Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Halina Editing Update

As of this writing I'm a little shy of halfway through the first rough cut of Halina. Most of the last couple of weeks has been spent logging and labeling all of the footage and sound files - now that that's all done, the initial editing is zipping along pretty quickly.

This is the first project that I'm editing on Adobe Premiere CC (I usually use Final Cut). One newer feature on Premiere CC that is amazing is the new masking and tracking feature. This makes it easier than ever to apply a filter to just a portion of your shot - like a license plate - and then have that filter track the plate through the rest of the clip. Back when Purgatory Comics got picked up for distribution, I had to apply de-focus filters to all of the licensed logos and then reposition the filter manually each frame. If I had this tool back then, my life would've been a lot less stressful.

You're not going to see this in the above picture but I set the film's aspect ratio to 16:9 widescreen. There are a few ways to do this is Premiere CC but after trying them out, I really like the method presented in this YouTube video. It gives me full and easy image control with no hassle.

I'm really happy with the edit so far and trying to be an absolute perfectionist. When I'm satisfied with my cut, I'll have to bring this elsewhere for sound mastering and color correcting because I'm pretty weak in both of those categories - so right now it's hard to predict when this will be finished. I believe I can comfortably finish before May if I keep up this pace - I'll provide more thoughts on that down the road.

I leave you now with this downtempo track from Zero 7. Sometimes in editing I need to temporarily stick a song into a scene to get the pacing right. Last night that song was "Somersault" which I've been listening to a lot lately to match the film's vibe. Enjoy!


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