The Post Production Whirlwind

2nd November
We had an editing masterclass with Nuru in using Adobe Premiere Pro. It was exciting to see what the programme was capable of, since I'm used to working with much less powerful software. We also looked over our footage and Iona, the editor, began to assemble a rough cut of the film.

5-19 November
During this time we completed the edit of our film. Iona worked from the rough cut to refine the film and I gave feedback as the director. We used Trello to upload each edit at the end of a session, which was a helpful backup and meant anyone with the footage could access the edit and review where we were up to. It was also helpful when we needed to pass a copy of the picture-locked edit to Matthew and Michael to do sound design.

The post production Trello board

A challenge that we faced whilst editing was that the wires had to be removed from the shots in the hallucination section. This meant that Iona and myself had to learn After Effects. Although the process of removing wires is simple, it was time consuming. Something that I will take forward is that it is far easier to remove wires when they are straight, so ensure they are straight on set!

Here is one of the shots after we removed the wires

Another error that was made on set that had to be fixed in post was that the lighting was dramatically different in two different shots in the final scene. The difference can be seen below.

Nuru taught us how to colour correct and then reduce noise so that the shots matched better than they had before. Whilst we were doing this, Matthew and Michael were working on the sound design of the film, including adding footsteps and atmosphere to the 2nd scene, as well as the sounds of the Thames in the final scene. Matthew also composed some music for the piece. We mostly communicated using Trello and a Facebook Messenger group chat that meant we could all see where we were up to.

Exporting the finished film!

Overall, I have found the post-production process fun as I have learnt a lot but also stressful as we had to get the film finished by the deadline. I think we were effective as a team in post as we were able to divide up roles and tasks. For example, myself and Iona worked on the picture edit, Matthew and Michael on the sound and Murray and Matt worked on the credits.