Editing

I am officially done editing the final film opening. Runner Up COMPLETED!! (I can't wait to post the final product soon) Here's how editing went: techniques I used and why along with changes I made throughout the process.

This is the final timeline on Premiere ^^

Kind of exposing myself here but the setup was silly and my friend Mateo took a picture of me... I have the worst posture ever and look like a 9 year old while editing just wanted to share lol

First thing I did was organize all my clips into bins so I would know where to pull from when editing.

I divided it into audio files, wrestling clips, training clips, and exit clips. 

General Sequence

After a while of not knowing where to start and just staring at my screen, I went all in and started building the sequence from nothing (building a montage was kind of hard because I got so many different kinds of clips that I could mix and match into any way). I eased into it with some b-roll type shots to briefly establish the area and feature Matt's face and establish him as the protagonist. Then, I went straight into the montage, alternating with a training clip and then a wrestling clip. Before I finished that though, I stopped and skipped to the end (2min mark) so I wouldn't overdo it and have to delete my work to fit the "end" (quoted because obviously it's not a real END since it's a film OPENING). I ordered the exit clips, which was easy since there was only 3, and then developed the final wrestling/training montage leading up to that. I'm super happy with how that turned out because I was able to edit it in a way that you can see how the protagonist's defeat within the match matches up with his defeat in the training as well. Once that was set I just had to finish the rest of the montage. Obviously after watching it all together I changed a few things, but the original sequence I put together ended up being the final product.

Sound

As I said in my music post, I got super lucky. I think it was meant to be because after putting in Erick's song, I didn't have to change anything. All I did was line it up with the end and it worked really well, I'm happy with how it turned out. In order to emphasize the flashback feeling, I added a lowpass to the parts of the song playing during the wrestling clips, this gave it a muffled or drowned out effect. This was exactly as I wanted as it would reflect how in the actual match, the protagonist drowned out all outside noise; it was just him and his opponent. I ended up not adding constant powers after every transition of training to wrestling because I liked how abrupt it sounded, felt more dramatic. I also added some sounds effects I found online in the free to use Youtube Audio Library in order to make the sound more dramatic or emphasized. I did this for the metal plates clanging, which were used as a sound transition from a training clip to a wrestling flashback. I also added other noises like outside ambiance towards the end when the protagonist exits the building and for a phone ringing sound, apart from that I didn't need any other crazy effects. 

Flashback clips

In addition to the lowpass added for a muffled affect, I chose to do some other things to emphasize the wrestling scenes as a flashback. For one, I adjusted the aspect ratio using the crop tool (not sure if that's how you actually do it but it worked just fine) not only to differentiate it but to do as I researched in my previous blog post about Aspect Ratios and give a confined feeling. I also color graded to make the clips more blue toned, like a "cold" or bad memory. 

Graphics

Originally, for the title, my friend Mateo was going to help me use a mask tracking thing to make the title reveal. We ended up scrapping it though because with all the movement in that clip it was super tedious having to manually track it frame by frame. 

                                               

(that's him trying before giving up)^

Instead, I stuck to a classic title with no movement, I like how it looks though. Font wise I just chose a "sporty" font that looked good in all caps. 

For the credits I won't lie, I felt super awkward. It's weird crediting yourself on a project.. having to write your name for directing, editing, writing, cinematography, producing, and editing just sounds like overkill. The way I ended up doing it though to look a little less awkward is just keeping my name and using cross dissolves to fade in/out the applicable titles. Additionally, I added Matt and Roger of course and Erick for music creds. 

Editing wasn't too bad overall. I showed my not-so-final to my friends, heard their critiques and adjusted a few more things before the actual final was born.