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Today I started reaching out/ replying to students who reached out on Aula for editors. Both of the projects I have offered to edit begin shooting in march which means I ideally need to finish at least 2 pieces before I start these so i do not have too many edits going on at a time . However, both of these projects are short so if I am recruited I shouldn't take too long to edit either. The first is a fashion promo piece from a fashion buying and brand management student and the second is an advert for an alcohol brand for a digital film production student.

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last night the other student that I reached out to got back to me in regards to editing his project. he said that he already had an editor but would be happy for me to work with the editor on the project or grade or even cut other versions for him. I told him that due to the fact that the project was only minute long it would be best for one person to cut it but I would be happy to cut additional versions and grade for him to which he agreed. we arranged a meeting today but due to the fact that he saw my message quite late we didn't meet up but have arranged to meet up again on Thursday. I will similarly prepare some questions for this students in regards to the project.

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For one of my projects I will use avid as a way of demonstrating a range of software knowledge. I have tried to use avid previously on a long project and switched to premiere because of time. For this reason I will likely pick a shorter project to edit on avid such as a music video or advertisement.

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I have decided to pick one of the rushes package to start on today. After reading all the descriptions and watching a few clips from them, I think the best option is Ashes. It would challenge me and is not similar to much i have previously done in the past.

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after watching these rushes, it reminds me of a film called fractured. At first we are taken along an emotional journey with a character and pity them for a loss they are facing and we slowly come to realise that the charcter we have empathised with is actually the villain. i wish to create a similar feel in my edit, encouraging the audience to sympathise with the main charcter right up until they realise what he has done. i also want the edit to have a slow feel which gradually picks up, I wan the editor to feel the 'sadness' of the man but be quickly shocked by the true revelation of his actions and then of the haunting by his wife.

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Today i started soting the rushes into bins to make it easier to work through and also help me when selecting takes to use from each scene.

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Today I started editing, as it is part of my portfolio i deceide to take a bit more indepence with the editing. I looked at the lined script but didnt necessarily follow it, mainly using it as a guideline. I decided to put each scene into a separate sequence as i know that i may go back to this project to constantly change things and this will make this kuch easier

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Yesterday in the late afternoon one of the students I reached out to to collaborate with got back to me and said she loved my showreel and would like me to edit for her.
We have started talking on Aula and arranged to meet up at Costa next to uni on Thursday to further discuss her project.
In preparation for this I have started preparing a list of questions/ things I need to know in order for me to edit the project.

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For one of my projects would like to do some sort of graphics or typography project. I am not sure of the contents of what this may be. One idea that I have is to do a sports promo/ advert inspired by the Adidas adverts edited at Nomad and include some typography elements inside. However this may take a bit longer to prepare than what I would realistically have time for. Another idea I have is to do a typography project similar to the 'I am A Flower' project I did in year 1. This would allow me to edit text in a way to create a story.

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Today I attended the motion graphics workshop held by Tim. In this class we were assigned a motions graphics promo project which we could use for our portfolio so this will replace the ideas that I had as it is realistic with the time that I have and would allow me to demonstrate a greater range of creative skills as this type of project is not one that I have done before.

Straightaway i know that i want to include alot of movement in the project  and i would like it to have a abstract feel. I feel like this will match the soundtrack provided which is a rock like sound and has a chaotic feel to it.

I began by cutting the audio piece provided to 15 seconds which is the duration of the project. This is something that I have never done before or even thought would be easy however Tim showed us a method/ approach to this. First of all I brought the audio into premiere pro and then I marked parts of the audio which I would like which was the very beginning as this is where the track builds up, the middle which had more depth to it and the end which had a natural fade. Through zooming into the track and turning in digital audio scrub I could see where each beat in the soundtrack ended. This allowed me to then cut parts of the audio out seamlessly and patch it to another part. Due to the fact that rhe middle of the audio file had more instruments in it sounded a bit different from the beginning and to fix this I used the constant power effect which allowed the new instruments to fade in seamlessly. After this I then had a 15 second audio file which was seamless.

The project came with a brief and branding specification which were very specific and contained information regarding things such as colour schemes and logo rules. I decided on a colour scheme to use and as the specific colour code was provided I copied this into after effects to make sure it was accurate.

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Today I had my first meeting with Zak who is leading a project for a series of adverts for an alcohol company. In the meeting we discussed my role as an editor and what would come under it, in which we established I would grade and complete a sound mix. he gave me the option to come on set, however due to the amount of work that I have and the location of the shoot I do not think I will attend however if this were my only project I would. We discussed information in terms of the camera being used, the inspiration behind the project and also deadlines. he added me to a group chat with some other people on the project and he has also sent me the shot list, script and text to use for the project.  in the meeting with this student,  who is Zak, not only did he tell me but I could gage that he liked being and feeling in control of things and had a set way he wanted things done. This is helpful because it shows me that I may want to run any ideas in regards to the edit  by him first before doing them and that my creative freedom on this project may be reduced but I will be given a clear sense of direction.

i do howver belive that this project could be interesting with Blade runner as the main inspiration behind it and allow me to apply cinematic elements to an advert, which is something i have not really tried indepentdently.

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Today I had my first meeting with Kathy, who is a fashion student who will be creating a promo video which I will edit. In our meeting she told me about the project and what it means which was helpful because it gave me an idea of how the edit needs to feel and make the viewer feel. The edit is genrally about promoting her sustainable fashion brand and highlighting the importance of sustainablity when it comes to fashion. We discussed deadlines and key things she wanted such as closing titles and whether I would be able to do certain effects such as character fades which I can. She also gave me a light indication of how she would like the structure as the promo will include cutaways and an interview and this information is useful because knowing that I will be dealing with interview clips in advance will allow me to better arrange time to go through them in advance.
Overall, Kathy didn't know much about editing so was quite happy for me to do what I think works which is also good for me as it means that I can try things and see if they work rather than constantly having to ask if I can do something before doing it which can slow down the process. I will however make sure to take her along the process and give her options so that she still feels like she can have an input and is in control of the direction of the story and the project as a whole.

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Today i started transcoding the rushes, i have never gtrabscoded before and didnt know that it would be such a long process. I started quite late in the day and had to pause the transcoding however i woke up in the middle of the night and continued the transcoding. i didnt think it would take much longer but my laptop died before it finished and some files werent transcoded. I didnt want to confuse myself and miss out files so I deleted the ones that had transcoded already and restarted the transcoding process from the beginning and left my laptop on all night on charge and it was finished by the time I woke up.

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Today Zak put a message in the groupchat saying the filming of the project will be delayed by two weeks. Not only this but he has also made it known that he is still looking for some crew members. For these reasons I will have to start considering beginning another project as this one is seemingly uncertain and could potentially not go ahead or be delayed further to a date I may not be able to fulfill anymore.

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As a result of one of my commisioned projects getting pushed back, i have decide to pick another piece to edit from the rushes package. As stated previously, I dont want my avid project to be too long as i am still a beginner with the softare and after watching some of the rushes for the shorted projects I have decide to pick Home Alone. Today i will commence the download of the rushes and take them into uni later in the week to set up my avid project

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This film follows a similar narrative to the film Pihu. Through watching Pihu, one important element that i will take and contribute to my edit is to focus on the boys actions in detail; include things that may make the audience fear for the child or pity them as this drives the audiences attachment to the narrative. the pacing is also a key takeaway from this film as it tends to be quite slow and picks up every so often when the actor is in danger.

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In preparation for this project, I started researching other fashion promo videos and i came accross a Levi's promo which used stytles similar to what kathy told me she would like. Such as with text write on effects. I also found this advert very useful as it gave me some guidance in regards to the pace of the cut. It didnt feel to fast however the scnes did change quite quickly, It gave room for the audience to take in the product and the messages being promoted. These are all things i can bear in mind when editing this project.

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Today I finished making a rough cut of all the scenes included in this project and have made a master timeline for the full assemble. I will revisit this later in the week and ideally have it finished by monday which is around when i am expeted to receive rushes for a commissioned project. I have not ediyted in this bway before but have recognised that it is good practice for ensuring that each scene tells the story it needs to which is something that I have struggled with previously. The only thing I will need to be onscious off is ending each scene in a way that would allow it to make sense when I attach it to its neighbouting scene in the master sequence however this is something I can always revisit later.

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Today i have began loading the rushes for this project into Avid and i began watching through the rushes selecting the best clips according to the editors log and also what i though would work best.

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Today I received the storyboard and rushes for this project. After reading the storyboard the concept seems quite simple and I can tell that she has a particluar style that she would like to portray. I am a little concerned as there are only 10 files which is a bit less than what i was expecting, however I will watch them over later. She has still let me know that she is happy for me to do what i think is best but I think I will be able to make a good comprimise between what she wants and what I think may work better.

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After receiving rushes for a commission I have realised that that project may take longer than anticipated. for this reason I am switching this project to a premiere project, even though I am able to use Avid, it is not a software I am very confident in and with the other project, I may not be able to troubleshoot fast enough should I run into any issues if I edit this piece in Avid.

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I borught all my rushes into premiere today, I kept my avid project open so i could see which clips I marked as good and do this again in premiere. I also copied the timecodes from avid into premiere where i had marked the parts of each clip that I wanted to use. This didnt take to long and I can now start working on the edit

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Today I watched through the rushes and can immediately see some adjustments that I will have to make to the rushes before i commence the edit. All the cutaway shots are very shaky as if a tripod wasn't used and will not intertwine well with the interview clips which are steady. I will most likely need to stabilise all of these before I begin the cut. In addition to this the interview clip has alot of noise in it so I will also need to denoise the entire clips before I begin separating the interview bites. In addition to this there is alot less b roll footage than I expected, for a fshion promo I would have expected loads of clips of clothes from different angles and on different models however there is only 1 set of ctuaways which shows the clothes and they are all the same clothes on the same models. I am a bit concerned by this but all i do is use these strategically to not make  the cut look boring and repetitve.

As Kathy did not know much about the editing process which she said herself, I wasn't too shcoked tp notice that there was no transcript for the interview. I didn't think asking her for one was worthwhile as I am sure she didnt genreate on and since we were communicating via email, it may have taken too long for a reply. I then decided to genreate a transcript myself and used an application called descript for this. With this i had to separate the dialogue by lablelling it according to whoc was speaking and I also colour coded it to make it more obvious visually as to who was speaking. During this process I realised that even though the interview was 11 minutes long there was not much speech that was relevant. Most of the interview was the Designer struggling to say the lines that Kathy told her to say and only about 2.5 minutes was actually I could use in the project.
This was a good thing only because there was not nearly enough B roll to balance anything near 11 minutes of an interview.

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Today I began to cut the interview clips that I needed in premiere. Seeing as Kathy provided a very clear idea of how she wanted the video to begin I thought I would begin with this. I took the necessary clip into After Effects and created a text animation to introduce the edit as she outlined in the storyboard. She had let me know that she liked th text fade by character look and wanted this elsewhre in the project so i tried to keep this style consistent but didnt wnat to overuse it so I used a combination of word and character fades for the intro.

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Today i worked more on the cut however i was finding it a bit difficult to make two sets of B roll work over the duration of 2 minutes of interview clips without it seeming too boring and repetive as it was feeling a bit slow and boring. So as to not waste time trying to make something work if I didnt need to, I wanted to ask Kathy if she actually like the edit as it was ot whether she wanted it to be shorter without coming accross too strongly in favour of cutting it down just because i'm struggling to make it work. To do this, I highlighted all the interview bites I had used in the edit in the transcript and sent it to Kathy to ensure that she wanted everything in the edit and I also let her know that the running time with all these highlighted parts would be about 2 minutes as I remember she told me that she thinks the edit will be around a minute long. She confirmed that what I highlighted was fine so I will have to come up with some ideas to make the footage work well. I may aske her later to include more tect write on's which will help me fill the project with more than just long interview clips.

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I received an email from Kathy today in which she let me know that her Tutor advised that the edit should be under 1 Minute if possible and she would be happier to have a longer cut for other uses or just the shorter one. even though she said yesterday it was fine at its current duration, i think emailing her yesterday and letting her know how long the project was a good idea because she was able to think about it and also talk to her tutor about it. I let her know that this is fine and would probably work better considering the amount of footage anyways. This works alot better for me as it means that the B roll will not be overused and considering the fact that she wants two quotes to appear on screen, I will be more able to finesse an intriguing edit. Kathy didn't specify anything in particular that she wanted me to remove so I tried to remove anything that sounded like it could be a repition of what had already been said or didn't relate as much to her brand 'Neco' which was the centre point of the promo video. After this I managed to get the cut to 1 minute. I restructered the cutaways making sure to get a good balance of the Designer  and the cutaways which were important as they showed clothes from the brand the video is for.

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For this project my method was to create a main comp which is 1080 x 1080 in adherence to the branding specification  and then i created a separate composition which was much larger than this. This way all I needed to do was make an adjustment layer to move the image down which was part of the specification. I imported all of the assets into After effcts which included the logo, the buildings to be used in the project, a lady on a green screen and the audio which i just ut down. I selected some of the buildings which i wanted to use and brought them into the composition. As they were all from Adobe Illustrator they were all vector images which gave me alot of freedom in regards to my edit and I made sure to enable this option in After effects.

I also worked on the greenscreen today, I brought the clip of the lady into the main composition and placed the keylight effect on top and keyed out the green colour. At first I wasnt really satisfaied with this as there were still green edges on the lady however after playing around with some of the options such as spill bias I managed to eliminate the green edge.

Next thing I done today was the logo animation. i knew that I wanted my logo to have some sort of animation, but I do remember Tim saying the easiest way to do this would be to trace the logo with the pen tool. I brought the log into my comp and put the opacity down a bit so i could see the pen drawing. I did struggle at first as the logo has a lot of curves in it hoever after some time of pulling out the handles and changing some of the pen points I had a perfect trace and I deleted the original logo. I wanted the animation to be a slow pulse-like wave alomost how a mexican wave in a crowd looks however i found this tricky to achieve. I put the wave tool on the logo and played with some of the options and came to this very vigorous wave which I liked and I also felt like it matched the vibe of the rest of the video so I went with this.

I left the class early due to work, however this assignment can potentially be done in a day, I have done some of the edit. For the rest of the edit, I plan to incorporate a lot more movement into some of the assets in order to make the promo stand put more.

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Today i have been able to genarate a rough cut of Home alone which i will revist later. I laid out this rough cut according to the lined script. I wanted to create a slow feel through this edit, but I am also concerned that it is too slow and some of the shots are on for too long so this is something that i will definitely revisit later. I also worked on the sound abit, as the actors are children, they were being instructed throughout most of the shots and i have gon through all the clips I have used and patched over where the crew were speaking so now the only voices that can be heard are from the charcaters.

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I also took this ooportunity to ask Kathy iof she had any preferences for music in her project and she provided a range of songs which she liked some without and some with lyrics aand voiced her concerns that music with lyrics may overpower the interview. Asd an editor I also knew this would not be effecient and used the music she gave me as guidance rather than using the specific ones she sent to also avoid issues related to copyright.

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Today I managed to cut down the edit to 1 minute and sent it to Kathy for review/ feedback as this will give me a better idea of how to finish off the edit and best provide her with what she wants in time for her deadline. Later in the day she replied to me and said she loved the edit and the animations I made to her logo. She indicated two lines within the interview which she would like to be removed to shorten the piece which is my next step in finishing this edit.

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I have since worked on the edit, cutting out the two lines requested, and I have had to restructure the cutaways to now fit a shorter duration which was also tricky as I wanted to create a good balance between cutawyas and interview clips and i still had Cutaways to add which Kathy highlighted as essential but I still had to fit it within the same duration. For this reason I decided to go for a short montage in the end which displays the brands clothes, which was highlighted as an important part of the edit.

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Kathy emailed me today to say that her logo has changed slightly. There is not much difference (just wider text spacing) and at first i was going to alter the spacing in after effects, however i have decided aginst this and will import the new logo into after effects as i did the first time and trace over it to ensure the logo matches exactly and then i will do the text animations again.

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Today i made some slight changes to the cut such as adjusting the stabiliser in some of the shots as some of them looked to warped and i managed to come to a point where i belive the edit was finished. I sent the video to kathy for review but asked her if there was anything she wanted me to change just to make sure that she was truly satisfied and didnt feel pressured to take the edit as it was.  After a few hours she confirmed that she loved the edit as it was and thanked me for helping her. Project Complete

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I received the rushes for this project today and as I have never worked with 4k files before I am  a bit hesistant on the workflow of this project as i will have to transcode which i have never done before and i am worrried about running in to issues during the conform process, however i will reveist some lecture and tutorials on Aula to better prepare me.

It is later in the day and I have managed to come up with a workflow, I may adjust this later on however I think it is a great way to start

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I revisited my cut today and cleaned up some parts which didnt flow well or have the greatest continuity. I also decided tpo change the openening of my edit after my formative meeting as in this meeting it was brought to my sttention the beginning may not be engaging enough to really captivate a viewer. At first thought, I would like to do something where I include a shot from later in the film and cut between that and black over the sound of one of the charcters screaming or crying as this will give an insight to a captivating film without sharing too much of the narrative.

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Horror films are heavily reliant on sfx and music to add tension and build suspense so today I began the sound mix for this project today. I went through the project scene by scene identifying what sounds i should be able to hear in the context of the scene and sourced the sfx on youtube and free sound. I discovered that through uing the surround reverb effect on premiere I was able to make the sfx sound more diegetic and ralistic to the space it was meant to be in. i also began looking for music for this project today which i found difficult as I wanted to use music that sounded more like an eerie/ scary tone rather than actual music with a rhythm.

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After a formative meeting today I have become aware of some elements of the edit which I can improve on before submission such as adding diegetic sound and altering the pace of the cuts. This will be quite challenging as there is not enough footage to leave gaps inbetween speech, howver I will see if there is a way to rework the edit. One way that I may be able to this is by moving the montage used at the end of the project over the interview audio and just letting it appear on screen with the accompanying music. This may be challenging because I have had to cut the interview in several places and the monatge worked well in hiding this visually, but I will at least try and uncover the longest bit of the interview at the end where there is no/ less cuts.

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Today I intended to start watching all the footage but came to the realisation that this edit may be more challenging than anticipated. The audio was recored separatley and the video files have no audio on them and therefore have no waveform, a clapper board was not used and there is also no timecode i can use to sync the audio. therefore i will have to sync all the clips manually using things such as a door closing to be able to sync the sound. I have let Zak know this and that I may need abit longer fpor this edit and he has said it is fine but would still ideally like the edit done for April 21st.

In addition to this, I do not think that the footage  really highlights and focuses on the alcohol enough which is the purpose on the advert. For example, a shot I would consider vital for creating a drinks adverts is a closeup shot of the drink being poured into the glass and even a close up of the glass itself, however none of these were recoreded. Howver I have also learnt from this situation that sometimes as an editor I may need to be more involved in production sometimes such as taking a detailed look at the shot list before filming and maing recommendations. I may have to speak to Zak about changing his desired cut of this advert to ensure that the alcohol remains the focal point. With his inspiration being blade runner, i fear that this advert is seeming to focus more on recreating a blade runner scene than advertising a bottle of alcohol which is good for the narrative of the advert but then there is also a risk that the viewer will miss the entire purpose, which could easily be the case here.

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After my formaticve today, I received some very useful advice from Caroline to not worry about the sync initially as there is not much dialogue and make a cut and create a sound mix later. This is a great idea as it will allow me to work alot faster and as there is no dialogue I will have the freedom of creating my own more enhanced sound mix. in addition to this wasting time syncing all the files when I may only use about 50% of it will set me back so this way works perfect. Caroline also advised me to do this cut in Avid which I was a bot hesistant about as I have never completed a cut in Avid but i have completed and passed the training and know how to use the software. despite my hesistations it would be a great project to do in Avid for me as it is not too long and the fact that i do not have to worry about the audio until I have finished the cut will help me to avoid syncing issues which is something I had a huge problem with when I tried to do a project in Avid a year ago.
(Later in the day)
After the earlier advise I was given, I have been able to genrate a full rough cut in adherance to Zak's storyboard and will work on this further later in the week .
As Zak would also like multiple cuts, I have decided to do the additional cuts in Avid.

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After revisiting the edit I have been able to add some sfx through to make the edit sound less flat. I included things such as fabric movements and writing on paper very low in the background as this will make the edit sound more real but will not overpower the interview.

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Today I moved this project into avid afer recommendation from my Caroline. iwas able to generate 3 differnet sequences , 1 which was in line with the storyboard as requested, one that is my preference and another under 1 minute. The edit that is meant to be under 1 minute is still a little too long as in order to allow continuity I have to use certain shots which are relatively long but this week i will revisit this and see how i can shorten it down. I did have to use alot of freeze frames and J and L cuts with these as there are many shots which are cut too early and do not leave enough time for the actor to transition to another part of the house which he appears in in the following scenes

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Today I worked on the sound of this cut, mostly cutting out the remaining parts which had instructions from the crew in the background. After watching Pihu which follows a similar narrative, I noticed how soft tonal music was used to emphasise/ create emotion throughout the film which I believe to be key due to the minimal amount of speech. On Youtube i have managed to find a few soundtracks that i can use throughout the edit. I also think the music will help me transition between scenes more smoothly as there are many occassions where we jump from one shot to a completly different one rather sharply and fading music in and out will help to emphasise a change of time in the edit.

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After a formative today, i will go revisit this edit and see how i can increase the amount/ range of shots I used. I will also go back and think whether the way I have cut each scene reflects what is actually happening according to the script. It is likely that alot of the feedback given in my formative is not relevant anymore as i have sinced changed alot but I will still go back and double check.

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Today i got in contact with Zak and let him know my progress and suggested that we go over the cuts this week so we can agree on a picture lock and I can move onto the Audi, grade and titles. However, he said that he will be busy this whole week and not available until next monday. As Zak likes everything a specific way i dont think it would be wise in this case to proceed without his agree on a picture lock as it may be a waste of time if he is not satisfied wwith the cuts. This may set the delivery of the edit back quite a bit as there is not much i can do before he approves, I may start working on the audio bforehand but as this isnt synced it may not be worthwhile if he later decides he wants certain shots changed.

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Today I resumed working on this project, an idea that I had initially was for the top of one of the skyscrapper buildings to expand vertically into the logo however I did struggle with finding a way to do this. Initially I tried to make the shape expand vertically  but this created distortion and ruined the smoothness of the piece. I then decided to draw a line and make it the same width as the top of the skyscrapper which would then expand into the logo. This worked however when I made changes to the piece, the line became misaligned with the building and it was very tricky to fix.  At this point I realised that I made a minor mistake, when I made my larger composition I made it both wider and taller however it didnt need to be wider as the screen only pans up and not to the side. Although it wasn't a major error it is why I was having some difficulties with some of the edit not looking the same in the main comp and if I could start the project again I would've kept the width at 1080 pixels. I finally came to a better way of doing this by using the puppet tool. The puppet tool allowed me to isolate the top of the building using 3 pins. The first would separate the top from the bottom, the second would indicate where the top of the building would begin to expand and the third would be the point to which the building expands which in this case would be the botton of the logo.

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Even though zak is not able to review the three cuts i have assembled i am going to commence with the sound mixing on at least one which the one he said i can cut to my own desire. This is because this piece is solely dependent on my creative decision, so if he doesnt like it alot it will not be the worst case sceneario and i can talk him through why it may work as part of his advertisement campaign. For the other two i may wait for his approval first as he clearly stated he wanted these to be exactly like the storyboard but due to the fact that he didnt shoot certain scenes i have had to skip certain scenes to it is important that he watches these before i can make any further developments.

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Today I patched the audio on the under 1 min cut, even though there was no clapper board used, I previously started sorting the clips with the paper shown in the shots which was used as a make shift clapper board and I also started sorting the audio files (ones where Zak said what shot it was such as "shot 16 take 1  Action!") into bins . This meant that I could refer back to these bins in premiere to see which video files where which and pick the corresponding video file in Avid where I edited. i picked this piece to patch the audio for first because as stated before, the edit has yet to be approved by Zak as he is not free this week and seeing as the audio is not synced and not that easy to sync, I didnt want to spend time on the audio unnecessarily. Seeing as he gave me more creative freedom on this cut, he is less likely to request changes on this and therefore it would be worthwhile if i started on the audio to increase my chances of meeting his deadline of 21st April.

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Today i decided to start syncing the audio for the other sequences even though I previously wanted to wait for Zak to check them. This is  because it may make it easier for Zak to review the cuts when they have audio as it will give him a clearer idea of the end product. not only this but other commitments mean that I may not be able to go into uni this week and therefore I have to do things a bit faster and also prepare to share edits online. this will be a bit time consuming but to reduce the amount of times that i have to send him my edits, i am better off working on them as much as I can before sending. I have followed his storyboard for the most part with a few exceotuons due to cotinuity issues which I have informed him of so and changes he suggests shouldnt be too drastic.
Zak got in contact with me this afternoon and asked if I had anything to show him. He seemed to assume I had done more than I had and I let him know that I had just manged to complete the cut and would only be able to start grading once he was happy with the cuts which I did offer to show him last week. I offered to send him the cuts and let him know that if everything is fine with them/ just a few changes need to be made, I can begin grading today so I am currently uploading the cuts to google drive.

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Zak gave me some feedback and he didnt seem to care for the other 2 cuts which he suggested that I make, so I will no longer work on these as it doesnt seem to be a good use of time considering how much he wants the narrative to fit his storyboard even though he told me to make my own cuts. He questioned me on a few things such as the aspect ratio, which i do admit I got wrong however, he never told me the aspect ratio was 2.35:1 he told me it would be 4:3. As i am working in Avid, I am not really able to change this, however i made a sequence in premiere in 2.35:1 and put the edit in and nothing was cropped out so once i have finished editing and grading I will take the sequence into premiere of even back into avid and change the aspect ratio. He also wanted to know why i left out certain shots and i agina explained that the continuity of certain shots wouldnt be great as he didnt film all the shots he intended to and one of the shots he wanted was very shaky and was the only one like this and even with the stabiliser effect it still didnt look great. Therefore using this shot would ruin the flow of the edit. After explaining this to him he still requested that i use it but just a shorter amount so i will include it. he also felt the pace in the beginning was too slow, i realised that i left out a shot as I didnt quite understand where it fit however i know that it goes in the opening scne, this should help with the pace, hopwevr the opening is a long continuous shot and cutting it would affect continuity.

after working on the cut addressing the points on whoch zak gave me feedback, I have managed to include the shots which he requested. i am going to let him know that if he wants the pace to feel faster in the beginning I will have to cut the continuous shot which may make the cut feel a bit rushed and confusing as there are no other shots I can use as a cutaway to reduce the time it takes the character to get through the corridor to the front room.

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Today Zak got back to me and said that the cut i had was closer to what he wanted however he would give me some more notes later in the week when he is less busy. Even though I have already explained it to him, I dont think he is quite grasping the idea that it would not be ideal for me to continue to the grade without him approving the cut first. However due to time constraints, I will begin the grade and deal with whatever changes are necessary afterwards, this way i will at least have a completed piece for submission.

I have just created my davinci project, after having exported a reference file and aaf from avid to davinci. 3 audio files didn't convert back to the footage however I can fix this later. i will start by doing the primary grade first. Due to nthe fact that Iused the wrong aspect ratio, I intended to take the project into Premiere after I have finished it to put it into the right aspect ratio, however i realised that I could do this in Davinci instead. This works better because I will be able to move individual shots should they need to be reframed,whereas if I had done it premiere I wouldve only been able to export the project as a .mov/.mp4 and would have to change the shots as a whole.

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I resumed work on this project and wanted to get the background complete for the most part. i made all the bukding I had picked 3d layers as I wanted my project to have some dimension and after doing this I duplicated all og the layers and put a change to colour effect on them all and made them all black. After changing the opacity and adding a slight blur with the cc blue effect, I had now created a shadow for each building. With the 3D option actiovated i changed the position of some of the buildings ewhich helped to add depth to the piece. There were some lights that came as part iof the assets however after spendoing some time trying to align these with thebuilding that I hd used i figured that I would be better off making my own. I activeted the shape tool and unknown to me beofre I was able to create loads of little rectangles within one layer which saved time as I thought that i would have to make a separate shape layer for them all but now I had a layer of windows. to make these more interactive I wanted to add some people in the winows moving. I though of a dew ways of doing this such as bringing in videos of people howeever i felt as though this didnt suit the abstarct vibe that I was going for. I then decided to try and use gifs of couples dancing and this seemed like a great idea at first so i downloaded a few and brought them into my After effects project. When I went to put them on the windows I realised that the duration of the Gifs wasnt long enough for my project and with a time stretch effects the Gifs hardlymoved so I decided to scrap this idea. Instead i put a chnage to colour effect on some of the windows I created to give the look of lights being turned on and off. This worked out well however I came to the realisation that I should just imported on building and done all the animations for it and them duplicate it at the end which it what I would do should I do such a project again as it will save me having to recreate animations over and over. I deleted the other building I laid out and duplicated the ones with the lights. I flipped some over so they didnt all look the same and also changes the colour of some based on depth but still in line with the branding specification.

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I am not sure how this happened and went this long unnoticed but I have just realised that the audio files in this project are now all just noise and do not contain any of the actual sound from the shots. This is suprising to me as only 3 out of all the audio files i have used flagged up during the conform as offline and the rest were shown to be fine. I havent encountered this issue before but I should have realiused this much sooner by taking a bit more care when initially listening to the project when I first brought it into Davinci. As I have graded alraedy, I do n o have time to troubleshoot this issue by trying to reconnect the files as this may not even work. What I will have to do instead is just resynce the files that I have used which shouldnt take too long as I know which audio files i need for eacg clip now and I  roughly know which bits of each audio i need.

After about half and hour i have finished resyncing the audio and all the audio files are now working. Now I will begin to add additional SFX to create more dimension within the space. As the project is set in an empty room this may be abit challenging but I will watch through the edit and look for little bit of movement such as a squeak from a door hinge or even a clock ticking which can help build a better sound mix.

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I have began the colour grade and it seems to be fairly simple. Zak has used Blade Runner as his inspiration for this advert which tends to use the typical blue to orange colour range which many Action films use. Zak has also confirmed that this is the look that he wants. I started by carrying out a primary grade using the waveform scope; balancing the white and black levels to the legal limits. Even though this project is not for broadcast, I find that this is good practice for future and also a good way to create a balanced contrast in all the shots. I also made sure to copy and paste the grades I performed in a shot to all other shots that were the same or very similar so the grade would look consistent throughout. I then carried out a secondary grade and worked on creating the look that he wanted. He provided sample shots from Blade Runner which had looks that he liked so I used this as guidance. I boosted the blue tones in the shots in the beginning and middles of the project and reduced the red and green tones to give it a cool feel as you would see in other films in this genre such as Mad Max, Avengers or even Dark Knight. Towards the end of the project as highlighted in Zak's script, when a cupboard in the room is opened, the room is meant to be filled with a bright glow. So at this point in the edit i decided to boost the more orange tones and lower the blue tones to adhere to this part of the narrative. I used the parade scopes within Davinci resolve to create these looks. Whilst doing this project i have struggled with buffering most likely due to the fact that the footage is 4k. Working on this at uni would be probably be better however I am sure that I am using a newer version of Davinci than the ones at uni and therefore my project will not open. However, I have noticed that when i play back the timeline in grading mode it playbacks in real time with little to no buffer so i will do this from now on.

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I also noticed earlier that a few shots which I had resized were not the right size for the new aspect ratio of 2.35:1 so I will change these now as some of the shots have the audio recordist in the edge so this is necessary.

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Today Zak finally got back to me but still with no feedback and has requested to see the cut tomorrow. This for me is very confusing because he has a very soecific desired look and feel for this project which has left me with little to no creative control which I am fine with. However,  the problem arises from the fact that he will not give me feeedback for the cut that I have done which he said that he would but wants to see how far i've progressed. I knew that this would be the case but the fact that he still has not given me some feedback for the cut (in terms of the story) for the last version that I sent him, has strongly hindered me from producing a cut that would be to his liking. He also has a habit of telling me he wants to see my progress in person very last minute which is not very convenient for me, as even though I have time to do the edit, if I haven't planned to come into uni, its not very convenient especially considering the fact that I would have to go to work before or after. He doesn't consider the fact that I have other things to do and I am not just solely editing his work however I will still consider going into uni tomorrow as it seems to be the only way to get his feedback as of now.
I have however duplicated my timeline and created a version of the edit more in line with what I think works better which he gave me permission to do but I will not show him this version but use it for submission due to the lack of feedback he has given me as I didnt wnat to risk waiting for him and missing the deadline which will definitely be the case for his cut but not for the one I have done for myself.

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After revieiwng my cut, following the advice from my formative, I do not think that the feedback given is relevant anymore as I have made many changes since then. The only part of my project which I haven't changed is the living room TV scene and this is because the rushes and amount of takes do not allow me to cut the clip any shorter than I have if I want to maintain continuity, however I will explain this further in my VIVA presentation.

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Today I was checking all my projects to be ready for upload and I also used different headphones this day. I noticed that in one of my shots there was talking in the background, even though background noise is not bad because the scene was outside, it does sound like it is not meant to be there and now that I have heard it I find it quite jarring. due to the fact that the characters are talking in this part it is quite diffiult to edit out so I will just have to replace the shot. I found doing this quite challenging as the shot with the noise was the only one which allowed good continuity from the previous shot I had used. This is because in all the other shots the actors arm was positioned differently. Because of this I also had to change the previous shot however I do not think that this proved to be a bad thing as it has now allowed me to use a greater range of shots in the begining which should hopefully play useful in drawing the viewers interest.

As I have contnued checking this cut for submission I can further see how good of an idea it was to use different headphones as I can hear more things that shouldnt be heard that I couldnt hear with my other headphones. Most of these are small audio fixes that I can just fix by removing the noise and replacing with atmos from the same shot.

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Today i met up with Zak and he reviewed the cut that I had made. He had alot of feedback that he wanted to give me which was surprising as he still expected me to complete this project for Friday despite delaying the feedback for a week. Most of what he wanted me to change was related to pacing and how long certain shots were on screen. He said that he was happy with the direction of everything so far. i also showed him the grading that I had done so far and he liked it but wanted me to enhance the blue and green tones even more which I will do. Although I did start working on my own version, I will have to park it for now seeing as I now have feedback to progress. Initially I wanted to submit this project as a grading piece however due to the fact that as I expected I would have to change some shots due to the feedback, I will have to start the grade over. In addition to this the lighting in the shots are all very different and I want to give myself the best chance of doing this properly which would be possib le for me to complete by Zak's deadline which is 26th April but not mine which is 21st April. Therefore I will submit this piece solely as an editing piece.

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Today i began making some final adjustments to this project and i noticed a few things that I neede to change. The first thing was a continuity issue in the beginning as in many of the shots when the actor enters the house he is not wearing gloves and I used one of these shots. However I later show this same actor taking poff his gloves, at first I didnt notice this but after exporting the project and being able to view the project on a larger screen I realised this mistake. I then had to look for another take of the shot where he was wearing gloves and I manged to find about 5 however in 3 of them the audio recordist was in the shot and it was an awkward place which I would be able to edit out and 1 of the remaining 2 was a bad take. This left me with one more option and I used the clip replace button in Davinci to change the clips. I had to look for the corresponding audio fikle and also resync this. This worked out a bit better as this take was a bit shorter to helped a bit with the pace in the beginning which was previously a bit small. I also noticed another area of the cut with a continuity issue. I had used a shot of the actors hands on some pictuyres and cut to another angle from behind where his hands are in front of him where I assumed the pictures he was touching were . However when I expoerted this project to look at on a bigger screen I realised that in the shot from behind the pictures are actually to the side of him, and therefore cutting to this from the shot where his hand was on the pictures would be a jump cut. I did really want to use the shot with his hands on the pictures however i needed the shot from behind as it was the only one I could use to show the actor moving out of frame to the piano. Because of this I replaced the shot with the hands over the picture to a shot with just the pictures on the table. Even though I am not submitting this piece as an audio piece the sound sounded a bit flat so I went back through to add a bit more SFX.

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I revisited this cut today and i do feel like the pace is a bit too slow. It is a bit tricky as many of the shots are continuos are and hard to cut however i will cut some of these down. For example, I cut down ths hot of the Boy getting ready to serve himself breakfast at it was the longest shot I had. he walks to and from the kitchen several times and there were no other angles of shots of it I could cut to which would help me to reduce the duration. So what I did was I cut out two parts where he walks to and from the kitchen and only included the part where he walk to the cereal, struggles to grab it and then goes to get a broom to help him. Even though I have cut it, it is clear that theboy is struggling and serving himself food which is the overall point of this clip.

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In preparaton for this project I did watch Blade runner 2049 today. There are alot of things that I can take into consideration when editing my project from this movie such as the pacing and the regular close ups into small actions/ objects. In addition to this i noted how Blade Runner focuses heavily on ambience, there is this almost eerie mood throughout which helps alot in establishing each scene. I have also done some research into other alcohol adverts and i managed to find many on a site called ad forum and i did notice that the ones which have narratives tend to begin with a story and tie in the product quite late but keep the product as the focus once it is introduced.