Screenshots of Editing Progress

Editing Progress

Final Cut Express was a video editing software suite, now discontinued, created by Apple Inc. It was the consumer version of Final Cut Pro and was designed for advanced editing of digital video as well as high-definition video.

When editing we used the software of Final Cut Express in which we found many advantages in editing and adapting our film, there has been much progress through producing our film.
One thing we found very helpful was when cutting our shots and trying to dissolve them together we found it useful to use the effect of Fade In, Fade out and cross dissolve. This we felt to dissolve the shots together we needed to add these certain effects to make the narrative flow better and give transition between the shots. We focused on other effects which we may use however we wanted subtle effects to show a transition between time, and as the narrative is a thriller but a quite emotional narrative we wanted to use continuity editing and not quicken the editing up by using obvious editing which we thought could potentially ruin our transition between the shots.

We also used the toolbox for the stereo to fix the audio in various shots where there were interruptions such as loud traffic. We changed the levels of the audio and focused on correcting the shots that needed correcting. This was very easy to do and we all found it useful when adding extra audio as we could mute the shots that had background audio. Again we found that the progress of editing audio were helpful as we could tone the added audio in the radio trailer but make the voiceover louder and the music added slightly quieter. The process was very helpful when editing audio.

During the process of filming we had to occasionally reshoot some shots in which had slight difference in lighting which we used the effect of video filters and colour corrector, which you dragged and  added on to the shots that didn't match the lighting and it would just match the other shots. This was especially helpful as it made the film flow and didn't look abnormal with the change of lighting. Also we found it very useful on Final Cut Express that you can change and adapt the saturation and colour contrast as come of the shots seemed more warm than others which we found was easy to adjust.

In the final process of editing we wanted to add credits and titles which we just added text and changed the effect of how we wanted it to appear on the screen. With the credits we added the effect which made the text scroll down like the traditional way credits appear on screen, and we made the titles and other text including the actors name and title of the film, cross dissolve as we didn't want obvious effects on the text to match the other editing.

Overall, we felt that final cut express was very easy to operate and found there were a way to change the things we wouldn't be able to change using other programmes. Many of our problems were linked with lighting and colour which wasn't a problem as we just used the colour corrector and the brightness so then it would match the other shots. The progress has been a lot more helpful by using this editing software and if we found certain things difficult we could easy find another way round it or could just search for it, as it was organised this made the editing process easier.