And the Window of Time Narrows

This past week has flown by without any major advances in our film production. Although our film has been digitized, the editing process has proved to be a technologically hindered process. Many of the editing programs available for free download either leave watermarks embedded in the final product or do not have the features necessary to properly edit our film. Our film class does have access to an ethnography lab, where professional editing equipment is available, but our group feared that the time allotted would be too scarce for the editors, Elizabeth Naglack and I, to fully assemble our film. Thus under the advisement of our film technology instructor, Eric Dietz, our group selected and purchased reputable editing software from our local Best Buy electronics store.

Now that we have collected all of the necessary equipment, we are ready to get serious into the editing! Well, at least that’s what we thought. When Elizabeth started transferring the video files into our newly purchased program she found three files that were not compatible with the software. And instead of the program posting notifications of why the files were incompatible, it would simply freeze solid. A real help for those of us who are new to the process! Also, one other problem that was experienced with our clips was audio quality. Supposedly, one of the clips features miserably low audio levels. Thus now we must rely on the beauty of voice over. For now we will be waiting for class this Thursday to see if Eric Deitz can alleviate some of our technological problems and although not our first round of technical problems, we are all hoping it will be our last.

We have less than two weeks of available days in the semester before our film must be finalized. I’m sure more time would be nice but it’s not exactly an option at this point. I don’t doubt our ability to finish the film but stress will certainly be mounting as the window of time narrows. I hold a strong sense of optimism because as soon as we settle our editing platform (mainly technology), I believe that we will be able fly through the editing process. Our screenplay is still concrete as ever and our shots are filmed so that they smoothly synchronize with the plot. Taking those qualities into consideration, I am confident that major editing feats can be avoided and the film will ultimately fall into place.