Re-Edit Blog

There were some difficulties I faced when re-editing my film opening. The first issue was caused by COVID-19. Due to this pandemic, I wasn't able to re-edit the week I planned too because Spring Break was extended to a week earlier. Since I didn't have access to the school or the laptops that already had my editing software, Pinnacle Studio, I had to figure out a way to edit. My first idea was to use the default editing program that came with my laptop; however, it wouldn't allow me to open my film on it because the film was created using a different program. Due to this issue, I was left with two options: re-edit my video from scratch or buy Pinnacle Studio. I discussed with Leila the pros and cons of both ideas and we concluded that purchasing Pinnacle Studio would be the best option. Before my parents very kindly and generously bought me the program, I tried to see if I could finish the film just using the free-trial version. I could finish my film using the free trial; however, there would be a watermark. I didn't want there to be a watermark on my film, so I bought the program.

Since I never had Pinnacle Studio on my laptop, I had to download it. The downloading process took about an hour, so my re-editing time was delayed. The time was furthered delayed because after the program downloaded, I had to import all the footage I had collected over the process of this project. Hundreds of footage needed to be imported, so more time was wasted. Once everything I imported I could finally start editing. I knew that there was a lot of editing changes, so I started as soon as I could.

Before I started editing, I watched the film to remind myself of what I had already finished editing and what needed to be fixed. One of the main things that needed to be fixed was the ending. The ending was extremely choppy, it didn't flow at all. It was also very hard to understand what was happening during some parts. To fix the choppiness, I added transitions and made some of the scenes longer. In order for my audience to have a better understanding of what was happening, I reordered some of the scenes. I was added in more footage that helped to develop the story. While I was editing the ending, I cut out one of the shots of Cori saying her dialogue and replaced it with one of the takes I filmed on the re-shoot day.

The next part I wanted to re-edit was scene 3. Leila and I decided to completely re-do scene 3 with the footage we gathered from the re-shooting day. The new scene was a conversation between the spies about being ready to go on their mission. I cut out the old scene and placed the new dialogue in the order Leila and I discussed and decided on during the re-film day. When all the footage was placed in its correct placement, I decided to watch it to see how it looked. I quickly realized that it looked extremely choppy and that it was missing aspects that would make the dialogue make sense. After I made this realization I contacted the actresses and asked if we could meet up to re-film again; however, due to COVID-19, both of the actresses were able to meet to film. This meant that I had to work with what I had. The footage was originally placed in an order that created a shot-reverse-shot, which was something we needed in our film. I tried reorganizing these scenes in a way that it wouldn't ruin this type of shot, but nothing was working. In the end, Leila and I decided that for scene 3 to make sense we would have to get rid of the shot-reverse-shot and order the footage differently. I added a piece of dialogue from the Monitor in between the spies' conversation, which made the scene flow better.

A smaller change that was made was volume adjustments. Since new dialogue was added, I helped Leila go through and make some of them louder and others quieter. I also added fades to the music to make the opening flow better.

When I opened my film on the Pinnacle Studio program on my laptop it changed the titles, so I had to re-do them. After Leila and I finished adding in all the titles I tried adding in the title transitions. After multiple attempts, I realized that the program was not going to let me add in the transition after I created the title and that I had to make the transition before the title. I had to go through the film and delete all of the old titles and replace them with new ones that already had the transitions. After the blank titles with transitions were added, Leila and I wrote what we wanted them to say. After Leila went over all the titles to make sure they were all correct, I went through them all and placed them in their correct positions.

This is a picture of me and Leila editing our film at my house.