Digital News Production: Package Editing

What was involved
Once the After Effects footage was ready, it was firstly a matter of laying out each part of the package in chronological order in a Final Cut timeline. As we had already planned out the order of the news package and the features that would be added in post production, it was a well organised process. From start to finish, editing involved...

• Beginning with our presenter green screen footage.
• Transforming the sound. I changed certain effects on the footage to make the presenter's voice sound clearer and lower the sound of a slight 'static' or 'noise' sound behind her voice. I think it sound very clear after tampering with this.
• Finding an effective placement of the opening titles/intro. We decided on after the line "Hi guys! I'm Lisa and welcome to Game-Over" this fits very well as she dives into the topic straight after the intro.
• Adding on-screen footage of games that were released this year and said to have glitches, as well as footage of glitches in Assassin's Creed, with the presenters voice becoming a v/o to mix 'showing and telling' and showing the audience the issues first hand...

"...bugs such as their character falling through the map"

• Using the same showing and telling v/o technique by adding screenshots of Twitter users' complaints about Assassin's Creed Unity. Presenting fans/customers opinions gives a clear connection and relation to the parts of our audience that are frustrated with the game.
• Deciding on a background to have behind the Twitter screenshots, rather than a plain background. I decided to stick to our theme and use the same green screen background for this, but change the colour to black and white and zoom on it slightly. I think it looks very effective and doesn't stray too far from the background behind the presenter...

• Deciding as a group to add GFX footage of money with text saying '10 million' over the presenters voice discussing statistics. I think this gave a good covering of a long clip of just the presenter on screen and added some entertainment to a simple line about the statistics of sales...

• As decided before hand, adding a screenshot of an apology stated by Ubisoft in a BBC News article, in a similar style as the Twitter posts. As another way of showing and telling and livening up the package. I also wanted to keep the same background for each screenshot to add consistency...

• Adding silent footage of upcoming interviewee lecturer Matt, conducting a lecture, with the presenters v/o introducing him. This adding a lot to his introduction, as we see him in his workplace before 'meeting him' in the interview.
• I then separately constructed the cut of the interview itself, separate from the package timeline. To make sure that it was kept to a short amount of time, without losing important content, I carefully selected the more important and interesting 3 out of 5 questions and answers.
• After this, I decided to start with a wide shot of both the presenter and interviewee, for an establishing shot of the location and setting, and then remain using close-ups for the rest of the interview. As it gives a much more personal feel.
• As the interview at the this point was too long to meet the time quota, I had to cut down Matt's answers. I cut out any stutters and long pauses to begin with, and moved on to cutting out the less important/needed parts of his answers. I covered the cut answers with the presenters reaction shots that we had filmed in preparation, which I think look very natural and flows well. I managed to cut the interview down to approximately one minute in total, without losing any of it's quality.
• The last part of editing the interview was correcting the sound in the same way that I did so with the green screen footage, to make it clearer.
• Once the interview was added into the timeline, I added close-up cutaway footage of our presenters hands using a gaming console controller and of the game on TV, with the presenter telling us that she tried out the new release to find out about bugs for herself. This adds a 'doing' role for the presenter in our package and I think that mixed with the interview, it allows her to be a professional-seeming mix of presenter and reporter...

"I had a go at playing the game to find out for myself"

• A large decision to make was whether to use our first (downbeat) ending option of the new Assassin's Creed game being full of flaws, just like the last or to use the upbeat ending of it being much more well made and smooth running. Due to our testing of the game and finding that it had no issues, I was able to use the footage of our presenter stating that this game is a huge improvement.
• Once every bit of footage was laid out and cut together in the timeline, I fine tuned each clip to make sure that it flowed well and that none of the sound cut into each other. I think the package runs very smoothly due to this.
• I then added the soundtrack - Moose by Bensound. A copyright free techno track that had been decided on as a group. While it sticks to the 'news' feel, it connects very well to our topic of gaming, and lifts the energy of the package fantastically.
• To give further information on who we're watching, I added a lower third to the first clip of our presenter (aside from her intro) and a lower third onto the first close-up clip of our interviewee. I think this adds to their introductions and fits well into the conventions of news. I decided on both silver and red lower thirds with geometric shapes to stick to our logo and backgrounds themes...

• Once I'd added this ending, the last part of the timeline to add was the credits. Due to researching other news programmes such as BBC News and ITV News and finding that their end credits are one 'page' of roles and only momentarily appear, I decided to keep it simple and add my groups names and roles and our music source. Along with our title above. I think it looks simple but effective and represents a news style of credits very well...

Changes
Although we were extremely happy with our news package at this point, it was approximately 3 minutes long, instead of 2 and a half. So with feedback from our tutor to shorten the time and improve on certain features, I made the following changes...

• Removed an unnecessary part of the presenter's topic introduction.
• Lengthened the time of both of the lower thirds, to give the audience more time to read the and take in the information.
• Removed one of the Twitter screenshots to cut our time, as only one was needed.
• Removed the examples of Batman and Tony Hawk as glitchy games to cut time as they were not needed.
• Added 'courtesy of...' text to our approved YouTube game footage to credit the users.
• Removed unnecessary lines after the interview and in the outro.
• Changed our GFX footage and text when the presenter discusses statistics due to an error on my part. I changed the text to '10 million units' as the statistics are talking about the amount of copies shipped, and changed the footage to GFX of game discs to fit the new text. I think this is a large improvement...

• Added a lower third with a list of ways for the audience to leave comments when the presenter asks us to provide our thoughts on the topic. I think this was much needed and greatly approves on the package ending...

Final result
Without including our presenter intro, the opening titles and the end credits, our total time for our package is 2 minutes and 37 seconds. I'm extremely pleased with the end result of the package. I think it flows very well, is tightly cut and even after cutting down a lot, still holds the amount of energy, information and entertainment as we originally planned. We see our package as a very realistic and professional news piece.