Editing #2

Through the editing process we have been using the computer program ‘Windows Movie maker’. Windows Movie Maker is a basic video and audio editing program that allows us to upload our footage and cut and move it. It also offers basic effects such as transitions, fade-ins/outs and scene-splits.

Once we had our footage filmed on our camera I plugged it into the computer and uploaded them to Windows Movie Maker. The audio track was loaded to the bar underneath the film footage so that we could cut and move our film to fit in with the audio. Between scenes we added transitions and particularly made the flow smoother by introducing fade-ins.

On the positive side, Windows Movie Maker has a friendly interface and is easy to use. Negatively it is easy because it is basic and doesn’t include features we wanted to use such as ‘Green Screen’. The software is very slow and frequently crashes which can be very frustrating.  The crashing usually occurs when I try to import an mpeg-encoded video file despite Windows listing this type of file as compatible. We have found that we have had to convert these files to either AVI or WMV files to make it run smoother.

Despite these flaws we have been able to get positive results so far- and it’s the only program we have. I'm finding the editing process is going well as we match our footage to our audio and try to match the lip syncing.

These are photos of me editing our work on Windows Movie maker. Here I am ordering the shots we took and dragging and dropping them into the time line below. I can create fade-in transactions by slightly over lapping the shots; I think this type of transition will work well with our video.

Mood Board



This is a mood board I designed to display our influences and remind us of what direction we are heading in with our work. The centre photo is the infamous photo of the man kicking the window as the student protests of 2010 turned violent. This is particularly emotional for me as I was one of the peaceful protesters in London that day. Photos of the protests and of the first televised election debates reminds us our political themes are very relevant and topical to this day- it are these factors that keep influencing us with new ideas throughout our project. Contrasted with these photos are pictures from: Spitting Images, Peep Show and The Simpsons which represent the humour aspects of our piece. Cleverly these are all comical shows that have all had political aspects and great influences for our work.

Filming #4 / Editing

We have now completed our filming apart from two short scenes and small tweaks. Through out the filming process I have kept to my Focas Points of:

      Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate
      Shooting material appropriate to the task set

I have made sure the camera was always charged and ready fro filming, the tri-pod was set correctly and the tape was safe. While filming I made sure we used a variety of shot distances in our video aswell and more interetsing shot-types such as Birds-Eye-View.
    This week we have had a kep focus in Editing as we've loaded all our filmed work onto 'Windows Movie Maker' and worked on cutting out un-needed footage and putting in transitions bewteen shots.