2 Minute Character Study - Editing Process - Fine Cut

The rough cut was a good starting point to allow me to continue cutting down the footage, and start to move more away from the shot list and storyboard structure, and more on to what subjectively looked best where. The fine cut allowed me to start moving clips frame by frame in order to get each shot as tight as it could be and allow the narrative to flow as smoothly as possible. After doing this and tweaking some of the shots a bit, we were still at around 3 minutes long for the final film. This meant that we had to decide how to shorten down the rest to make it fit into 2 minutes and in the end, we decided to go with something a bit different and experimental. This was to use jump cuts in certain shots, especially around the male character losing his mind, to connote a sense of damage and dream like unrealism to the film which works in conjunction with the record player skipping/jumping and the use of the string.

Creating quick jump cut sequences to connote losing of mind.

After doing this, the film was still slightly over time, so we decided to cut out one or two shots that transitioned the narrative in the middle of the sequence, and replace them with a fade in and out from black. Although this was done simply to get the time limit down, we can justify its use as being to show the inconsistency of the male's mind and how his emotions can change.

Using carefully timed fades with considered durations.

After finishing the whole sequence and cutting it down to size, I started to address some of the issues with certain shots, be it the lighting, continuity errors or colour. I started by masking certain areas out in shots that you could see some of the background in, much like I did in the rough cut, however here I used a different effect and even used keyframing in it to track with these background anomalies.

Keyframing mask effect.

As you can see, the Spot Colour Correction effect allowed the masking to be much more accurate than the previous effect I used, as well as applying the effect to a filler above the series of clips so that it didn't alter the video directly itself.
After masking all the clips that needed it, I began the final run through of the sequence and began to colour correct certain shots. The main issue I had was that the actor's face was very red in quite a few shots, so I had to turn this down as much as possible without effecting anything else in the shot. I did this by using the Curves tab in the colour correction mode and moving the red curve more towards the blue, to try and cancel out some of the reds in his face.

Colour correcting areas of the film.

After completing this, the fine cut was done and I exported and sent the copy over to Luke our sound designer, so he could sync up any remaining sound that needed moving after any slight re-jigs which he could then send back to me for the final export ready for the presentation. Throughout the fine cut and rough cut, I've been sending over my work for Luke so he could continue the soundtrack for the film whilst we worked, and sync up any sound that needed to be synced as we go along. This is because of the limited time frame we, as a post-production team, have been allowed to work with, so neither of us further hinders the work of the other by waiting around for the final fine cut to be ready.

Final video fine cut assembly.

Overall, I am relatively pleased with the edit and the final film, however, we all do agree that without the 2 minute cut off point and more consideration into this when planning the shots, the film would be a lot stronger and less ambiguous. We have discussed that it might be useful making an alternative version of the film without any time boundaries on it just to see what it could have looked like, and if it would have been better or worse that the film we submitted.