Editing

I've done all the editing at home, because my camera records in *.m2ts format (with accompanying *.modd files). Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro cannot import this format, so for the sake of convinience and quality, I've avoided these programs. Note: I'm basing this off of Adobe Creative Suite 3. It is possible that CS4 might support these files, but I didn't want to be forced into doing all the editing at school (as I'd have no way of moving back and forth due to compatibility issues).

This is a rundown of everything I did in the editing of this opening, though I might have missed some parts. I have a folder of screenshots to accompany this, so wherever you see a [0] with a number in it, that number corresponds to an image in the folder. If I need to upload the images at a later date, I will.

The programs I used were:
Sony Vegas Pro 10 - Editing
Adobe After Effects CS3 - The 3 seconds of Bill shooting the goons
Sony Picture Media Browser - for importing files from my camera
Youtube Downloader - For downloading music
Anvsoft Any Audio Converter - For converting the downloaded *.flv music
MS Paint - for saving screenshots of my editing

The first thing I did was to set up a new project in Sony Vegas. For this I chose settings that matched my camera's footage - 1920x1080 pixels, 25 frames per second (PAL standard), 48,000 Hz audio sample rate. [1] I've done tests before where my camera had been recording in 1440x1080 pixels and I hadn't noticed. Since the output has always been to 1920x1080, these clips had all come out choppy and unwatchable. Some time before filming this opening, I set it to the correct ratio and did more tests, and the output was significantly better.

After going through all of my footage in Sony PMB[2], I picked out 12 minutes of usable footage[3]. That's 79 video clips. I imported these into Vegas and trimmed them one by one until I'd gotten it down to 6 minutes[4]. I went about splitting audio from video, and deleted the audio for the opening clips. I then layered the video and audio together so that it would roughly resemble the finished product. From there, I worked on the narration[5], cutting together 4 takes of Bronson talking, and then rendering it as an *.aa3 file (the same audio my camera's files use). I then went looking for music that would support this and settled on a piece called "Cult of Lamb" - however, this needed to be stretched out and ended up being too horror-movie-esque. I searched on youtube for ages, and eventually replaced this with Duke Ellington and John Coltrane's "In a Sentimental Mood". I imported the music and narration, and added these to the timeline. I went back into the PMB and saved a single frame from the first clip[6], which I then imported into Vegas and set to fade in, and merge with the footage[7].

At this point I had 7 layers in Vegas[8] - two video tracks (Intended for track effect editing. I wanted to have one track for inside shots and one for outside, so I could brighten/darken them seperately. At this point I didn't have any effects on, nor did I have the clips arranged according to the tracks), and 5 audio tracks (two that accompanied the video so that I could layer the dialogue correctly, as well as one for music, one for sound effects/narration, and... I lose track of the others. I basically split them so I could use each track's master volume rather than do gritty detail work at this point).

Here's where I spent a lot of time in After Effects for little reason[9]. I had one shot where one of the goons accidentally kills the other goon, and then Bill shoots the teamkiller. This was only a few seconds long, but the editing took forever. I didn't have any fancy motion tracking software (though a friend tells me he could've given me them afterward -_-) so I avoided using AE's tracking data method. Mostly because I've only used it a couple of times, but also because there weren't many useable points in the shot, especially with the goons' flailing limbs. So I imported a couple of muzzle flares and about 4 different blood squirts, and went about placing them individually[10], and in some cases doing some 3D rotation[11]. I then went frame by frame to adjust the effects clips using keyframes.

Another thing I had to do was to mask out bits that shouldn't be there. For example, the first muzzle flare occurs with Bronson in front of it, but other scenery behind. For this I used the pen tool and drew an outline of where I didn't want the muzzle flare to be seen. By default AE has masks set to 'add' so the result was the complete opposite of what I'd intended - the flare was ONLY seen in front of Bronson[12], and nowhere else. I set this to 'subtract' and vioala![13] Of course, I had to mask every blood effect[14] and this meant about 10 or so different masks[15], each one I had to adjust the markers frame-by-frame[16], as well as set the opacity, rotation, and feathering using keyframes[17]. THEN I got to adjust the colour values of each effect clip using Colour Curves[18], and in a couple of cases, even keyframing additional adjustments there. By now my computer was about to go into cardiac arrest, so I finished my work here by adding an adjustment layer, adding black-and-white effects, and rendering the 5-second footage I'd spent a good 3 or 4 hours on. While I could have saved time for myself by using tracking data and saving the effects layers as a single clip (without the original video, thus I could do all the colour correction at once), I like having the specific control of being able to determine exactly what will be seen on a frame-by-frame basis. And I seriously doubt my computer would be able to perform well enough to track 11 layers of HD video, considering how poor the framerate was in playback (what is -0.007 frames per second? The clip is meant to be 25fps...)

One of the main problems here was the colour grading going awry. In most cases, the blood effects seemed to disappear because in black-and-white the red was too dark and just looked like everything else. My final output from AE was in black and white, which meant I didn't have to do anything more to it and it'd look fine. I went back into Vegas and added another video layer specifically for this clip (because the effects I added later would mess with it for some reason, so I found in a prior test).

From here I spent a lot of time looking for music for this opening. All of the footage had been trimmed and arranged properly by now, so it was time I got the soundtrack sorted. I found some music that would suit and downloaded it, adding it to Vegas and into the project timeline. Now I could go about matching the clips with the music, so that everything happened on cue. This meant some rearranging, and some extra trimming/extending of clips. I had each track of music on a separate audio track, again to lower the volume easily. After I'd done this I added the sound effects that I'd sourced from free sound effect websites (all of which were awful, I might add). I asked a friend for any sound effects he had and simply placed them exactly where the placeholder sound effects had been (I'm talking about gunshots and a single 'thud' sound). The last sound effect was the police siren, which was difficult to find, but I took my friend's advice and found some on youtube. I downloaded one and replaced the placeholder. I figured the sound effect was modern, but so was half the items in the film, as well as the final track of music, so it didn't matter.

Now that the film was mostly done, I could trim the clips down (some video clips were layered on top of one another[19] - where the lower clip could not be seen, it was still there. I basically just got rid of that stuff) and arrange them properly. I put all the video on one track, then moved all the dark clips to the lower track[20]. I then put all the audio onto four tracks - two for clip audio, one for music, and one for the police siren (the gunshot sounds were now on the clip audio tracks). I went and used audio envelopes to keyframe adjustments in volume[21], which meant I could make individual sentences louder or quieter[22], and make sure that all audio could be heard over the backing music.

The last step was to colour grade, which meant adding two effects[23] - Sony Black And White (which simply desaturated the video)[24][25] and Colour Curves (which allowed me to expand/reduce shadows, highlights, and midtones with a lot of care)[26]. I adjusted these per track - brightening the track of outside shots, and darkening the track of inside shots. When I was certain I'd done a good job, I went to render the finished film.[27]

In rendering I used a custom output that I'd configured previously[28] (based on the required settings for the V48hours). It was basically a Sony AVC video set to *.mp4 encoding (rather than *.m2ts which would have had me go full circle). This meant the quality would not be reduced, and the output would have the same attributes as the project (which, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, were the same as the camera's files). The quality was roughly (if not exactly) the same as it was to begin with, and the file size kept small (about 400mb for a 6-minute HD video). The total amount of footage I took was about 2gb in size, so this was certainly an improvement.

I watched the video, made some notes, and realised some of the colour grading was off. I went back into Vegas and moved the problematic clips onto other tracks based on whether I needed them lighter or darker (in the end I created another track in order to seriously darken the scenes shot down the hallway and in my parents' room)[29]. I also took the time to adjust the audio further with the envelopes[30], and added a title right at the end, which would fade in after the last clip had faded to black[31]. Then I rendered it out and I was finished. Although, some of the school computers could not play the video due to the Sony AVC codec I'd used... it worked fine on both Todd's and Ms Kazimi's computers, so I doubt it'll be an issue. If it comes down to it, I can always re-render in another file format[32].  :)