Documentary: Editing- Rough Cut

All the footage has been filmed, it's now time to start editing together a rough cut. I always find it hard to explain every step of my process but I'll try my best. Before editing anything, I set up my workspace with a dual screen layout, to make editing lots of footage a lot easier. This is my favourite and preferred way to edit.

My workspace set up

EDITING: ROUGH CUT

I began the edit by importing all of my footage into Adobe Premiere Pro. I then used bins to organise everything and make it easier to find. For example, I had a bin for all of the interviews, and a bin for all of the GVs from day 1 of filming. I also created 11 sequences: Rough cut, opening titles, section 1, section 2, section 3, closing titles, credits, Jamie's IVs, Sue's IVs, Martina's IVs, and additional IVs.

My bins

My sequences

Next I began watching all of the interviews and keeping a note of any sections I would like to use in the final cut. I used to script to guide my choices, and to ensure I picked all the correct information, and cut out the irrelevant stuff. Once I had watched all of the interviews, I inserted the clips into their respective sequences. I then went through each sequence, cutting the interviews down to what I needed. I then went through and started working on the cuts I had made. I worked on the audio as that was the important part, the visual cuts will be hidden later on. I used the mixing tools to hide all of the audible cuts in the sound. I continued to do this until I was happy that every single interview clip was ready to be placed into the final cut.

All of Jamie's unedited interview clips

Step 1: Assembly

For this part, I only focused on the interview clips, and the opening and closing scenes. Anything else with GVs was going to be left until the fine cut edit.

I started by working on the opening scenes. I began assembling the footage on the timeline in the order I wanted, not worrying about sound just yet. I inserted the narration, to help guide my cuts and shot choices. 

I then moved on to section 1, where I started to insert the interview clips I needed. Again, I used the narration to guide the edit, and help with the timing of the piece. To help more with timing, I did fill a few gaps with some GVs I knew I definitely wanted to use. Once again, I didn't focus too much on sound because I would be coming back to that later on. I then moved onto section's 2 and 3, follow the same steps, using the script and narration to guide the edits.

Finally, I assembled the closing scenes. I used the narration as a guide and inserted all of the footage, and additional interview clips that I needed. This section was mostly built up of additional footage, shot away from the allotment, that related to what was being said. Basically, the premise for all of my edits during the assembly cut was to match pictures with sound. The narrator says something, and then we see it.

Step 2: Fine Tuning

My next step was to start fine tuning the edits, fixing any mistakes I had made during the assembly process. During this step I started to insert only a few more GVs to help with the timing. I also started to insert some music tracks, as I wanted some shots to cut in time with the beat. I spent a little while working through each section, fine tuning the cuts and making the edits just a little bit cleaner. I found using the ripple delete and rolling edit tools made this process a lot easier than usual.

During my fine tuning process, I also had to stabilise a few shaky shots. To do this I used the Warp Stablisation tool. I let it analyse the footage and then I set the stablisation level to 25%, so it didn't affect the quality of the footage too much. I was very happy with the results of this tool.

Warp Stabilisation Tool

Step 3: Sound and Music

Next, I began working on the sound, something I had ignored up to this point. I had already inserted music and narration to help with the timing of the edit. Now I just needed to work on the levels and blend everything together.

I started by first going through my interview clips once more and fine tuning all of the audio adjustments I had made prior to assembly. Then I started to work on the music levels. The levels varied depending on which part of the documentary I was working on. When a character was speaking they had to be very low, when the narrator was speaking they could be a little higher, and when there was nobody speaking, they could be just below their normal level. To work on the sound I used the track, and clip mixers to ensure there were no mistakes.

Track mixer

Finally, I went through the interviews and narration and adjust the levels so they matched that of a normal talking voice. I also ensured they were all audible and at a similar level throughout. And last of all, I went through all the audio and used the 'constant power' audio transistion to help blend audio clips together and hide audible cuts.

Step 4: Graphics

My final stage in preparing the rough cut was to work on three on screen graphics: the title card, an on screen quote, and the credits.

To create the title card, I opened the background shot I wanted in Adobe After Effects. I then set up a two new compositions, one for the text and one for the background. In the text composition, I added the title, which at the time was 'Pledge For Veg', and I then animated it so it faded on screen in a linear manner, from left to right, whilst scaling up a little too. I then went into the background layer and inserted the text composition so it overlaid the background. Finally, I repositioned it to a spot I liked, added motion blur and inserted the final edit into the rough cut in Premiere Pro.

Creating the title card in Adobe After Effects

The next graphic I created was the on screen quote. In this part of the documentary, a quote from an online article appears on screen and I needed to animate in in After Effects. I started by inserting the background, quote, and a text box. In the text box, I wrote the source. I then changed the font and positioned it at the bottom of the screen. Next I animated the quote so it slowly scaled up throughout the duration of the clip. Then I blurred the background so it was easier to focus on the quote. And finally, I added a drop shadow to the quote and text box, added motion blur and inserted the final edit into the rough cut in Premiere Pro.

Creating the quote graphic in Adobe After Effects

Last of all I created the credits. Although Premiere Pro has a built in effect for credits, I prefer to do it in After Effects. I began by opening up a new document in Adobe Photoshop, so I could create the text that would make up the credits. After adding all the text, I insert the Photoshop document into After Effects and animated it so it scrolled up the screen. Once I found a good pace, I inserted the final edit into Premiere Pro.

Creating the text in Adobe Photoshop

Editing the credits in Adobe After Effects

And that was it, with a bit more fine tuning, the rough cut was complete. A lot more work was put in to bring it up to the standard it was at but as they were only tiny adjustments, I have not mentioned them. Overall it took maybe more than 12 hours to put the rough cut together.