Going with Robin’s suggestion, I have had another go at editing the fruit salad exercise since the first draft was done in such a rush. It’s not perfect, but I am happier with how this one turned out – the shorter length made the whole thing snappier and made sure the novelty of the match cuts weren’t overused. I’ve also tried to rearrange and fine tune some cuts that weren’t graphically the greatest.
The thing I’ve learnt with this exercise is to plan my composition out better – I always just said “I’ll fix it in post” when I was shooting to get the frames looking the same for the match cuts, but as this Studio has taught us, editing is just half the story, even for my seemingly technically oriented exercise. Considering the composition/coverage more carefully and having a better plan instead of just shooting a bunch of stuff and hoping to put something together in editing is something I should learn to implement better, because it certainly will be even more necessary when it comes to shooting on a bigger scale.
Nevertheless, the main goal with this exercise was just to get going and do some practical work, which I think turned out well. As Robin had said, not every exercise has to be amazing and/or cinematic and/or meaningful, and just having a starting point will lead to further discussion and the creation of things with more substance.
Fruit Salad from Jessica Xiao on Vimeo.
