My Timed Edits

As part of the 'BC1002 Introduction to Sound' module we were required to do two timed edits that together would amount to half of our final grade. These two timed edits would require our creativity, demonstrating our ability to edit using 'ProTools' and would both be provided with unedited material for us to work with. Both were held under exam conditions and due to the time limit would force us to show our true editing potential, something of which was both an exiting and challenging prospect.

The Pro Tools 'Edit Suite'

The first of these edits was a 3 hour session where we required to create a professional edit of a local news radio programme. We had been provided with unedited material and had to organise and structure it to what we thought best, keeping in careful consideration of presentation and duration. The audio files we were provided with once again featured Ian Downs presenting a fake radio show and included a variety of news stories, links and a weather report. The duration we needed to edit these into needed to be 3 minutes long so it was clear that I would have to select the best stories and further edit them to make it all fit into a the short time span. This was quite tricky considering we had so much audio footage to sort through and had to include the weather at the end. We were also supplied with a selection of jingle Cd's that we had to select our theme and music, something of which I enjoyed personally and probably spent a bit too much time selecting. Nevertheless once I'd chosen my music and selected the parts I wanted to use in my edit, I quickly got started, disposing of any unusable clips and trimming the few I had down to keep within the time duration. I managed to complete it with time to spare and was pretty happy with the results, allowing for a huge sigh of relief.

The second timed edit was done in the space of a week and was probably one of the most enjoyable thing's I have done so far on the course. We were provided with a video clip of the film 'City of God', a rather unique clip that showed the character in it in the middle of a gun fight in the city suddenly transported (in what i presume is an old memory) to a desert setting where he's playing football with friends. The video was silent and required us to add sound and music to it, although this time we were required to find the material for it ourselves. Even before starting the edit I was rather eager to get working on it, the thought of being able to work with video for the first time in the course excited me as I have a huge preference of seeing the work I'm editing. Once we began editing I watched throughout the video and noted all the sounds I would be needing, the most important to me being some form of music, as I believe that music provides the best atmosphere within film. One of the best programs I have the chance to work with on this course is Soundtrack Pro, and any chance I can get I will be on it faster than lightning. At first I wanted to make something with some sort of African beat that would relate to the characters in the film, however
after watching it a few times and looking through the list of instruments on 'Soundtrack' I decided the best option was to go for a synthetic, slightly eerie theme that turned out to work very well with the film's style and narrative structure. It worked perfectly with the change of setting and allowed me to not get too involved adding various other sound effects. The few sound's I did use came from a website called 'sounddogs.com', a very handy website that provided me with anything from a clucking chicken to children cheering. With these in place, I kept their volume to a minimum and tried to reflect the sounds as the character in the clip would be hearing them. I believe I captured this rather well although had this not been a timed edit, I'm sure I would have spent a little bit longer working on it.

City of God 2003, Miramax films

I thoroughly enjoyed the timed edits during this semester, much like I have done editing on other projects throughout the course so far. These one's particularly showed me how much fun it can be to edit and whilst occasionally stressful it proved to me that editing is one of my key interests in media, something of which I would hope to be a part of my future career. For now though edits like these will be satisfying enough and I really can't wait to start working and editing new projects next semester.

Hard at work!!