Starting to Edit

         Entry 35: 4/1/22

     Hello everyone! Rehearsal for Lightning Oscars went spectacularly on Wednesday AND Lightning Oscars itself yesterday was so much fun. This was my first time being on stage in front of a crap ton of people (other than a speech I had to do for a position) and I was honestly nervous. In the end, we walked on stage and just had fun so that was super exciting. They also had a red carpet and red carpet interviews. But you guys are not here for that so, let's talk about the editing.

     During Isa's privilege and the little time we had at home after school, Isa began lining up interview clips, syncing audio, cutting out any parts of me asking questions, and getting ready for the Adobe transcriptions. Having done Counter Conformity before this documentary is such a help because we can learn from our mistakes. One thing Isa made sure to do was rename clips to avoid any issues. First of all, naming clips would make it easier to search for them. Secondly, an issue we had with Counter Conformity was the clips linking to the wrong clip. Since we did not rename them, many clips were named the same thing so that messed up with when we were exporting.

     Isa labeled them in an extremely easy way so when we get together to line edit and do b-roll, we can easily find anything. Here is the format Isa sent me of how she labeled the b-roll.

    - S, M, or T for Sabrina, Maya, or Tess

    - I for interview clip

    - A or B for A cam (main camera, wider shot) and B cam (second camera, tighter side shot)

     How that the footage was all organized, Isa was gong to start the transcripts but realized that Monster #2 was on Premiere 2021 which does not have transcriptions. So Isa had to export the cut up interviews and put them onto her computer to transcript. We thought this was going to take much longer because Isa's computer is much slower but it took about 25-30 minutes.

     After the transcription was done, there were a few errors because the process is not perfect but it is better than having to write word per word by hand. This took Isa about 45 minutes to make sure it was all correct. Once the transcription was all fixed up, Isa downloaded it as a .txt. The awesome thing about the transcriptions is that it includes time stamps and if we were editing on Isa's computer, we could just click on a word and the computer would bring us to that interview clip.

     Well, that was only Sabrina's interview so now we got Maya's and Tess's left. This should take about another day and we can start the line edit. Once it is all done in terms of the transcripts, we have few things we need to do before we can line edit. First, we need to put it all on a Google Doc and start highlighting the best answers and organizing it for the final line edit. Then, we need to start reordering the answers to flow in the actual documentary. This can only be 5 minutes for the AICE project, but we are doing a full 10 because we want to submit to film festivals and that is normally the max. Once we have this organization of the clips done, we can start putting it all into the timeline. This could most likely be done by Sunday so we will have to see where it all goes.

     Last thing, since Isa and I have different schedules and I cannot be there every time she edits later in the night or during her privilege, we decided that she will handle most of the editing and I will do the social media and magazine component. We will be helping each other along the way but this is the most effective process so Isa does not have to wait for me to start editing and neither do I for the rest. 

     Anyways, I really got to blast because I am using a school computer to type this since today is Grad Bash! We could not bring a backpack or anything today since we come back at 6AM. It is going to be so much fun I was update you guys soon!