screenshots, otherwise the whole of the screen will freeze and be seen for the duration of the footage. This was tricky as the mask tool gives you three pointers to drag around the selected area, but as the snowboarder is a funny shape and the sky changes colour during the jump, I needed to be accurate. Experimenting with the different elements of the mask tool available, I was able to increase the 'feather' and 'rounded' effect on each, making the mask closer to the outline of the snowboarder.

Finally, I imported a song from YouTube called 'A Beautiful Life' by Tim McMorris and fit it to my footage. I then trimmed all the clips so that they were exactly the same length. 

The final product is attached below. If I were to do it again, I would have less freeze frames of the snowboarder in the sky, possibly by using a longer clip. Also, I would be more precise with the mask tool to ensure the ultimate accuracy.