I love the process of art. Random start, I know but its true. I love the hard work that comes with making art. Nothing is easy, and sometimes I want to crash out over mistakes. But that’s the point. The art process is messy and confusing, but see everything come together? Worth it.

Making the final montage of Edgerton Park brought back that sense of love for art, even if I use different tools. Not only was the filming extremely fun, but also the editing afterwards. This montage has been an awesome experience, and I’m excited to share where the journey took me.

What I Needed to Learn: Editing

The first major step to the montage was the filming. With the past weeks experience, I went in prepared. I filmed all the content I needed and was over satisfied with what I got. But there were still a lot of things that needed to be fixed and content that must be organized. So I needed the foundations of editing. And thankfully, a reading this week lead me in the right direction.

Bare Bones of Film and Video: Chapter 10

Chapter 10 of Bare Bones of Film and Video revolved around after the video shoot content, specifically editing. Its in this chapter do we learn the foundations of how editing works, what to consider while editing, and what ideas/tools exist that can benefit us in the editing process.

The first part of the following chapter follows the author Tom Schroeppel exploring how editing works. He uses an experiment where you ask a friend to follow your instructions. Schroeppel makes it clear from the experiment that editing is the result of what you allow the user to see. Ever change you make, reality is now altered in the camera, and how you chose to change that perception is important.

Schroppel then provides many techniques to use while editing. Each recommendation tended to fall in three categories for me: Think of your viewer in mind, think of your shot in mind and think of your style in mind. All of these will make editing a lot easier for. For thinking of the viewer, he recommended:

• Divorcing your director: detach from personal interest and read your script as if you were a random viewer.
• Establish, Reestablish: Create your world, then recreate it with the intent of the viewer knowing what is happening.

Think of your shot recommendations were:

• Good Log List: A list consisting of a shots information (is it close/far? What’s it of?). It acts as a way to organize shots easily.
• Paper Edits: Cut out everything on paper: shots, timings, how long things will be. This allows for easily movement of where the edits go.

And lastly think of your style. How fast/slow should it be? Are the shots different? There could be background music and sounds to add to the atmosphere. The point of all this? When you edit, you are thinking of everything. editing shouldn’t be carefree, it should be planned, and make your film just as impactful as when you filmed it.

Editing is not Just Pretty Transitions

Its true! Yes, transitions are important, but they are so much more than that. Editing is never accidental, its always intentional. So whether the editing is quick or slow, or something that helps transition like a fade, wipe or cut. Know that whatever media you watch, listen to, or play, it always serves a purpose. Lets look some editing styles in media I find did a great job at adding to the scene.

The Box Crofrontation: Brooklyn 99

The perfect crime cracked. A simple style with a simple goal, The Box episode of Brooklyn 99 is considered the best episode on IMDB for good reason. The ending of the episode is only has a mix of fast hard cuts, but they work wonders. As the interrogation goes on, everything is meant to feel quick as the cops, Jake and Holt, are on a timer to get a guy to confess to a crime. If they fail, he walks free.

This quick editing adds to the intensity of the scene. And the cuts get quicker as everything starts to unravel, leading to one of the best endings to an episode of the show. The Box ending is lead by its editing, just like Jake and Holt to reason of the crime by the end.

The Lost History of Minecraft’s Enderman: Game Theory

To all those who grew up with MatPat, welcome. Game Theory’s style is silly but entertaining when it comes to editing. I think one of their best examples of editing is their Enderman Minecraft Theory. The style is more quick than slow, but what stands out the most are the transitions and wipes. Each transition doesn’t feel too much or too little. The wipes add to the transitions, going from topic to topic like so smoothly, it feels like a conversion between friends.

The transitions also lead from one point to other too, so each transition or wipe is done with the intent of revealing new information. Its widely interesting once you notice just how many transitions exist, but also that they used to get from point A to B. But hey, that’s just a theory, right?

My Name is Peter B Parker: Into the Spider-Verse

The Spiderverse movies are some of my favorite animated movies ever. But its not just their themes I like. The editing is amazing too. Despite the Peter B Parker Intro only really fast with a lot of hard cuts, I think this style of editing does this Peter’s opening justice. The editing is meant to feel rough and fast, not only as a way to introduce him to the audience, but what his life has been like.

The sharp cuts also represent how badly his life turned out, and think that having this style not fits the character, but also shows how simple editing can be just as effective.

The Final Product Takeaways

As finished up my montage, I look back on a lot of things. For starters, I really underestimated the time it takes to prepare such a piece, even a small one. The process editing alone (this includes audio, cuts, video, sound effects, and more) took me 5 hours in total. I think as someone who is just starting to learn the process of video work, it really makes you look back on media we love, and how long it takes for a group of people to make everything just right.

I still enjoyed filming and editing despite the time. I found that using the UX-90 film camera wasn’t really a challenge, and it was fun trying to get the right shots, even improvising whenever a new idea came to be. As for editing, Premiere Pro made editing look amazing. When you see everything come together, its one of the most satisfying feelings. And my favorite part of it was color grading, since many shots didn’t feel vibrate without the enhancements.

Now after filming at Edgerton, I lastly just want to say what a great park it is. The history behind the park, as well as all of the friendly people who go there everyday really make Edgerton a safe place to be, and overall, just a good time to visit. I’ll definitely be returning in the future.

Here’s my Montage of Edgerton Park. I hope y’all enjoy!