Overall, I am happy with the final outcome of our short horror film The Babysitter. Surprisingly, the editing process was easier than some of the other projects I’ve done in the past. Due to the nature of the project - the fact that it was a short drama piece - I feel that the rigid story structure really helped me when it came to the edit. Having a strict story in place meant that I couldn’t lose my direction during the edit because I’d always have a story to follow to keep me on track. In my opinion, this reduced the time it took me to complete an online edit by quite a bit and I think that a rigid story structure is something that I really need to implement and continue to do in future drama projects.

 

Unlike every other project I’ve done so far, the story structure of The Babysitter was set in stone as soon as the footage was filmed. Being that we were working on a drama piece, we had to be sure to pre-plan and structure the story in full before the day of the shoot. Not only did this help us stick to the scheduled time-frame to produce an offline edit, but it also ensured that our intentions for the film were clear in the final cut. 

 

As always, it is in the best interests of the film to come up with a comprehensive production plan before getting any footage. But I believe that the structure of the planning that we did in pre-production made a huge difference to how easy the outcome was to edit. During the editing process, I was very limited to what I could do to alter the story or change the dialogue that we had already filmed. I found this in no way to be a bad thing, as limited editing resulted in less editing time. I believe this to be the case because I was forced to work methodically through the storyboard rather than relying on my own creative license when working on the story. Also, if I were to have multiple variations of the same scene to work with, I’d risk losing the original idea behind the film and changing the meaning of the story completely. Honestly, this took pressure off of me, because I knew that I was delivering the film that we intended, having already made most of the creative decisions as a group. Something that I've learned from editing this project is that the storyboard and script act as a rulebook rather than a guide. Usually, I would set out to film a project with an idea storyboard, script and goal to reach. The pre-production documents that I’d normally produce would be used as a guide during the edit and I'd have much more room for creative licence. To me, these projects require a certain level of creative freedom. In conjunction with a drama short, which I now realise needs an enforced structure during the editing process. During this project the story structure has to be edited as originally planned in order to deliver a successful short film and communicate a story. I now realise that this is how all drama projects in the future will be because it is in the nature of a drama project to have a pre-set structure. In conclusion, this project has given me a better understanding of how I can expect to edit a drama piece whether it is a short film or not.

 

It seems to me that my file organisation method I've been using in this project and in past projects is a good way to keep my files arranged. I carried this method over from projects that I'd done in the past where I had multiple clips of the same shot, angle or scene. It had always been successful for me in the past and therefore I'm glad that I brought it into this project. As I think that it made the process of the edit more efficient once again. The editing process was made more efficient by gathering all the clips that made up scene one, rating them on how usable I thought they were and adding them to a ‘Scene 1’ folder. I then repeated this for every shot in every scene until all the clips were arranged suitably. Although this process is time consuming in the short-term, I really feel as though it reduced the amount of time it took me to produce the final cut. Because of this system, I didn't need to trawl through hours of footage, trying to find the shot that I wanted every time I imported a new shot.

 

One of my biggest difficulties when editing this project wasn't choosing which shot I'd like to use, nor was it adjusting the sound of adding sound effects. Shockingly, the most difficult part of the editing process for me waa colour grading each clip. I knew going into the edit that the lighting throughout the house wouldn't be consistent, considering that we were using multiple locations with varying lighting set-ups. However, I didn't anticipate the difficulty I would have in colour grading the shots. The problem stemmed from the lighting in each room being drastically different in colour temperature. I noticed that using the overhead lighting in some scenes compared to using the panel lights in other scenes, caused a huge difference in the tone of the shots. Although I was able to correct this to a certain extent, I feel as though this is something to be reflected on in future as something to change. I now understand the importance of having consistent lighting throughout the entire shoot. It is particularly important when you are shooting multiple scenes in the same location over a long period of time and you want to maintain continuity in your film.

 

Reflecting on the editing process as a whole, I think that it was a fairly simple process. Made more enjoyable by the fact that I employed past organisation techniques. As well as the fact that I had a story to follow, rather than having so many creative decisions resting on me.