Carology News - Editing Process Part 4 Sam's Opinion & Adding New Interview

Today we continued to edit the project. I have been really ill the last few days and I still am, but I wanted to give all my support to the edit because I knew if I did not show up today it would be just George by himself and he may want a second opinion and not be able to ask anyone in our group. I arrived about an hour after George did so I could give him some space and let him put something together. When I got there, there was a basic NEW interview put in place with Formula ford racer Jason.

After I had given a few opinions on it and we had slightly adjusted the close up shots we then had a meeting with Sam who gave us a few pointers for our work.

• Tidy Audio, possibly with transitions. Also audio levels need to be finalised. -18 db
• Change opening sequence to Car, Bus, Train then Plane
• White Balance properly when we re-do the studio piece
• Possibly shorten driving sequence, try to find natural end points.
• Lose the shot of opening the car from the inside.
• Find one or two segments from the Ajay interview to include in studio piece.

I also picked up that the voice sync in the interview with the second camera was not quite in line with the original audio. Sam's feedback though was positive, much like Helen's he liked my presentation and also liked the whole car test package. He felt the Ajay interview however did sap the enjoyment out of the piece. This gave myself and George a bit of thinking to do. We wanted to select one moment from the Ajay piece that we can interweave into the studio piece with an introduction from Andrew or Cailan. We settled on a line where Ajay talks about right now being the right time to buy an electric car. We thought this provide good balance of our news piece, with some negatives and some positives in relation to electric cars.

George came up with the idea of having text over the part where i drive away in the package. I was unsure of this idea at first but as we have done so well with the rest of the edit, we found a common ground. My idea was the car wiping the text off the screen as I drive out of shot. It keeps the shot more fluid and keeps the movement up. Before I was unsure because it was very static and I felt it did kind of sap the enjoyment out of the piece. After George had edited this to wipe as I drove off, I really liked the idea. With key figures about the car it reinforces to the viewer some of the stats that will be relevant to the test that we are conducting. 

While George wanted to create a backdrop for the news anchor, I wanted to edit a couple of things. I wanted to write the text that Andrew reads over in the package segment, we edited this to be a little shorter as the second part of what Andrew said was not really needed. With the text on the screen it feels much more news like. It did not take me too long to create this file with a blurred out background of Andrew next to a car, but I still think it needs work if we want to use it. I do feel the font needs to be changed but have struggled to find one that I think works and looks professional.

I also added in the footage that I shot of the cars going around Brands Hatch and added them into the live interview segment. I chose ones that where steady and also clear and at the same time fitted in as best that I could with what Jason was saying in the interview. Jason gave us a great interview meaning we don't need to cut away too much and I have probably added in too much B ROLL right now, but we can easily take it out. We also noticed an issue with the wide angle on the tripod in the live interview. As George was trying to operate 2 cameras at once we did struggle to know if they where both working properly. It looks like the ISO was left too high on the wide angle meaning that it is fuzzy and does look a little odd. It is not too bad but we are trying our best to not use too much of the wide angle because of this issue. Once again though, there is not much we could have done as George was busy on camera 1 and i was busy presenting. It was very hard with both of us.

George stayed late and nearly finished the background for the news anchor piece. It is looking very good, but it originally has a blue carpet as well and we did point this out to george saying this is a little vibrant, we suggested a slightly less crazy colour and while it does look better now, we still may need to adjust it to look more realistic and to colour screen. and we all have to appreciate George's dedication to the edit. While I want to respect his boundaries and give him space in the edit, he always does go the extra mile to get stuff done, I hope everyone would feel I did similar while directing.