fine editing
I hoped to get the first propper edit finished by the end of today, but it’s not going to happen. It’s slow work putting in the music, sound effects and narration and you tend to be so focussed on the minutiae of the project – how one shot follows the last – how loud each sound should be – where music is appropriate and where it just gets in the way – that you loose track of the wider themes and start to wonder whether the project actually says what you originally wanted it to say.

That’s not a bad thing – On any large project, this happens eventually. You loose the initial naivity and excitement about the project as you do the fine details, so you just end up having to trust yourself. Trust that when you planned out the story and worked out the basic shape of the thing that it was right… and that once you’re finished, that shape will return.

That’s not to say I don’t like this process. In fact it’s probably my favourite part of the edit. You finally get to see the “moments” in your film. The pacing and the pauses that make one point stick out more than another. The way the visuals and the sound track work together. The actual style of the piece starts to emerge fully formed from the raw material.

It’s slow, hard work, but it’s great to see the programme emerging.

I’m coming to the view, however, that editing – especially fine editing is such concentrated work that I can only do it for a certain length of time before I have to stop and do something else.

My productivity drops off in the afternoon and I find I’m getting less and less done. I find it harder and harder to concentrate and I start loosing enthusiasm for the finer details.

I wonder if the optimum editing time is half a day… I’m wondering if in future I should schedule to only spend about 4 hours at a time editing and switch to other more relaxint (or just different) projects in the afternoon. Maybe do a little 3d texture painting or writing work….

Anyway, that won’t happen with this project as I’ve got to get a finished version by the end of the month… Just 10 days away….I’ve sent off a copy of the first few minutes to my distributor and to the voiceover artist… it’ll be good to hear what they think.

I’m really getting annoyed with premiere Pro. It crashes every couple of hours, so I have to keep saving my work. I’ve just lost about 15 minutes of work. I guess it’s not too much – because I’ve made the editing decisions – it’s just that it’s fiddly work putting in sound effects…. Anyway, what can you do? I guess buying more memory might sort it… is 2gb enough for HD editing? I don’t know.

I suppose I’m asking quite a lot of the package, combining HD, SD and computer animation on the same timeline whilst animating 3000 pixel stills over several layers. Still….