Major Project: First Assembly Start & Workflow

The first stage of editing Double Exposure consisted of the initial set-up and beginning of editing, and creating the First Assembly cut of the film.

Post-Production Schedule

Before setting up, the producer and I finalised my editing schedule, in-line with other post-production procedures from the colourist and composer. The outlining post-production schedule consists of:

• The composer comes in every other Monday to get a new rough copy of the film and discuss/deliver music and or graphics.

• Crew edit reviews every Friday.

• First Assembly deadline 17th March.

• Rough Cut deadline 7th April.

• Colourist colour grades from 10th to 21st April.

• Fine Cut deadline 5th May.

• Final Cut deadline & project submission 12th May.

I think this a well structured schedule for us all to work to and I feel that I can complete my work load for every deadline.

Set-Up

Following this, I went through multiple setting-up stages with the assistance of our course Technical Adviser, consisting of:

• Initially attempted to view my dailies on a Mac at university, but the editing software wasn't as up to date as mine, so it could not open. This was troubleshooted by our technical adviser teaching me how to export my work as an XML file, allowing it to open in an outdated version of Adobe Premiere Pro.

• Worked with technical adviser to figure out the best sequence settings to use for all editing of the film, in-line with the footage specifications. The sequence specifications that match the footage and will be used for every edit version are below...

RED Cinema 4K HD editing mode, with 25 frames per second, and 3840 x 2160 ratio

• As the ratio of the footage was simply 1920 x 1080 when digitising, instead of the camera's preview film aspect ratio of 2.35:1, I used an online tutorial which can be found HERE, to learn ways to crop all clips in a Premiere timeline down to 2.35:1, following the Adobe Photoshop and Adjustment Layer tool technique, but by dividing our film's 3840 ratio by 2.35 instead of the example 1920 by 2.35. Giving the footage the original look that the director and DOP intended it to have, and an overall more professional, slick look. Below you can see scene 1 in the timeline, with the cropped adjustment layer above, with the preview cropped into a slick 2.35:1 ratio...

• The technical adviser then assisted me in setting up my own editing suite for a professional experience of what it's like to edit in the industry; in a separate room as opposed to a crowded office-like environment. Allowing me to edit the whole film in a private room with the use of editing equipment such as a Mac, headphones, speakers, and a soundboard. Giving me a real experience of being a professional editor and allowing me to have complete focus.

Following this, as all of my files and folders were already named and organised from the dailies process, so I was able to simply create a new sequence and project with the label 'FIRST-ASSEMBLY-V1-08/03/17' (a pattern of 'CUT-TYPE-VERSION NUMBER-DATE CREATED' that I decided on and will follow for every editing session/version) and imported all of the media, ready for editing.

First Assembly Initial 5 Day Workflow

The initial First Assembly stage of editing took five days before having a reshoot day, followed by a final sixth day of assembly editing (both to be discussed in other posts). Below are all of my notes copied out from my Edit Log that I used every day to describe each step that I went through per day, and the ways that the project developed, accompanied by daily screenshots of my work, and my overall thoughts on the process.

Day 1 (Online Editing Test & Assembly of Scenes 1 - 11):

• Started my Edit Log to track my progress throughout every day, and to keep notes of issues and troubleshooting, along with suggested reshoots. Below is an example page from day 1:

• Tested editing with the full high resolution footage in Premiere by doing the following:
• Creating a sequence with the above RED Cinema settings.
• Added all scene 15 clips in a non-linear order (a scene that consists of a large quantity of clips) to reach 15 minutes on the timeline.
• Layered the clips and audio, then added dissolve effects to make the software work harder.
• Added cropped adjustment layer to the timeline.
• I found that there were no issues, the software didn't freeze or lag, it ran very smoothly with the full resolution footage. So with the go-ahead from our technical adviser, I decided to edit online right from the start of post-production. Below you can see all of the scene 15 test in Premiere...

• With the dailies cut fresh in my memory, I started the first version of the First Assembly cut, and in linear order from scene 1 for continuity, started cutting the scenes together.

• Started by using just camera audio to focus on assembling the clips.

• Initially rendered each scene after cutting them together for a smoother workflow - although later this proved to be too time consuming.

• Used both original shoots of scenes and their reshoots for any and all useful clips, and later and useful sound.

• Re-positioned a scene 2 shot to allow for more head room (as the original footage is not cropped, this allowed for re-positioning a number of clips in the editing process to get the best alignment out of the shots).

• Initially struggled when cutting scene 3 together, I had to resize and crop certain clips and use a clip from scene 19 (an almost identical scene) to make a smooth enough cut. Along with needing to speed up and slow down some clips for a slicker look.

• I found that scene 4 needed to be cut down some how in order for it to flow, as it currently dragged too much.

• Re-scaled a scene 4 bedroom wide shot to cut out an out of place object.

• Decided to mix some shots from scene 5's original shoot with the re-shot clips, as some originals were well shot or better suited to the scene in some areas.

• Slightly cut into and replaced some audio to remove the director saying "action" and "cut", where I felt that the clips needed to be held longer, such as in scene 7.

• Re-cut scenes 1 and 2 to anticipate incorporating the opening titles, and added the 'couple' photos initially shot for scene 7 into the opening of scene 2, as I felt they were a better fit to introduce the couple to the audience. An example of the breaks between scenes 1 & 2 to allow for the film's title and the couple close-up shot can be seen below...

• Scene 8 had to cut to black between the character driving and a shot of her using the handbrake as they didn't cut together.

• Decided from this that a pick-up close up shot of the car pulling onto concrete may be needed.

• Further clips were re scaled for symmetry and movement such as in scene 9.

This was a very good start to the first assembly, in one day I cut together nearly half of the film without feeling as if I rushed it. It still had a long way to go, but I think that I chose the best of all shots and made a good start on making the clips flow together in the best ways possible.

Day 2 (Assembly of Scenes 12 - 21):

Day 2 Edit Log example

• Began with playback issues that seemed to be fixed by 'unlocking' then re-locking the adjustment layer and rendering the timeline. However this issue hasn't occured again since then.

• Re-scaled further clips in scenes 12, 13 and 15 to remove or add headroom and out of place items.

• Re-scaled clips for the purpose of matching shots more closely during a dialogue moment in scene 14, re-scaling MCUs of Dan to CUs, to match the CU shots of Emily opposite him.

• Found it difficult as a perfectionist to focus solely on assembling visuals only, as I wanted to fine-tune overlapping dialogue! But decided that it needed to be left to a later stage with the rest of the film's audio.

• Frequently used tools such as 'Ripple' and 'Razor' to professionally and smoothly cut together each individual clip. Allowing for cutting on action to be seamless, tools and techniques that I have been, and will continue to use throughout editing. An example of this can be seen below...

• Used an original shot from scene 19 for the scene's opening shot, then cut the rest with the reshot footage. Initially planned to later use some audio from the original shoot.

• Used a scene 3 shot of a character in scene 19 as it was a better fit.

• Altered the 'Speed/Duration' length of clips of Dan hitting his head and falling in scene 19 for a more dramatic effect.

This was a great continuation of the assembly, with more complex scenes being cut together, making sure right from the start to cut on action, make the most of my tools and keyboard shortcut techniques and trying to make each scene seamless.

Day 3 (Assembly of Scenes 22 - 23 & Syncing Sound in Scenes 1 - 14)

Day 3 Edit Log example

• Finished adding video for all scenes to first assembly timeline.

• The film at this stage finished at 18 minutes 9 seconds, therefore around 4 minutes needed to be removed and cut down.

• Began adding externally recorded audio, manually syncing it with each clip's in-scene camera audio, and replacing it once synced. An example of my audio syncing can be seen below...

• Had a challenging start, for each scene quite a lot of audio wasn't recorded, so not all of my selected clips had audio that they could be paired with. Scene 1's reshoot also had a large amount of wind throughout, so the audio was replaced with a combination of scene 1's original sound, and scene 11's sound. An example of these replacements can be seen below...

• Turned off the 'snap' tool to freely move the audio tracks for syncing.

• Began syncing sound frame by frame. This involved zooming in a close as I could into the timeline, and studying the dips and peaks in the audio for large periods of time, making sure that they were exactly right. This was often a struggle as a lot of the audio rarely noticeably peaked. An example of the difficulties of manually syncing my audio, but with an exact result can be seen below...

• Paired the sounds of scene 2 when the character enters the house with the 'couple' shots.

• Had to replace a lot of audio due to tracks that weren't recorded.

• Looped atmos tracks for the time being during clips where overlayed ADR tracks such as whistling were needed.

• Lifted the audio gain of extremely quiet sound clips by 10db.

• Found that almost all audio from scene 4 hadn't been externally recorded, so temporarily used atmos tracks, with the plan to recorded foley sounds later in replacement of this.

• Further missing recordings and some static sounds on recordings for scene 11, so replaced with some scene 1 recordings.

• Overall, I replaced a lot of sound from other scenes where the audio wasn't recorded.

• Found a technical issue throughout most of scene 14's audio that will need fixing in sound editing, along with a lot of echo from their dialogue, which will need fine tuning.

• Struggled with syncing up typing sounds in scene 14 due to their pace.

• The loud sound of a bottle being dropped in scene 14 was too distorted in the external audio, so the camera audio was used instead - something that had to be used in further scenes later in editing.

Learning from other students' experiences and difficulties with automatic audio syncing, I decided before working on audio that I wanted to manually sync Double Exposure's sound myself. Where the audio equipment had a lot of technical issues throughout shooting, and a lot of audio needed to be replaced in the scenes, it seemed like the most exact and least time-consuming way to sync the audio would be to manually sync the audio myself, frame for frame, and highly detailed. I'm extremely pleased with my results, especially as often the audio had only very slight peaks, but I managed to match up all audio seamlessly, even when the audio belonged to another clip or scene.

Day 4 (Syncing Sound in Scenes 15 - 23, Pick-up Foley & SFX notes, & 1st Sound Fine Tuning of Scenes 1 - 16)

Day 4 Edit Log Example

• Continued syncing sound from scene 15 onward. Further audio missing from scene 15, so I synced up other audio with some clips.

• Used camera audio for very loud dialogue/sounds.

• Found that 15 was the most lengthy and challenging scene to sync the sound for, as it took over an hour to sync all sound.

• Scene 17 also includes camera audio for loud dialogue.

• Used audio from scene 3 for scene 19's beginning, to replace the sound of footsteps without the sound of whistling.

• The beginning of scene 19 required further use of camera audio for shouting and loud dialogue.

• The sounds of Dan hitting his head and falling were also adjusted in 'Speed/Duration' to match the sped up footage of his death.

• Camera audio was used for a section of 21 as none of it's audio was externally recorded.

• Added ADR replacement recordings of Emily's scene 21 shed scream that was too distorted, and Dan's final "Em?" in scene 23 that was too quite. An early example of the ADR scream (in green) incorporated into the timeline is below...

• Used one long track from a separate clip in scene 23, as no audio was recorded for the clips that I'd selected.

• Began focusing on sound fine tuning and sound design, one scene at a time.

• Removed all original camera audio tracks from the timeline. A before and after can be seen below for how much it cleans up the timeline.

Before camera audio track removal

After removal

• Lowered all sound's max peak to -12db to avoid distortion. However this will need to be further altered later in Adobe Audition.

• Added atmos tracks for smooth transitions between clips and audio.

• Added whistling/humming ADR tracks to scenes 3 and 4.

• Added subtle sound of birds atmos track to scene 10 to match the script's description and tones.

• Started using J and L cuts to smoothly cut the dialogue in scenes 14 onward. Below is an example of a J cut I used for Emily's dialogue...

• Blended the sound of typing over scene 14 by adding additional in-scene recordings of the typing sound.

• Added 'Exponential Fade' Audio Transition effect to dialogue that overlapped, and to blend overlayed audio together in a more seamless way.

• Made notes on my copy of the script of all foley and SFX sounds that needed to recorded on our reshoot day, noting down each time that I noticed key audio was missing, or that extra sound design was needed. My script notes can be seen below...

Overall, syncing the audio to the clips was a struggle, due to the amount of audio missing and distorted or unusable audio. But the end result is well timed and synced, it just needs quality control work when sound editing in Audition. Working on sound early in the editing stages was extremely useful in recognising which sounds needing re-recording on our reshoot day for both sound replacement and sound design.

Day 5 (Continued 1st Sound Fine Tuning: Scenes 17 - 23):

Day 5 Edit Log Example

• Used 'Exponential Fade' Audio Transition effect in scene 17 to create the impression of distance.

• Replaced and re-synced a character's dialogue in scene 19 as her tone fit better and had less audio issues.

• Added whistling and humming ADR to scene 19.

• Sourced a high quality, well matched sound of glass smashing from Freesound.org to simulate the sound of the photo frame smashing on the ground in scene 19. This can be seen highlighted and added below...

• Used camera audio from the original scene 19 shoot for the sound of glass falling from the photo frame as she picks it up.

• Replaced, looped, and synced heaving breathing audio from a separate recording in scene 21, as it the selected clip didn't have matching audio recorded.

• Finished initial sound design improvements.

• Reviewed work so far, at this point looking to cut down the film, and add pick-up shots and audio.

After just five days, the first assembly cut of the film was already looking more like a rough cut, I was extremely pleased with the quality of this assembly. Although I credit a lot of my improvements in editing to my thorough research within this project, I also credit it to hands-on teaching and guidance from our technical adviser, and my own building and growing experience and practice within editing. My next areas to prepare for were our reshoot day, adding the reshot footage and re-recorded audio, finishing the first assembly, and beginning the rough cut.