Race License - Removed 2 mins
The big part of our documentary that needed condensing was the race license. Until cutting it was by far the longest part of our documentary and in my opinion, the most boring. I worked with George to remove the unnecessary remarks from Wil [My lecturer] as well as combining the audio from in the car with shots from around the track. This worked really well in cutting down the sequence, enabling it to not drag on and allow us to get all of the same information in around half of the time. Keeping the onboard shots ensured we had shot variety because otherwise the sense of speed could easily get lost.
We had the issue with the camera facing me, meaning we didn't have the footage we really wanted from inside the car. But combining the footage from outside and the audio from within added another level to this scene and it allowed us to keep all of the shots along with relevant audio and cut down the time. We managed to halve the length of this scene by making this editing decision and I personally feel the scene is a lot more interesting due to the increase in pace. It still doesn't feel fast, which is what we wanted, but it doesn't feel unnecessarily drawn out like it did beforehand.
While I love how the Diary Room sequences look and feel, unfortunately, they take up a lot of time. We have already had to remove the final part of this sequence due to its
Abbi Pulling INT Shortened
As discussed in last weeks blog, we had already edited down this sequence quite substantially but this week I went through it in fine detail and decided exactly what was needed. We removed little phrases such as "my Dad used to race here" as they didn't add anything to my story but did cost us time. We kept doing this throughout the whole sequence and managed to cut around 20 seconds from this sequence. It did mean we needed to cover a few cuts with other footage such as Abbi getting in the car and pulling away as this is still relevant and allows us to cut the exact answer we want. We are not changing what is said, rather getting to the point because we all ramble on a little and because of our time limit we can not afford it. This is another sequence that is now probably as short as it can be, but I look forward to seeing the reaction from Simon and our peers to see if there is anything we could cut from it.
Bruno Spengler Introduction
We added music to the introduction of Bruno's sequence which gave a better tone, however, the sound of cars could be enhanced further still to make this introduction both visually and audibly interesting. This led into the sequence much more naturally as well as allowing us to further craft an audio scape throughout our documentary.
Along with this, we cut out the part where he rambles a little towards the end of discussing what the overalls are. This will be covered with some pre-recorded footage of Bruno putting on his overalls and helmet that I filmed back in 2017 for another project. It is good to finally use this footage as the planned project for that footage never actually became reality.
The sequence, in general, is very interesting and I enjoy watching it. Our biggest issue will be that without colour grading it clearly looks very different from the rest of our documentary. Obviously, I also know that it was
V/O Updated and Shortened - Including Better Shots over V/O
We had two sequences that stood out in being particularly long aside from the race license. Those were the intro to Jamie and the intro to the Kickstarter which was after this interview. Upon review, the first voiceover we recorded was nearly twice as long as it really needed to be. In realising this, Cailan wrote up a transcript of my old takes and I proceeded to edit them to a length that seemed a lot more reasonable.
After rewording and shortening these scripts I recorded the voiceover and we all agreed that they were much better. I took the Jamie intro down to around 60% of its original length, as with the introduction to the Kickstarter. Doing this allowed these sequences to feel more impactful and drag on a lot less than before. We saved nearly a minute by redoing these, which begs the question if others could be cut similarly. This will be a task for next week as I definitely can see wasted time in some of these transitions.
Along with recording these, we put in some better, new material that I had shot over the past year, showing the cost of motorsport through car issues, crashes and mistakes. We also included some visually incredible shots of cars on their limit to the Kickstarter introduction to ensure this sequence has something visually interesting in it.
Dan Interview Condensed
A sequence that has always worked really well is the walk and talk interview with Dan. Simon has always liked this sequence and we have too. Beth, however, criticised its length which spurred us to all look at it again and try and find a way to make it shorter, The problem was, as we filmed it in such a unique way, it makes it hard to condense without removing a critical part of the story.
However, I made the decision to cut the last question of both part 1 and part 2 as they didn't particularly add much to the story and it was the easiest to cut around as there was not a question afterwards which we needed. This along with trimming the ending of his reply for question 3 allowed us to take a significant amount of time off the ending of this scene. In doing so, it has helped us trim our run time even further.
This interview is now as short as I personally think it can be. Any shorter and we remove a piece of key information and I do not want that at all. This sequence would ideally be kept as well because it incorporates one of our sponsors for this documentary which is what they wanted. Cutting this sequence would be bad for multiple reasons so we don't think we need to do anything bar colour grade it now.
After doing a great job to trim over 20 seconds off this sequence last week, we managed to fine tune it even further, taking 15 more seconds out of this scene. This was mostly done through using stronger L cuts as well as removing a few small parts of Sam's dialogue which didn't really add anything. We also removed a section in which I basically repeat what Sam said, so it was no loss to remove that as well.
It has been hard to be so hyper-analytical of even one sentence, but doing this has allowed us to trim a lot of content that we don't need in this documentary. This does mean that some areas are probably a little faster than we had anticipated, but we are doing the correct job in ensuring we keep all of the sequences instead of cutting one altogether to save time. I think it will be worth asking Simon about this sequence once again, as he may find even more we can cut, but as it stands I am happy with this sequence and we are currently just over the 3 minutes we allocated for it.
Jamie INT Condensed
Being very analytical after a full viewing, I picked up on a few small points from this interview that could be removed to save a bit more time. I noticed that he clears his throat, which caused a 5 second moment of nothing, so that was taken out thanks to switching between our numerous cameras.
I also decided that we didn't need him to introduce himself because I already had done so in the opening voiceover. Of course, we had changed the opening voiceover meaning we definitely do not need this introduction. Both of these changes took a further 10 seconds off of this interview, once again drastically helping our run-time issues!
Timers For Stings
Cailan had spent some time in After Effects and created some countdown times for the stings which will build intrigue and show dedication in the build-up to the race. We plan to have four stings from start to around 3/4 of the way into our documentary to condense some of the elements of the journey we don't have enough time for. We will be showing the countdown before showing a little montage of me doing exercises, on the simulator as well as improvements in the Kickstarter. These visual bursts will allow the viewer to see a broader view of the journey I have been on. George has worked on a few experiments and they look good so far. I am happy I suggested these as I think they will add a lot to the documentary and without them, we may miss some of the journey I have been on. This, as well is showing I have been putting into practice the advice I had been given along the journey.
Intro Montage
Finally, we have worked on the introduction to the documentary. I have been looking through all of the material that we have filmed and started picking out some of the best shots that we can include in this dramatic introduction. This needs to be powerful as we need to draw the viewer in. We recorded the voiceover again last week and I am selecting clips that would work alongside this. Once again, there is a time issue and I made sure that the introduction did not drag on, as our first take took forever. I know Cailan is keen to include stuff about my YouTube channel in the introduction, but my thoughts are that this is included in a later Diary Room and I would rather have great shots of cars on the track and onboard footage than looking at a web page. This is my opinion but I am interested to see how Cailan tackles this over the weekend so we can see a cut of this before we meet up next week.
Debrief
This was definitely the hardest week for the edit so far, being so critical of our work was hard but we managed to cut a lot and got a lot closer to our final sequence length. We started the week with a 28-minute project, and thanks to a lot of hard work we have got this down to 22 minutes. This was a great effort from all and we can see that it is possible to make this the right length. A few weeks ago it did not seem possible with the amount of footage we had, but now it definitely does.
Once the race day is in and the content after it, we should be sitting on around 25 minutes, which still leaves us with a good amount to cut. However, at this stage, I am wary of taking out too much before we show Simon, as we want him to see the whole thing before deciding what needs to go. Saying this, we will be going through the timeline again and going deeper into the sequences we've already shown him to trim even further.
The race day is now the main focus and I'm excited to see how it looks. Of course, it is not what we expected but there is still a story there and I know we can make something very exciting. We will meet up as a team next week and go through the sequence once again. I am very proud of what we have done this week as we have significantly improved the documentary while decreasing the time taken. We still have a lot of work to do on this, but at least we know it is possible now.
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