Editing

So today I finished editing and all I can say is that I have a newfound appreciation for the people who can do this for a living. Granted I already knew that I did not have much experience in editing besides the few projects I have made in this class. However, this project required much more skill than I thought it would.

My number one issue was finding copyright-free sound bites and music that fit the tone of my piece. I would literally sit in front of my computer for HOURS literally wanting to spoon my eyes out listening to random tracks that sounded like they came straight out of Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean. Everything I found was either too dramatic or too happy. I looked through several sources including BenSounds and Incompetech and I hated all of them! This is an exaggeration but nonetheless, none of them seemed to fit my piece! The least I could say is that I was FRUSTRATED.

I had this predisposition towards the Youtube Audio library that it was cheesy and only had basic and boring music and sound effects so I never really looked there. But I was so desperate that I decided to check it out. And basically... I owe the Youtube Audio Library and apology now because I found everything I needed there! It was really easy to use and it let me refine my search in a really easy way that let me find music based on the mood and even instrument. I will have to say it was still a nightmare to find music but it definitely made my life a little bit easier. 

YouTube Audio Library search tool

Finding music for the introduction was especially hard since it was a very neutral scene that turned stressful very quickly. Therefore, if I picked calming music it would seem out of place once the stress started to build up. So after a while of sorting though songs, I decided to just go ahead and use ambient noise. I think this was the best decision as it prevented the scene from being too quiet while also avoiding the problem of clashing with the quick build-up of stress. 

As for the video, in general, I decided to edit on iMovie as I have the most experience on this. It also lets me detach the sound which is something that I don't believe I can do on the only other software that I have access to which is Wevideo. Also, I actually had a lot of fun with overlays during the process, that I had never used, so that part of the editing process was fun. However, I had trouble putting together my footage because there were many parts that I had to cut out that made the film look a little choppy but I tried to smooth them out to the best of my ability. Some parts, however, came together very smoothly such as the part where she sees her younger self in the mirror. 

Overall, I had to cut back in forth between several shots and the editing process became very complicated but in the end, I think I put my all into it. It's not perfect but I am definitely learning. I think one of the more interesting parts of editing was definitely the subtitles.  I was scared to even use subtitles because I feared it would be too much work but it ended up working out alright. The only issue was that iMovie does not provide any specific tool for subtitles so I had to export the video and put it into WeVideo. So, in the end, I ended up using TWO editing softwares. So basically I got the best of both worlds. In essence, I think the process taught me many new things.