Editing Diary

Week 1 
In the first lesson we captured all of our current tapes and put them onto the time line, from this we cut down to the shots we want to use and some that are we are deleting; this was then put on the the Shot decision list.
The tapes we captured in the first week was the ones from Blackpool, The tea leave interview  and the Extra additional shots, involving dream catchers, candles and stills from Blackpool to create our opening.
We then put all of our footage into a brief chronological time lime, of introduction, Blackpool footage, and Tealeaves so we got the outline of the documentary. We then began to start from the beginning and work our way through editing.
For our opening we wanted to create an eery atmosphere involving a montage of different related images to do with the supernatural, that can create this mood for our documentary. We included things such as old books, candles, old signs and posters and dream catchers, footage from Blackpool and additional footage we captured for just the opening sequence. We edited the opening by using the images we planned to film, and editing them into black and white, to give an old authentic look. We did research  a lot of Adobe premiere Tutorials because we wanted to create an old like film effect however, we could find one that created the correct atmosphere we were looking for so we settled for black and white, as it is simple, authentic and not over edited. Transitions we used in the opening were dip to black and cross fade, these were mostly popular to use i think because they were very simple however helped the documentary flow and fluent. Other editing we used in the opening was reverse speed shot where we reversed the speed of a close up birds eye view, of a candle being blew out. When we experimented with this edit i feel it worked well and look very effective making this shot unusual and obscure, which fits into the themes of Supernatural and Fortune Telling.
Towards the end of this week we then captured the interview with 'Lucy Bate' a girl who has claimed to see and have a paranormal experience. As we had captured on the time line, and there were a lot of takes we felt we could be organised by cutting down the interview to the interesting parts, and start to add in our cutaways that we had planned for this interview. Therefore we had successfully created one interview and the opening sequence by the end of the week.

It was essential to come back in our own time if we could, as we did not have long to edit or finish filming. I came back for two hours this week, where i then cleaned up the supernatural experiences interview, and added graphics and Subtitles. Introducing who the interviewee is and what her occupation is. For this interview the subtitles where 'Lucy Bate, A local teenager'
Week 2 
In the second week of the editing stage we picked up from last week and continued to piece together all of the sections. We cut down the tea leave interview, to get the interesting bits and then added in the necessary cutaways that were needed. Ensuring that the tea leave interview fulfilled all the codes and conventions needed, using cutaways, rule of thirds, and graphics. We then began to start from the opening sequence and piece everything together working on each section at a time. We began to work on the Blackpool section. This was a challenge because we needed to use all of our establishing shots, to fit the narration needed and the introduce the interview with the fortune teller however because the fortune teller was not much of a success due to the sound of the interview. We tried to fiddle around with the audio to try and get rid of the hard background noise however it was a challenge, it does sound a bit better however i still think it is really low quality, so we may have to brainstorm ideas on how to improve on this interview, or change it someway.

Week 3
Week 3 of the editing we began to record the narration for the narration in the documentary and the radio advert. At first we asked a middle ages woman who was happy to do it for us, however when we put it over the film we did not feel she gave enough enthusiasm and we wanted our narration to be a bit uplifting and interesting, animated and enthusiastic. We then found it difficult to find someone but then fortunately, we found a friend in the drama department who was willing and very enthusiastic to do our narration. Even though we did want to have a voice similar to a fortune tellers, we thought its better to have an enthusiastic narration rather than a monotone dull one, therefore we continued to record the narration with our close friend in the drama department, which i feel was a success. During this week we put together the narration on top the film and cut it down to fit and go in sync with the planned cutaways. We then put all of our documentary together with the narration and began to add music. It was a challenge trying to find where the music wanted to go, because we had to find the places it was most suitable. However we did get there in the end after asking a lot of people and getting other opinions about our music, then as a group placed our music in from after using the Internet to download our music.

Week 4

Week 4 involved us finishing any final touches of the editing of the film, for example in a few places of this we experimented with the audio, improving the narration. Other ways we experimented with the audio was fading in and fading out some of it, to make it more fluent and fit in well with the other audio involved. By decreasing and increasing parts of the audio it gave a balanced range of audio. We then began to do the planning and research of our radio advert and Poster. By researching each codes and conventions used in Radio Adverts and Poster Advertisements for professional films we then began to move onto a planning. From brainstorming ideas we drew up a final draft for our poster to then began to take images and edit the poster in lessons.
Once we were about to begin to poster editing, we then had to plan the radio advert, As we had previously already wrote a script we just needed to edit it making a successfull music bed and putting our sounds in the correct places.
Challenges we had to face when editing the poster was making sure it fitted into the guidelines of the channel 4 Poster Advertisements because it had to look like it had been professionally made. Also trying to get used to photo shop as we each Had to do a bit of the editing, I'm quite good with photo shop myself but teaching other people in the group to use it was a little bit time consuming. However even i had to face and learn new tools that i haven't used to create our successfull Advertisement Poster.