Der fünfte Beitrag

So here it is, the final week of the Genius Hour project. This has definitely been the most challenging, time-consuming week of the entire project. Not that I left everything until the last minute, but I definitely underestimated the amount of time that I would need to complete my mission. I should have been more diligent throughout the course of this project and done more hands-on editing with the actual Final Cut Pro X system from the beginning. But that being said, I have learned from my mistakes, and have made a mental note for the future. So far this week, I spent over 40 hours working on my short film. I have been really dedicated to the project and this blog post is the first assignment that I have worked on outside of my short film. So how did I come to spend so much time working on my Genius Hour project? Well, the editing of a film (albeit a short film) is something that requires a lot of time. And even moreso when one does not know how to use the software that they are using. So I started watching more YouTube videos on how to do simple things with the Final Cut editing system last weekend. These videos started to get way too technical for me and were eating up a lot of my time. So I just started playing around with the functions of the software. I also ended up purchasing the VideoDuke downloader online. This enabled me to download any video that I wanted from YouTube, even those that contain music. Videoduke also allows you to download videos from Vimeo, DailyMotion and a wide variety of other content providers. I stuck to YouTube and was able to download a wide variety of songs from the artists that I would like to profile in my short film. I was able to access music videos, live shows, performances and fan videos. I also was able to download more artist interviews and lots more B-Roll footage. The Final Cut platform has two windows to see your work in. The left window is the viewer window wherein one can see the clip that they have selected and the right window displays what is in the timeline. The timeline is a horizontal bar at the bottom of the page which can be scrolled from left to right. The timeline is essentially the assembly of all of the clips that have been edited together along with any effects, fades, dissolves, titles, voiceover, etc. that the editor wants to include in their film. This timeline is essentially representative of the working copy of your film. So after I spent the weekend importing hours and hours of footage taken from YouTube, I then started to make a story out of the footage. I began to assemble the various clips together, often starting with a single song and then working my way around that song to divulge more information about the artist through interview clips and other songs. I had to make the difficult decision to cut a few artists out of my final selection for who would appear in the short film. Those who made it to the final version of the film are Alborosie (Italy), Alpha Blondy (Ivory Coast), Fat Freddy’s Drop (New Zealand), The Emeterians (Spain) and Gentleman (Germany). With these five acts, I had more than enough footage. You would be amazed at how long it takes to edit together one little segment about a single artist. Very painstaking and time-consuming. But I did it. I edited all of the relevant footage together. I did it in a rather basic manner wherein you just trim (cut) the section of a clip that you want to the desired duration, and then you drag it into the timeline. It is as simple as that. Once the clip is in the timeline, what do you do with it? Through trial and error, I discovered that you can detach the audio track from the video track of your clip. Once you have done so, the audio track appears below your video track and you can now adjust the sound levels. I was able to raise or lower the volume levels on an individual track, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to fade in and fade out the levels at the beginning and end of a clip. The problem is that when one clip is placed next to another, that joining of the two clips does not always happen seamlessly in regards to audio levels. Often there is an audio “jump” or an unsmooth audio transition when one clip leads into another. This is due to the source clip having been recorded at different levels from the clip that it is being paired with. So I went into the Apple Final Cut Pro X Support page and it was much more helpful than those lengthy YouTube tutorials. The Support page has the problems laid out in brief questions and provides simple answers which often propose a few different manners of solving a problem. A quick read and five minutes later I had figured out how to adjust audio levels and fade in/out of a selected clip. This seemingly small discovery was a big one as it made the sound transitions between clips more fluid and seamless. I am discovering in editing that this idea of making the film ‘seamless’ is one of the biggest challenges. If the film plays seamlessly, there are no jarring cuts, no disconnected bits, no incongruent visual edits. This is hard to achieve. I know that I have failed in some aspects, but I can also see that there are some points within the film where I have pulled it off pretty well and the narrative flows well when that happens. So at the moment the film is still too long. I would say that what I have right now is a rough cut of the film. It still needs more tweaking. I need to shorten some of the duration of some of the songs presented in the film as a few of them are too long. I already shortened many of the B-Roll clips in the film and that has contributed to the film being more fluid in its presentation. I am toying with the idea of putting some title cards in the film to introduce each artist. I will see if I end up doing that or not. I also need to do some end credits. I also found out how to do Voice-over within the Final Cut system. I was originally planning to import recorded audio clips into the system, but Final Cut has a really easy to use V/O capturing feature which is going to save me a lot of time. So that is where I am at right now. I would have to say that I feel pretty good at where I am at. I would also say that this is the week of my studies wherein I have learned the most in any aspect. Learning how to use the Final Cut Pro X platform on my own was at first daunting. It is a massive undertaking with many confusing options and variables. But once you go through the process, put in the many requisite hours, and learn how to manipulate the system, then you do receive a sense of accomplishment when viewing your final product. I am glad that I took this project on, although with the busy school workload, I would definitely attempt something easier in the future.