WEEKLY JOURNALS

This is where you think about your FMP learning journey and development.
Don’t simply describe what you did - consider what you have learnt and how this has benefitted
your project. What do you need to improve?

THIS IS JUST GUIDANCE THAT YOU NEED TO ADAPT TO YOUR OWN PROJECT. YOU HAVE
CREATED YOUR OWN PRODUCTION SCHEDULES AND YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS SHOULD
REFELCT THAT.

THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN THE WEEKS YOU COMPLETED THEM. DO

NOT JUST SUBMIT THIS FORM FILLED IN FOR YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS. THERE SHOULD BE
11 WEEKLY BLOG ENTRIES (INCLUDING EASTER).

Week Nine – Editing

EDITING

How did you find the editing This week I edited the final version of my production which I
process? found to be somewhat challenging as I had some problems
to overcome. Overall the process was quite smooth and I
am very happy with what I have done. I found that
background music is very powerful in my production and
has been very key while editing as it has created strong
emotion appeal and has proven to be influential when
viewing. I found that the cross cutting I did worked very well
as I cut between the various scenes and I found that this
worked really well as it effectively showed the relationship
between the scenes and how they are relevant to each
other. The editing process was very long and took a lot of
time to complete however I am very happy with how it
turned out. As my footage turned out really well it made the
editing process easier and more simple to get right as there
were not scenes that I had to change a lot due to the fact
that I had already filtered out the takes that I did not want
in my production, this made the process easier and simpler
to get done. This week I was not as rushed to get the
production completed as I had more time to edit the final
version of my production this week making the process less
stressful to get completed by the deadline.

What skills did you have to
learn/develop during the editing
process?
During the editing process I had to develop my cross cutting
skills as my production relies quite heavily on cross cutting
between scenes as scenes I cross cut between are relevant
to each other and by using cross cutting I am able to show
the relevance of the scenes to each other as they are key to
helping the audience understand what is happening in my
productions narrative. By developing my cross-cutting skills,
I can link very key scenes that essentially need each other
to be linked to therefore make sense to my audience.
Another skill I have developed was changing the audio
levels and pitch to make music go from non-diegetic to
diegetic. This essentially meant that I could make the audio
sound as if it is external to the scene but then the audio
source appears to from in the scene itself. This was
important while editing as It meant that I could create an
effective comedic moment in my production, although my
production is meant to remain quite serious I did want to
include some kind of comedy so that audiences are more
engaged and I believe that by using this skill I achieved that
in the dancing scene. To do this I first lowered the decibels
of the audio levels to therefore make the audio quieter then
I put a pitch shifter effect on the audio and decreased the
bass the increased the treble to make a sharper noise to
simulate the sound of loud songs playing from earphones,
the sound of this can be heard from earphones as they are
not made to play like a speaker so there quality is similar to
the effect I have placed on it audio. This is relevant to my
production and improves my production as it adds to the
comedic moment shown in my production in scene two in
which the protagonist is dancing. This change in audio
causes the scene to be comedic and shows the auditory
perspective on the supporting character who walks in on
the protagonist dancing. I also developed my skills with
background audio and music as I used it to improve my
production. Firstly, I used background music for the shots
the controller is in so that he has a consistent theme
throughout his appearances. This also gives some context
to his character, as I used low ominous music for his
scenes/shots viewers will get an ominous feeling from him
and by hearing this dark style of background music it tells
audiences straight away that he is a ‘bad guy’ or antagonist
with bad or villainous intentions yet to be revealed. I also
used this in a couple of other noteworthy scenes. I put
dramatic music over the research montage in scene four in
which the protagonist is researching and working out if he
lives in a simulation. For this I placed dramatic music over
the top of it to emphasise the scenes significance and its
seriousness in the narrative. I also used this in the final
scene In which the protagonist is running down the road
and into the woods before then being deleted, for this scene
I put a powerful song over this footage and the song was
the only audio playing. This makes the scene seem sad as
the music has a sadder theme to it which foreshadows the
characters ‘death’. This sad music also gives the tone of the
scene as the production comes to a dramatic end.
Upload screenshots of the editing
process and explain what they show.

The screenshot above shows scene five in which the

protagonist is running through the woods. For this part of
the editing process I had not implemented music yet
however I was syncing up the clips for the scene as I had
used recorded many shots for this running scene and you
can see that there are many clips on the timeline and this
meant I had to time the clips specifically so that this part of
the scene did not look choppy or rough, instead I have
made it look smooth and continuous which supports the
continuity of the production.

In the screenshot above I implemented music into the

timeline. This can be seen towards the end of the timeline
as I have put music over the footage and cut almost all
audio out for dramatic effect. By removing almost all audio
other than the music there is no clash of audio and it also
makes the slow motion shots look much smoother and
closer to professional cinematic standard as it keeps a
rhythm but then as it breaks into the normal motion footage
there is still no audio so that there is no clash between the
diegetic sound and the non-diegetic audio (music). You can
also see where I have started implementing clips over each
other for visual effects I have implemented. The layering I
have done is going to help with the special effects I want in
my production as I have used them to split shots down the
middle to then create visual effects by editing each side of
the shot that then allows me to do things such as freezing
one half of a shot and then playing the other half so that
the scene seems to have frozen but is also playing at the

What issues did you have to
overcome whilst editing? How did
you move past them?
same time.
In the screenshot above you can see the final stages of the
editing process. In this screenshot I am editing scene five
and in the screenshot you can see that I have not only
implemented the music for the final scene of the production
but I have also implanted sound effects and background
music. The sound effects make the production more
engaging and immersive while also adding to the scenes as
the sound effects make it more believable to the viewers. I
also used background music for the shots that we see “The
Controller”, I used ominous music for his appearances as
this gives a tone to the scenes that we see him in and also
tells audiences what kind of character he is, clearly shown
by the ominous music he is the antagonist and by adding a
bit of background music to his shots I am able to give him a
slight theme and tell audiences what kind of character he Is
without having to literally tell them through dialogue. The
use of music is subtle and I have used audio fades to then
make the cross cutting smoother and to make it more
gradual. For this I also smoothened the transitions between
the audio as some of it overlaps so for this I made used
fades on the audio clips to then make for a smoother
transition between music and sound effects.
My main issues came from implementing special effects as
this proved to be challenging. The first time I used this was
in scene three in which I wanted the cat to walk across the
room twice in the exact same way to show a glitch in the
simulation. The problem I had was that when I implemented
a split down the middle of the shot the split was very
obvious and the editing looked very bad when the shot was
like this but I could not fully overcome it as the editing
became quite complex so I found a way to try and make it
as subtle as possible. To do this I moved the split further
towards the left of the shot so that more covered up the
split then I tried to position the split line in the area of least
movement that still allowed for the visual effect to work.
Below is the result:
As you can see it is not perfect however the effect worked
and the split is not horribly obvious although unfortunately
it is noticeable, unfortunately this was a very hard effect to
get right and my best option was to make it as subtle as
possible.
In scene four I used a more basic visual effect when
showing a car freezing in shot, at first I attempted to split
the shot down the middle then have the car freeze while I
react to it freezing however the problem was that the split
between the frozen side of the clip and the playing side of
the clip did not work well and looked quite poor quality and
lowered the production value so instead I froze the whole
click with a key frame hold and then after the car freezes I
then cut to the clip in which the protagonist reacts to what
he has just seen:

This is the freeze frame I used, fortunately the shot was far
out enough so that you could believe that I just standing
very still even though the frame is frozen however by
having the camera record from further out it is harder to
see that everything is frozen compared to if the camera was
closer up.
Another problem I ran into was the problem with audio
levels as there was an inconsistency with audio and some of
the audio would reach the red levels when playing which
when exported would sound very inconsistent and some
parts would come out distorted so to fix this and avoid
these problems I watched through my production and
lowered the clips that were too loud, fortunately none were
too quiet so none of the clips needed to be louder. Once I
finished lowering the loud audio to the right levels I
watched through the production again to check that the
 audio was consistent relevant to what was happening in the
scene.

Have you identified any scenes
which need re-shooting? Will you be
able to do this?
Luckily there are no scenes that need re-shooting. This was
because I took multiple takes of each scene to make sure
that I had back-up shots in case the original shots had
problems or were not done properly. To do this I reviewed all
shots after filming to make sure I did not have to re-shoot
on the day of filming before dismissing actors or crew. To
avoid re-shooting which therefore wastes editing time, I
reviewed footage after filming and I shot multiple takes of
the same scene so that I had back-ups in case I overlooked
any problems when reviewing the footage.

Are you on track this week? If not, This week I am very much on track and only have to finish
how far behind are you? this weekly blog and get my final version of my production
exported and published on my website as well as YouTube.

What work do you need to complete I will need to complete this weekly blog which by now is
outside of lessons to stay on track? complete and I also need to export my production and
publish it on YouTube and also put it on my website.

High Grade Tips

Evaluation & Reflection

● ‘reasoned decisions and inform the development of ideas’ – both your evaluation
and the weekly reflections above will clearly show both how and why your ideas developed
throughout the project
● ‘demonstrating clarity in thinking’ – all of the above plus very clear links between your
research, planning, idea development and the production of your poster and film trailer