Fitness Montage
This sequence was already in a good place but George and I spent some time slightly trimming it as well as going through the shots and replacing some to better show the intensity of the training. This along with the cuts to music drastically change the tone of this sequence and certainly make it more powerful. I am a big fan of this improvement and feel this scene is now pretty much at its final stage as we cannot do too much extra to it. As we are still too long on the overall run time I am not sure what scene may get the chop but I feel this cannot be one of them. It is definitely one of the scenes which shows dedication to the project. Saying this, we may have to condense this sequence in order to hit the runtime. All this sequence needs at this stage is grading and colour correcting. I think this sequence is now complete bar this. But we may have to be even more ruthless once we see the overall runtime.
Abbi Pulling Interview
The biggest sequence for George to edit this week was the Abbi interview that we recorded this week. This was the last of the contributor interviews and we needed to ensure the sequence was tight with all unnecessary answers cut. I asked more questions than actually needed for this interview as I wanted to give us options in the edit. This was a blessing when we came to edit, as even though we had good answers we needed certain parts from the other questions to make the sequence work.
Abbi was really good in the interview which made the edit less hassle than we were expecting. Capturing on track footage as well as shots of Abbi preparing to go on the track were also valuable when hiding cuts in the interview sequence, which we needed to do to ensure this sequence was tight. The walk and talk segment worked well apart from the shaky camera at the start which we have covered up with an L-Cut of us driving and arriving at the track. While not ideal we would have had to do something like this anyway due to the time restrictions we have.
The sit-down interview was a little harder to edit because of the desire to make the sequence tight. Our three camera setup really helped us in this scenario, but we needed to make sure we didn't include any parts of the answer that didn't really move the story along. This along with my tendency to look down at the questions to ensure I was saying the right thing also made it harder for George to edit. He came up with a good solution to of using a few extra cutaways over these segments as even our three camera setup was hard to use due to exterior factors [Tractor in the back of shots]. We obviously couldn't jump cut from a close up of Abbi to another version of the same shot [While I was looking down, hence the reason both the wide and close up of me were unuseable], so George's decision to use cutaways was the best solution and gave us the opportunity to flex the extra footage we had recorded, as it would have been a shame not to include it.
Overall this sequence has been edited together very quickly and to a very good standard. We may be able to trim a little out of Abbi's answers to further condense this sequence, but a further update will be seen next week. I am happy with how this sequence looks, especially considering
Jamie Interview - Cutaways
Jamie's interview has been trimmed to a stage where the actual interview itself cannot really be shortened without losing context. We have reduced the opening drone shot as it took up 10 seconds which was really unneeded. This along with including relevant cutaways that we recorded on the day allow this sequence to be much better visually than it was before. I had some shots of Jamie from 2018 in his Formula 3 car which were also used to make this scene even more exciting. As I have said before, the interview itself and it's content are not the most exciting, so including these cutaways helps the pacing of the scene.
I know Simon is not a massive fan of Jamie which has left us as a team questioning if we should remove this scene. The problem is that what he says is vital to a lot of the drama and jeopardy that comes later on in the documentary. Without the context of his interview, what happens later loses meaning and we need to ensure that is not the case. As with the two above sequences, this is now at a very good stage and I am personally happy with how it stands. I don't think we could trim this any further. We have tried, but it has meant what was said doesn't actually give us the full picture of how expensive motorsport is.
Clips for Bruno, Motorsport is Expensive, Footage Behind v/o
While small sequences, all of these needed cutaways to ensure they were both visually interesting and relevant in this documentary. I had shots of Bruno putting his motorsport equipment on which have been placed into the sequence to allow it to be more interesting. The vast amount of content we have is allowing this documentary to be incredibly visually interesting which I am really proud of. The footage shot extends back to 2017 and I am really happy that I have kept all of this because I knew at some point it would be relevant to this documentary.
As for the footage for the various voice-overs, including the "Motorsport is expensive" sequence, I went through my hard drive to find some relevant footage from all of the motor races I have been to over the last few years. As I keep all of my footage we had a lot to choose from and I found exciting clips of fast race cars going around corners as well as moments of drama where cars have issues or have crashed. These will underlay the relevant voice-over nicely. As I know more about the sport than the rest of the crew it made sense for me to be the one choosing these clips. What I found really works well in the edit and I think this makes our documentary even better visually. I don't want all of the voice-over to have shots of me driving or walking, so the fact we have so much better footage to chose from has helped out the voice-over sequences, which get the facts out there rather than being exciting. These scenes all now have clips behind them, which means we can focus on the race day sequence which is our main priority going forward.
Kickstarter Graphics
Simon critiqued the first cut of the voice-over introducing the Kickstarter fundraiser as it solely used Cailan's graphics. We knew it was not the eventual end for that sequence but these graphics were used to cover it up while we decided the relevant points of the GFX. We have now slimmed down the use of graphics and included shots of me setting up the page in person, with the typical keyboard typing and mouse click. While this is somewhat stereotypical, I am not sure how we could innovate in this area. The use of this footage which we recorded in our pick up day as well as shots of cars having issues [showing the cost of the sport] allowed this sequence to be more visually interesting than simply a slow GFX package. The mix between real-life footage, GFX and race footage makes this sequence much better for the viewer.
I do think the inclusion of GFX works in this documentary, but we must be aware that this is not a news piece, and this type of footage can easily make a scene appear as such. The reason we decided to show the sequence in this way is that we wanted to ensure the viewer knows what the Kickstarter is and what it looks like. This is the best way to visually portray it. I am very happy with the sequence as it is now, but we may re-record the voice-over next week to be able to condense it. This is the same for the sequence that comes into the Jamie interview, as both could be quite easily condensed to 70% of their current length. This will help us cut even more, which is needed in the situation we're currently in with the documentary length.
Summary
With the race day upon us, we are in a much better position in terms of the edit. We are still aware that scenes need to be condensed so that we are in a position to be within the 22-minute outer timeframe for this documentary. I am proud that we have already cut off a few minutes this week and the aim for next week will be to get the documentary to around 20 minutes so we can add the race day on, making a documentary of around 23 minutes. We can then show this to the class and understand what everyone thinks can be cut. The race day will be the priority next week, but we will also finesse some of the sequences not mentioned in this blog post. I am personally really happy with the progress and now that the majority of the filming is complete, editing as a team is becoming a lot easier. The edit progress is certainly where it should be at this stage.
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