Expertise Exercise #5 | Wallflowerrose

I wasn’t able to come to class the week of the expertise exercise due to sickness, so I went to the edit suites to get some footage to edit together from the other groups. Here are the three ways in which I edited this footage together:

I don’t think anything was lost, necessarily, by not actually attending the filming of the expertise exercise, because I still feel I learnt important things from the editing process. I was able to adapt to Pauls method of organising Premiere files which I liked, as it was really straightforward and consolidated. Though I think I learnt the most from the process of editing the clips together and trying to synch them to audio, it was a slow process, because with the way it was filmed, there wasn’t anything I could find to do to tie them together (i.e clapper board or a simple clap), so I just had to observe what the subject was doing in the video and match the sound up to it’s corresponding clip. So, the mission was to edit each sequence together to show the same thing (in this case, folding up a piece paper), while changing to different angles to see how this could look aesthetically better or how to convey the scene more clearly.

The first edit I approached in a fairly standard way, with an establishing shot, then switching to a side angle, that transitions into a closeup of the subjects hands, before switching back to the side angle. It’s a fairly basic sequence and while I think it flows better than the second edit, I think the timing of the close up should have come later, when the subject was folding the more intricate parts of the paper as it’s difficult to see from the side angle.

From my perspective the second edit is all wrong, it’s starts from the side angle, which doesn’t allow the audience to establish the scene and then switches to the establishing shot after, then a close up before leaving the close up right when the really detailed section was about to be showcased. It’s not necessarily a bad edit, but it doesn’t accentuate the activity of the scene or flow nicely.

The third example of editing this sequence together is my favourite, it’s the most clean and relays the activity occurring concisely. The reason for this is because it uses the establishing shot, then the side angle, than the close up to show the more detailed movements, before coming back out to the establishing shot to finish. It pushes in continually and only comes out into a wide shot to show the finished scene. This crescendo draws the viewer into the activity taking place, despite its simplicity. This edit was the hardest to synch the audio to, as it showed the subject tapping the table and ripping the paper, but these added details make it more interesting.

In hindsight, all three could use a tighter edit (I tried to always cut on action, perhaps clipping the clips a bit shorter would emphasise this better) and the audio could be adjusted, particularly in the second clip where it isn’t very audible. This was a fun exercise in its simplicity as it allowed me to look at a few vary angles of the same scene and assess which way would better tell the story. It’s so interesting the different directions you can take it and makes me really appreciate the power of the editor.

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