Editing Diary: 3

There are a number of problems we have encountered in the editing process today. Firstly, we have found that the clip of the 'present day' narrative leading up to the first flashback scene is too short. It involves the couple sat at the breakfast table, whilst Beth daydreams and Oscar eats by himself. Our storyboarded plan here was for the female to sigh and look out of the window, catching her eye on a Scrabble box hidden in the corner. We then intended to cut to a shot of recognition on her face, which would lead smoothly into the beginning of the flashback, showing the two in a happier time frame playing the board game. However, the clips we have did not turn out to be as effective as we had planned, and a number of them were unusable for numerous different reasons. Additionally, these shots were taken on one of the handheld camera as opposed to the camera attached to the tripod. This means that there is an excessive and perhaps unavoidable element of unsteadiness to the shot, which can potentially have a negative effect on the overall professionalism of our video. The only usable clips we have for this section were extremely short, lasting for around 1 beat each. This contrasts highly with the smoother, more in time editing of the rest of the video to this point, so will be something that we will review and try to iron out at a later stage. For now, we feel it is an ineffective use of time to devote hours to one small section of footage, so we will continue to edit the rest of our video and then review this section, and make any amendments if possible.

Another problem we encountered in this stage was the lighting throughout this flashback scene. Our original intention was to elevate the romanticism and sentimental value of the scene through the use of low-key lighting in the form of closed curtains and candles. However, the main flaw in this idea came in the fact that we had to film these shots during the day, and therefore could not effectively create an authentic night-time impression. In many shots, the bright natural daylight can be seen from behind the curtains, pretty much ruining the illusion of nighttime we had hoped to achieve. Additionally, the candle light did not appear to do much by way of lighting the scene, and therefore this was a rather ineffective approach to the filming. If we were to do it again, I would suggest perhaps the use of other methods of low-key lighting, such as lamps to dimly light the couple from the front, still serving to create a similar effect, but at least making them visible in the filmed footage.

We have attempted to resolve the lighting issues in these clips through the use of editing, but we are still uncertain as to whether this has aided the effect at all. We are likely to go back to this in a later stage of the editing process to see if there are any improvements we can make.

We have been experimenting with different effects we could include in the video, and decided to add the diagetic sound of the glasses clinking during the match-on-action shot. To do this we raised the volume levels on that one particular clip to hear that sound simultaneously with the song. However, we decided that this was not a professional nor product conventional feature, and overall would not tend to work as an effect in a real music video, and so we removed this effect, dragging the sound levels back down to mute it.

The editing process around this section is quite tricky, as we have not yet filmed the second half of the flashback scenes. This means that we do not yet know if there is any outdoor footage we want to include up to this point, and therefore must leave gaps whilst editing in order to add footage to fill the blanks at a later date.