Looking back on the editing process...

As we've reached Rough Cut 3 - which I'm feeling might be my final cut - I feel it would be appropriate to post something about the editing process of 'Neurosis', from looking through the shots to finishing the third rough cut.
   When I uploaded all my footage, my original plan was to do two scenes and I had all the footage for them done. I had the scene I've used for all of my rough cuts with Kieran and also an extra scene with Laura where we actually see her waking up and realising she'd been kidnapped (hopefully I will get this edited together and posted as a 'deleted scene' so I can evaluate why I decided to not use it). I decided on the shots I was going to use and started editing!
The first cut took a long time to edit as I was slowly realising how long the first scene was and how I wasn't going to have time to add in the second scene; this caused me to panic slightly because I wasn't sure whether or not the first scene alone would be enough to secure the marks I wanted. I also has several continuity issues throughout my piece. Firstly the photographs kept switching places as whilst we were filming I was showing Kieran how to pick them up and their order etc, which caused them to be in slightly different positions in each shot. Secondly Kieran would sometimes switch the hands he picked the photographs up with, which was another fault on my part because I should've checked the footage before we finished shooting. Finally, the lighting was a major issue as some of the shots were so dark, you couldn't actually read the credits! These errors became apparent when I was editing everuything together so I uploaded a very haphazard rough cut and decided to film again.
    Kieran and I filmed the scene again and he was fantastic throughout the whole process; the second filming experience was much more fruitful than the first as I knew exactly what I wanted and Kieran was able to improve upon the first time. His acting was really good and fitted what I wanted perfectly.
   Once I'd uploaded and looked over the new footage, I was much happier with everything as nearly all the earlier issues had been fixed: the lighting was much better, the issue with the hands had been sorted and all the photographs stayed in their original places. So the second editing process began.
    I found editing for the second time much less stressful as I had a multitude of shots I could use and I'd also taken some new shots that I thought would work well in my piece. One of these was a shot of some water that would be edited to show some black ink being poured into it but then it would quickly cut back to the original shot. I wanted this to show my main character's mental instability (which is also why I used a lot of ghosting and fuzzy shots). Another idea I had was to actually use clips from news programmes and disasterous events such as 9/11 and Princess Diana's crash in my piece. These also represent the character's mental issues and his gruesome outlook on life as they're meant to be images that are flashing in his head; I conveyed this by making the images distorted. I had a small issue with the music and where I was going to actually fade it out but I decided to leave this until I got my feedback from Mr Earl on some of the overall shots. Rough cut 2 was complete!
    Mr Earl commented on some of the length of the shots, as well as the fact I needed to actually try and focus in on the actors in the photograph when their credits came up. This reduced the actual length of my piece by quite a bit and fixed the problem I'd been having with the music, so overall everything seemed to work out with Rough Cut 3. It's now uploaded and I'm just waiting on some feedback but hopefully I will be uploaded it again soon with a slighly different tite....FINAL PIECE!

Cut 3

Final Cut from Rhiann Quinn on Vimeo.

Rough Cut 2

Rough Cut 2 from Rhiann Quinn on Vimeo.
Here's my second rough cut for Neurosis. I'm much happier with this cut as I feel it just works better and thanks to the second shoot, all the glaringly obvious continuity mistakes have been fixed and I've been able to add scenes from news broadcasts into the latter half of my piece to show all the disturbing images in Kieran's character's mind. 

Rough Cut 1 - the first of many...

Rough Cut 1 from Rhiann Quinn on Vimeo.


Here's my first rough cut for the first half of my final piece. I'm aware that there are many continuity errors and lighting issues which is why I decided to reshoot this piece again and it came out much better! What I learned whilst editing this rough cut is that firstly I would have to edit out certain pieces of footage as I have a whole other scene to add and the first half is already three and a half minutes long which is bang on the suggested time. If i go over, I could be penalised and lose marks.