Editing Our Commercial

     Today we actually edited. Despite everything, we put together our footage quite nicely.  This said it wasn't without its various issues though. First off, we were divided in our first half of editing. Victoria was homesick and Emily was home due to the recent passing of her uncle. With me and Andrea on the scene, we went through our many takes and picked, sorted, and ordered them to illustrate our story. Out of nearly thirty takes, seven were chosen. Unsurprisingly, not many takes would be, what one would call, "perfect". The seven chosen were just the best out of the worst. This is more of a self-critique more than anything else, but. many shots could have been shot better.
     In terms of the issues we ran into; we faced many technical difficulties. Oddly, when importing our footage from the desktop, the files somehow changed. This wouldn't have been an issue if our instructor recognized the file change and could fix it. Needless to say, she did not. We were advised to switch programs since Pinnacle Studios couldn't read our files. For a while, we did attempt to use the secondary program. I forget the name, but I believe it was Microsoft Editor. We did, at the same time, also attempt to continue using Pinnacle Studio since we'd already achieved so much. While trying to play our ordered footage Pinnacle crashed. Luckily, with the self-inflicted shutdown, Pinncal miraculously started to read the footage and all was well until it was time to save. When saving we were again advised, this time advised to upload our film onto Google Drive, and somehow, it saved as an audio file, switching the files yet again. We had to trust that saving it on Pinnacle would be enough and left and the conclusion of the class.
      In the second half of editing, taking place a day later, we took our ordered footage and started taking out unnecessary scenes and splicing them and connecting altogether. This was more of a challenge rather than an issue, but worth saying none the less. When editing, Victoria and I ran into the issue of making a smooth transition in each of the seven shots. Since they were all separate, they all had different perspectives angles and camera movements. Like I speculated before, it was rough. We ended up combining some shots outside the chosen seven to fill in some gaps we had. I would like also to say that, because of the separated shots, the film feels fast, despite it being a little under a minute long. To me, it antiquity tells the story we had envisioned but seems rushed in a way. Overall I think our film is coming together nicely, we're doing all we can and I feel like it'd be something both myself and my group members can be proud of.