Editing improved.

Yesterday I received some useful suggestions from Jonathan to improve my edit. The majority of the improvements were made to the sound.

The first general improvement I made was using the pen tool to make the sound fade in and out to a more professional standard, rather than using the cross fade effect.

The screenshot shows how, especially with the voiceover sections, I faded the sound in and out with the pen tool to clear it up and give it a more professional standard. I also dipped the audio levels of the sound track where necessary, to give more emphasis on the voiceover. As Jonathan also pointed out, some of the audio levels were peaking into red and so I had to alter these slightly which meant adjusting some of the other levels also. Quite a few of his other suggestions on the audio were also to move some of the songs to start a bit earlier. I feel this has worked really well in parts where it overlaps the end of the interview, and the beginning of the next voiceover.

He had suggested to use some cutaways at certain parts of the film. Below shows one attempt at doing so.


However, I felt that the use of cutaways in this part felt lost because they weren't really relevant to what Hussain the interviewee was saying, and the only one I could find that remotely seemed relevant just seemed pointless on its own. Furthermore, I wanted to keep a Cinema Verite feel to the interviews, and this was the same with the Tom Gatis interview. Not only that but in terms of his suggestion with cutting parts out, although I did want to also, I felt that with all the information being given by the interview itself, it was too important to cut any out. In the end I decided to remove the cutaway attempt, and rather than go back to using a cross dissolve effect like before hand, I didn't insert anything and left it how it was. I was pleased with the end result and felt it is somewhat of a compromise. I haven't changed any other parts in the interview as I felt they worked better.

However I did have some slight problems with the soundtrack of 'Air France - No excuses' because when I tried to use the pen tool, it would insist on cutting the beginning of the song out, which was the section of the song I wanted.

This screenshot shows how I ended up keeping the cross fade at the beginning of the song because it had the correct result I was wanting.