Editing continued

We are well into our editing now and have cut through most of the documentary. I wanted to go into more depth about the technical side of our documentary and the different challenges you come up against in the editing process. I will do this by splitting the certain areas of our editing into several sections.

1. The timeline



The timeline is essential to any editor. In our case, the timeline shown in the picture above stores your movie. It is the graphical and sound representation of our content and is almost like a story, reading it from left to right as time progresses. It is in the timeline where you cut clips, add transitions and effects and introduce layers of sound and other video/pictures etc. As we insert more content the timeline increases. Due to us using a professional editing programme (Sony Vegas Pro + Final Cut Pro) we are able to move clips in much more precise measures and edit in more detail. The timeline is a key feature in the editing process.

2. Pan/Crop

In some cases, your screen may not be fully covered with your video... So by setting the aspect ratio to cover and block out black edges your whole screen will be covered. This makes it look a lot more professional and allows for better continuity. The pan crop can also be used in cases where you may want to zoom in on your footage, for example the headlines of the articles we have used.

3. Using effects



With the implantation of effects, your film can be varnished and look a lot more relevant. In our case, we have colour corrected many of our shots to make better quality in our footage. It does this by making the contrast stronger and brings our the sharpness levels. We have also used Vignette effects to darken our documentary as we are following the themes of a dark, conspiracy-like film.

4. Synchronising music with video



We have synchronised our video in the opening scene to the audio which is played. We have done this to give a much smoother run of this scene by being in time. By synchronising our footage it also creates more excitement for the viewer as it is fast paced and of course flows well with the audio.

5. Applying Text/Headlines

In this screenshot you can see how we have inserted text. Sony Vegas offers many options for creativity when using text and as you can we have created a shiny headline look by playing with the bump map effect. This makes our title stand out a lot more and is more interesting to look at than a plain one colour font. It also adds depth to the headline, ultimately making it stand out.

6. Layering/using opacity



In one area of our documentary we have collided screenshots of Google and Twitter. By doing this we have merged them together and decreases the opacity simply by playing around with the settings. Once again by doing this adds better continuity and flow to the documentary.

our timeline for the opening scene in Sony Vegas

I have also made nform of explaining our editing process in video, which goes into more detail and explains how iMovie and Sony Vegas differ. It also shows off a better visual representation of Sony Vegas. Here it is: