Editing

 

This was Alexa editing from her iMac at home

Since I am very poor with using computers, Alexa volunteered to be the main (and sole) editor. However, Lucia and I called Alexa while she was editing so we could give our feedback. We did face struggles with editing that caused us to cut many parts of our opening film out. Let's discuss... 

WAY TOO LONG...

Alright, our first issue began when Alexa combined all the clips in our film. In total there were 3 minutes and 34 seconds of footage which was WAYYYY longer than we needed it to be. Our limit was 2 minutes, so Alexa immediately texted our group chat informing us of this sticky situation. We already had cut out previous parts so we were a little stressed and worried that our film would not have enough footage for the audience to understand. Nonetheless, Alexa asked which parts should we cut, and Lucia and I suggested cutting the opening shot since we believed it was unnecessary. We already had the shot of me entering Lucia's home so having the shot of me leaving the car was not needed. That eliminated a good 5-8 seconds of footage. Alexa took notes as we gave suggestions and luckily, she was successful in cutting enough footage. YAY.

THE VIDEO SIMPLY WOULD NOT SEND...

Another major struggle we faced was trying to get the video sent. Alexa tried many methods (Gmail, One Drive, Google Drive) but none of them were effective, it just resulted in us getting a black screen. This was obviously not good considering none of us could see the video and we needed to give Alexa feedback in order for her to make changes. Eventually, Lucia got ahold of the video, sadly I did not. So, we had to have Lucia FaceTime me so I could watch it from my phone. Another issue we had was that Alexa has an android, so it is difficult to do face-to-face calls. However, we found a very effective solution! Lucia called Alexa through discord on her computer, while Lucia and I were on FaceTime from her phone. That way Alexa, Lucia, and I could all hear each other. In case you're wondering where Kimora was during this situation, she was unavailable. 

SCHEDULING CONFLICTS

I am leaving for a trip very soon and we were worried that the project and its entirety would need to be completed prior to Spring break, and I leave before Spring break starts. This caused stress and a little panic but fortunately, Mrs. Woz allowed us to finish after Spring break. So, even though we have 95% of our editing complete, we still need to include the title sequence, but that should not take too long. As Alexa is the sole editor, we told her to take her time since she is doing everything, we don't want to pressure her especially when she has so much schoolwork on her plate. 

FILTER FIASCOS...

Oh boy... the filters. We wanted the colors in the film to be radiant and stand out, but none of the iMovie filters seemed to be doing our film justice. I have used iMovie before for a couple of projects so I knew that we were able to up the saturation. Since I was over the phone and not physically next to Alexa, it was hard to tell her what to do. But, we figured it out and we were able to up the saturation which got us the perfect filter we wanted. Also, we needed filters for the flashback scene, but the filter we originally agreed on ended up looking like the Twilight movie where everything was ridiculously blue. We had to find another filter that didn't make our film look like a blueberry exploded everywhere. We found this "vintage" filter that worked perfectly

FINAL THOUGHTS...

Overall, even with the obstacles we had, we were successful! Somehow, throughout all the incidents we had, our film looks GREAT and we are essentially done (just have to add the title sequence) (I am excluding the CCR from this statement. Honestly, I didn't think we would be able to accomplish everything so quickly, but we did it! 

Here is Alexa as she was editing (queen!)