Here is an overview of the postproduction process that I carried out. I had a process in mind and had planned an order accordingly. However, as I have found when editing all my films so far, it is important to keep watching and re-watching the whole edit so far to see how it flows, particularly from one section to another, and to not be scared to alter things from your original plan if they are not working when you see them. I made changes, for the better, several times. For example, as detailed below, with the Extra Filming, and also the Animation that I added despite originally planning to have no animation.

 

I have Reflected upon and Evaluated the process in my Evaluation section.

 

Uploading, arranging and editing my filmed Woods footage

Because had already used the test filming footage that I had filmed in the garden to do a mock-up of my video, this enabled me to replace those clips with the real ones that I filmed in the woods very easily, saving time. I tidied it all up since it now contained the real footage, to have crisper, better lined up cuts and to look more professional. I was aware at this point that there were issues with the audio of me speaking to camera, which I was going to work to fix later.

 

Also, I had noticed that some of the footage of me speaking to camera was a bit grainy due to issues with the Manual settings. I have discussed the reasons more fully elsewhere. I used the grain reduction tool (which I haven’t used before) in After Effects to reduce the graininess, but after feedback from my tutor Tom, I ended up using the not-grain-reduced version to avoid the softer focus that reducing the grain caused. Tom also commented that he didn't think the graininess was as bad as I had been thinking.

 

Split Screens for Woods footage

I had planned to have the shots that I filmed of my mum on a split screen with the shots of me filming my mum (i.e. the behind the scenes), for each of the 3 different camera movements, so I put them into these split screens. They go on screen after the audience has watched the 3 versions full screen.

 

Colour Grading and White Balancing

I colour graded and white balanced all my filmed footage to make it look more consistent and less jarring and thus more pleasing to the eye.

 

Then once all my filmed footage was all edited together, I exported it so that it became one video. This means that I can keep my editing files tidier, helping me keep track better of what I'm doing.

 

Adding my recorded Voice-over

Next, I added my recorded Voice-over, this enabled me to have an audio track to edit in the video clips and stills, that I had collected during my research, into, allowing me to work out, for example, how long each still needed to be on the screen.

 

Inserting Clips and Stills

For the video clips, I balanced the length of time of audio for each sentence that each video clip related to, with the amount of the video clip that I had made the decision that I needed on the screen. In some cases, I made slight adjustments to the voice-over audio, for example inserting a slightly longer pause to enable a longer clip to be inserted. I had to be careful to keep the flow of speech sounding natural though. In other cases, I re-evaluated how much of the clip I needed. It was all a balancing process, to achieve a good flow that felt natural and easy to listen to, not jarring.

 

Adding tilt and pan animation

Originally, as a result of my research, I had decided not to go down the route that a number of documentary/informative videos do of using animated diagrams to explain certain things. I have no problem with it in the right setting, but I hadn’t felt it would be right for this film. However, when I was listening to me talk about how the first Camera Movements were the Pan and Tilt, I felt that an animation could really (simply) make it clear to people who weren't really aware of these terms what they meant, without going into lots of depth to explain which would have run the risk of turning it more into a technical video, which I didn’t want. Luckily, I remembered seeing 2 animations in one of the Crash Course Film History videos (2017), which saved me the time that it would have taken to create them myself. I added them in, but I felt that, instead of each clip running sequentially, it would be clearer to have them run side by side, so I incorporated a split screen for this, which I think works well.

 

Extra Filming

This is filming that hadn’t figured in my original filming plans and script, but when I saw how well the tilt and pan animations fitted in, I decided that I also wanted to illustrate the part of the voice-over where I say "up, down, left and right" to describe that a tilt and a pan are pretty simple camera movements. I didn’t want to use another animation, so I had the idea of going back to the woods and recording footage from my camera actually moving up, down, left and right. I had to make adjustments to the footage once I had edited it in, in order to line up the camera movements better with the beats when I say the words "up, down, left and right" since otherwise it would jar.

 

Split Screens for Clips

I planned to use split screens as appropriate, for example for showing behind the scenes footage from films alongside the actual scene being filmed. One particular edit that I had to do when I put in the 2 clips from Rocketman (2019) Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, one from the film and the corresponding behind the scenes clip, into a split screen, was to sync them up. This was particularly important because there is a point at which all the dancers jump in the air, and this needed to be synchronised with the same point in the behind the scenes footage otherwise it would look odd to the audience.

 

Doing 3-way split screen

This is another thing that wasn't on my original plan, but as I was watching and re-watching my edits, I could see that it would be a good idea. There is a point after I have shown the series of split screens of my 3 experiments in different camera movement, and discussed them, where I mention the three different shots in a relatively short sentence. It occurred to me that it would just help the audience to be sure what I was talking about if, briefly, I put footage of the 3 different sequences on the screen at the same time, which I did using a 3 way split screen.

 

Adding Birdsong

I had tried to record real ambient sound in the woods with bird song on to match that of the first day's filming which you can hear when I am talking to camera, but it was too windy each time I tried. So, I used ambient woods/birdsong that I found on YouTube. However, it wasn't long enough so after I loaded it on, I had to loop it, and in a way that wasn't obvious. I also had to adjust the volume of it to match that of the actual ambient woods/birdsong that was in the background for the shots of me talking.

 

Adding Background Music

I added the background music that I had created using the A.I. program. I went through the video adjusting the volume of the music as appropriate for what was on screen at each point.

 

Adding Text and text effects.

I added text in the form of names and years of the films that I had clips from. I experimented to find the best font, which I determined to be Arial, which is a very simple font, and best size on screen to enable the name to be read easily by the audience but not get in the way of the film clip, as I didn't want it to distract the audience.

 

I added text to introduce each of the experimental sequences that I had filmed, to help the audience to follow what they are watching for the experiment. I used a different font for this, I had felt that Arial was best and non-distracting for the film names, but for introducing the experimental shots I did want to catch the audience's attention with the font, so I made it a more interesting font and put it on its own on in the middle of a black screen, where the audience can't help but read it.

 

I also added text in the form of the Main title, "Camera Movement in Film and TV", on the opening shot, creating an effect that I am very pleased with, and which has been praised in comments from the friends who I asked to look at my video. It's a bit complicated to explain. The opening shot starts by having a tree trunk fill the screen, out of focus, with the title superimposed on the tree trunk. Then the camera tracks to the right on my slider, to reveal me walking towards the camera. The camera stops with some of the tree still in shot. As the tree effectively "moves" the left, the parts of the title text that become not on the tree, vanish. It took some fiddling to get this effect to work, especially since the speed of the tracking slows down towards the end before the camera stops. I am pleased with it.

 

Adjusting the Audio          

As I mentioned at the start, I needed to adjust the audio where I am walking in woods and the leaves are crunching too loudly. My tutor Tom suggested using equalisation in Premiere Pro, which I hadn’t used before, but which looked really interesting and useful. However, I couldn’t get it to work, it wouldn’t apply to the area I selected., even after trying to research a solution. So I used the pen tool, that I knew worked on my current computer set up (an Apple Mac Mini), to level the sound out, and showed the results of this to my other tutor, Nargess, and asked her opinion. She was unable to help me to get the equalising working, but she also said that she felt that what I had done with the pen tool was fine and that I didn’t need to use equalisation now.

 

She did also suggest, as feedback, that I try seeing if any fades work when I have transitions to black screens, which I did, and have put in the places where they work. I hadn't thought to use fades because I associate them more with the passing of time in fiction films, but I like the effect it gives here.

 

This is essentially what I did in Postproduction. There were lots of other little tweaks and things that I also did, but this the main things.