From the course: Video Pre-production for Low-Budget Films

Editing the pre-shoot

From the course: Video Pre-production for Low-Budget Films

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Editing the pre-shoot

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- As soon as we finish pre-shooting, we couldn't help but just get the computer, load Premiere, dump the footage, and start cutting right away. You could even cut your footage, your pre-shoot, on a cell phone or a tablet, but it's more efficient to do it on a laptop. At this point I'm importing all the footage, and I'll do a very quick edit, extremely rough, no transitions, no music, no gradient, none of that. It's just organizing the shots and have a better understanding of if there are any gaps in the story and how to compress it and how to make it stronger. When editing the pre-shoot, don't forget that we're dealing with shaky handheld cell phone video, so just don't try to massage the edit with transitions and sound and color. All we need to do is try to recreate a version of the storyboards with moving images. This is the time to look back and compare the shot list, the storyboards, and the actual footage, and see if the sequences are working. Are the transitions between shots working, or do we need more cut-aways or camera movement? This is also a great opportunity to eliminate shots. What we really care right now is, is the story clear to the viewer? And even though the script, and we have been working on the script for a while, it's very clear on paper, we realize that the ending is not as strong as we would like to. The point of this exercise is to see if the story works. Where can we simplify the plot? Which details are missing? Et cetera. And once again, forget about equipment and lighting at this stage. The story will tell you the equipment you need.

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