Sunday 16 June 2013

Editorial Decisions List

Within this animation for the homeless charity Crisis there was not a large amount of editing that needed to be done. All of the photos to comprise this stop motion animation were taken on a DSLR camera, luckily the photos were already in order, so this means I didn't have to do much structuring to the pictures as they where in order; however I did have to take out pictures that I felt were not good enough to go into the animation as the lighting was either off or the picture was not relevant. The main piece of editing that was done to this piece was the audio. I have added a backing track that assists the tone of the animation and also a voice over done by myself to explain to the audience why I am making this animation. At the end of the animation I have strategically placed the Crisis logo as well as there website link below to show where people could donate. I will now go into detail with my edit of the Crisis animation:

The first stage of the edit this animation was placing the photos into iStopMotion and then importing the edited clips into final cut, (I this animation had to be edited on final cut), due to the pictures edited in order on iStopMotion I had exported them as clips, so the pictures where in the correct order and time per frame already. I searched for a backing track that had to reflect this animation and the feeling I wanted to portray from watching it, I felt a progressive gentle ambient sound would be suitable for this and wouldn't be too harsh on the ear so it would be good too lead and back the voiceover. Once I found the track I wanted, I dragged the mp3 file into my final cut timeline and cut it to fit the required size. As we start to get to the end of the animation I have slowly faded the backing track out to tell the audience that the advertisement has finished but also giving them a period of quietness that will allow them to think about how they are going to help homelessness. This gradual fade out was also done for the audiences satisfaction to not give an abrasive cut, so its a smooth transition not startling the audience which I do not want to do as I feel this would send out the wrong message about Crisis.

A extremely large factor to this animation was the audio options, I wanted to record a voiceover as I feel they are very persuasive as it is the personable voice of a human, after recording this voiceover I knew I wanted to have a gentle backing track to keep the audiences engaged in the pauses between where I speak. The voiceover was recorded at my home where I used a large diaphragm condenser microphone to record onto a piece of software called Mixcraft, where I then mixed the file into a mp3 format so I could then drag it into Final Cut to get edited into the finished product that it is now. I my voice over in the position I felt it would be most effective in the animation as I didn't want it to start too early or finish to early as this wouldn't give a satisfying feel. The music underneath backing this voiceover has been used in adjacent to it, this is to stress Crisis's message, and ultimately get people to donate to this charity.

The last piece of editing within my animation was getting Crisis's logo and there donation website link in the ending sequence of the animation. I this by writing the website link into a piece of software called live type and then picking the font I felt was appropriate for and then its transition into the frame; which was just a simple one as I wanted it to look serious so I felt a simple transition would work best at gaining this look, then I saved the file. I dragged this file into my final cut timeline. This link is very important because it tells the audience where to donate and this is the purpose of the animation to gain interest in the charity. The Crisis logo on top of the website link was done simply by searching the internet and saving the best quality image I could find to my desktop, from there I dragged it into my final cut piece. I did this as it tells the audience the charity's name and it is the main part of marketing for the charity I want people to link the homeless animation with that logo so whenever they think of a homeless person they will make the connection with the charity.

Below is my Final cut timeline which shows the edit in its raw form:


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