Night Journey Assembly

This week we have began the assembly for the Night Journey brief by importing and labelling the films rushes. As the film is relatively old and is filmed in standard definition, we had to create a project in a slightly different way than we have previously had to, being in PAL 4:3 standard definition instead of the usual HDV 1080p 16:9.

Setting up the project with the right settings.

The raw footage we were given to edit came in 5 main clips which ranged in length from around 20 minutes to 5 minutes. This was because the footage was shot on film so between each shot there was a flash cut instead of a new clip being created like on digital films. This meant we had to subclip each one of these rushes and label each shot separately. To do this on Media Composer, you have to select an in and out point around the first and last frame of the clip (in-between the flash cuts) and then select the small movie reel icon next to the name of the clip in the preview screen, and drag it into the bin you want the subclip to be created in.

Creating Sub-clips in Media Composer.

The start of the labelling process.

As there are over 100 different clips that make up the 5 sets of rushes we've been given, dragging and dropping every separate subclip into a bin started becoming a nightmare, so we decided to use the command pallet to add a keyboard short-cut for sub-clipping to speed up the process.

Creating keyboard commands.

After a long time labelling all the different video clips and organising them into subsequent bins, we finished the rushes and started moving onto the narration.

Final labels of rushes.

For the narration, we decided to transcribe what was said and the time it was said at to make the labelling process for that much easier.

Transcription for whole narration.

Timings written next to transcription for easy labelling.

After we did this we started to put the narration on the time-line first and the fit the video around that to create a narrative. We decided it was best to put the narration on first as it would give us an easier time creating a story and structure the narrative clearly without complicating it with the visual side.

After we had agreed on the general layout for the audio, we started putting the video, linking corresponding shots to the audio and came up with a rough outline for the film.

First Assembly.