Lara McEvoy - 319311
Unit 13: Final Major Project
week 12: 22 - 26/4/24
As I was able to make good progress with the edit last week, I decided that I want to have a version of the edit done by the end of the week. This is mainly because I am wanting my lecturer to watch it through, but it would also mean I am able to fine tune it and get it done. For Monday, I tend to use this day as a journal/catch up day because I find that during the week I am able to note down what I have done, what went well and what didn’t, and then explore it further on Mondays. Over the weekend I have a lack of motivation to work and want some time out, so by dedicating Mondays to this I have found it ensures the work gets done and I am as up to date as I can be.
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On Tuesday, I made a start editing, but soon realised I wasn’t getting very far as I felt the first segment (about when they started) was unfinished. This is because I hadn’t added in my lower thirds yet, which was bugging me, so I decided to go back to my pre-vis I had created in pre-production and use them. But when I put them in over the footage, I didn’t like how it looked. Though I liked the font and felt it fitted the aesthetic, to me it just felt wrong. How I overcame this is explored in the post-production section. Click the button below to go there.
Personally, I think that the new lower thirds fit really well, and I am proud of how they look. I feel they fit the aesthetic I was going for and just make it seem more me and fitting to the piece. If I were to have used a basic font, such as arial or avenir light, it wouldn’t fit the piece. Creating these lower thirds shows that I have aesthetical awareness of my piece and am trying to do all I can to ensure that the piece feels like a whole. Rather than just having thrown some random lower third on and accepted it. Along with this, creating them the way I did helped me to develop my understanding of After Effects, meaning I now understand it a little better than I had before.
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From this, it meant on Wednesday I could make greater progress. I continued to add in b-roll and actuality through the next few segments, until I got to the section where Emily talks about her solo. Within this section I had previously chosen what actuality I was going to use but there was no music, and it didn’t feel right without music. So, I decided to do what I had done for when Chloe was talking about her solo and use the music from the solo itself. With Chloes this was fairly easy as she was the Sugarplum Fairy, which was danced to the iconic music ‘The dance of the Sugarplum Fairy’, so I could find it easily. But with Emily’s her music wasn’t a piece I was familiar with, so I used shazam to find it.
From this I was able to find out the music was called ‘The Gay Hussar’ by The Excelsior Ropes. Then I went onto youtube to find the song, popped it into a youtube to mp3 converter then put it into Premiere Pro.
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As shown in the video, I added in the solo music and matched it up, but when I then put it with her talking, I found that it didn’t work as intended. Rather than it being some background music, no matter the volume I set it to, it was too loud. The music was more overpowering than Emily speaking which isn’t want I wanted, along with this it changed the mood of the piece quite drastically. I wanted the happy, lighter mood to continue rather than having heavy trumpets. Because of this, I decided to just have the sugarplum fairy music come in sooner and have some of Emily speaking without music. Which in an odd way worked.
By the end of Wednesday, I had gotten past the dress rehearsal section, and was into the opening night segment. This segment I am aiming to finish tomorrow but it all depends on how much I can get done and if I feel I can without rushing it.
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When Thursday came around, I was set on getting the show 1 segment finished and maybe even starting on the ‘what it means to them’ segment. However, there was a large chunk of the edit I needed to do which would take a while, this being the section where Emily talks about her duet with Clara. Within this section I included footage of Emily dancing alone, as well as areas with her dancing with Clara, with some areas acting as actuality, which I felt worked well even. From this I then moved onto editing together the lift, which is the focus of what Emily’s talking about, so I needed this to fit. In the timelapse shown on the right 25.4.24 editing (youtube.com) you can see the segment being edited together.
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Overall, I am so happy with how this turned out. I feel it looks as though time and effort has gone into the editing of it, which it has, and that’s something I wanted the section to reflect. While it’s about the dance and Emily explaining how it was, the editing of how this is presented is just as important so having this be reflected, in my opinion, is something to be proud of.
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Friday was primarily focused on getting as far through to the end as possible, well the morning was at least. During the morning session I worked on adding in b-roll and music to the edit as again, it didn’t feel right without music. I used pixabay again as I found that this has been a more reliable source, and I can specify my search easily. With this I found some music with the label bittersweet, which is the vibe I was going for, and it fitted as I wanted it to. By the time it got it lunch, I had gotten to adding in images of actuality over Ella reflecting on what it means to her.
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In the afternoon, myself, Flossy and Molly worked on the programme for the End of Year show. We had started this on Thursday but finished off the inside of it today. Personally I really like how it looks, its not too formal but formal enough for it to actually feel like an programme for a show. The images show the front, inside and back, which all have colour but we didn’t want to use print credit so we printed it in black and white as prototype. I am really pleased with how this went and think that this will work really well for the show.
