Throughout the making of my film about Angel and the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, I will be posting Behind The Scenes videos to provide a more in-depth look at my production process. The second installment dives into my methods of organizing and sorting footage that I want to use in the film. The purpose of this process is to make things more organized so it is easier and more efficient to find and drag in clips when editing the film. If you missed the first installment on finding the right music for the film, click here.
Warning: Content in this video may be triggering to some viewers. Contains brief images of dolphins being driven, captured, and slaughtered. What you see in this video is a quick run-through of trimmed clips in different timelines that are sorted by category (drive footage, slaughter footage, Angel footage, etc).
Before I start editing, there's a lot of work to be done in importing and organizing all of the footage that I plan on using. The first step is creating folders and naming them based off of the footage source and description (see the left half of the image below). After that, I import every clip into its respective bin.
Now that all of the uncut footage that I plan on using is sorted into categories, the next step is creating video timelines for each category (see the right half of the image below). To achieve this, I look at each clip and trim it down into segments that I think would fit in the video. I then drag those into the matching timeline to have a compilation of every clip that fits the category. What you see in the behind the scenes video is a quick run-through of these trimmed clip segments.
Having all the clips in these timelines makes it easy and quick to find the footage I'm looking for while editing the film, and they're already trimmed down to what I want. This means all I have to do while editing the film is drag them into the main editing timeline where I want them and adjust their length slightly if needed. It streamlines my workflow and allows me to focus my thoughts on piecing together the story.
Screenshot of my editing program. Shows sorted footage bins (left) and timeline sequences (right). These both make finding and dragging clips to the film's timeline easier when editing the film.
Sometimes, I will even add certain effects at this step like zoom-ins or pans if I see a clip where it is needed to remove unwanted objects in the background, or where it makes the clip fit better to what I'm looking for (for example, I added a zoom effect on one of the aerial Taiji drive clips to focus more on the banger boats). This also saves me time later on when editing the film, so I don't have to spend all my time adding these basic effects to make it fit smoother.
After I drag in a clip to a sequence, I change its title to a brief description of the clip so that while looking through these sequences as I edit the film, I can skim through quickly to find exactly what I'm looking for (for example, is it a close up of Angel's face, a shot of her from above the water, or something else?).
Now that each category has a fully complete sequence of trimmed clips I want to use, the process is complete! It's now on to editing the film, finalizing the script, finding a voiceover actress, and recording the lines! The next behind the scenes update will look at how I edited the content in the preview, so stay tuned! If you haven't checked out the preview yet, click here! Thank you all for reading and for supporting me as I continue to work on the film!
CREDITS:
Music:
Epidemic Sound
Footage:
The Cove - Oceanic Preservation Society
Anonymous contributors
Disclaimer:
All content has been used either with permission or with a purchased license/subscription and the rights remain entirely with the owner of the content used. You may not use any of this content for your own production without express permission or licensing from its owner.
This free behind the scenes video is for the purpose of providing an inside look of the Angel Short Film, and is not necessarily reflective of the content in the final released product.
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