Editing the Film Opening: Part 1 (FOP)

Hey y'all, I'm back (on my spring break) to write a blog post again! Todays one is about editing, and I will split it into two parts. 

This part is about the experience editing. Now, I didn't edit, I don't know how. Ernest did the editing, so I'm going to also link his viewpoint here.

We used Adobe Premiere Pro, because Ernest is experienced with it. 

He used a greyscale filter (which turns things black and white) and then lowered the opacity (the transperancy of the filter). This had the effect of making the videos seem darker. This was good, because we wanted good lowkey lighting to emphasize the dark nature of the subject. 

For a documentary, the transitions didn't have to be flashy either. We did simple fades between each scene, and used plenty of drone footage of the Everglades and the town within it. 

Our biggest issue was film grain. The camera we used (the ones on the iPhone 11 Pro Max) did not have good lowlight performance. We didn't realize this until after filming the shots, so Ernest spent the whole night finding ways to reduce the grain. After hours of searching, Ernest found an extension to Premiere Pro called 'Neat Video' which helped him reduce the grain. 

Part 2 will focus more on the audio and final touches of the film opening. Here are some pics of us editing:

Till next time, later y'all!