I thought I would write down some thoughts on the edit that I’m in the middle of. At this point, what I like to call the ‘I’ve pieced together every piece of film possible’ has been completed. This, in my experience, is probably the most intense point of editing as I have to make sure the multiple camera angles line up with one another both in a video/audio sense so then I can switch between the two of them to figure out what was the best angle of the shot. I have gone through the entire film to choose the best angles and have decided on what should be in the entire cut.
Vero showed me last week how I should keep my audio levels around -12db so now I have to go through each clip and ensure it’s at the same level. This will not be hard in the church ceremony as we’ve decided to take the audio from Vero’s camera which was up near the couple getting married as opposed to my video camera on the opposite end of the church. I can already see certain elements that would have helped me if I knew it beforehand, like when I edit a section out of Camera A, if I don’t lock the audio track, it gets cut as well. Now I’m going back to the Audio A and restoring the entire track of it but it’s cut all over the place. It’s not that hard of a job, but it just takes time.
The next challenge will be choosing the audio for the reception part. This will require a little more finesse as I will have to adjust each audio track which was cut to the video which could be 1000 different cuts. All in a days work I guess? It’s fun though. I enjoy editing. I think I will enjoy the final part which is where Vero says ‘the magic happens’ and we can put things together and make them flow better, cut out extraneous parts like dance scenes, the band playing, etc. I got a good taste of how an audience watches the film when Samantha’s parents were up months ago and I gave them a sneak peek and while it’s nice to see people dancing and the band playing, after awhile the thought of “let’s get on with it!” fills the room. At least, that’s how I felt. I’m almost afraid to have Vero by my side during the final edit process as she is ruthless and she is all about ‘making it short!’. At the very least, we’ll keep the full version for historical sake in case someone wants to watch the five hour film.