Editing Extravaganza - Peer Review to Final Edits

Heyhey! Before I publish my opening sequence to the world I wanted to let a select few get a preview and also provide me with feedback. Notably, before sending out my film to my friends I went ahead and fixed the volume for the music. Since it is not a score I had to overlap, “Fade In” and “Fade Out” each segment based on when the detective was talking or not.  

I chose to share my film with Peyton Young and Janiah Charles! Janiah has worked with me before in the music video project so she knows my editing techniques and my abilities. With that, I know she will be able to also guide how I can test these abilities further. Janiah and I have a very open rapport so I am confident she can provide some concrete feedback. Peyton is a friend and AICE Media Studies student who has been by my side behind the scenes throughout the building of my portfolio. Peyton and I have different ways of creating projects so It will be interesting to see what guidance she can give me. She also uses the same editing platform, CapCut, in which we have both helped each other navigate previously so I know her review of my opening sequence will come with solutions within CapCut to my problems within my film.  

Some fun flicks with my friends/peer reviewers! 

Okay, onto the actual critiques these two gave. I gathered everything they said into a list of things to fix: 

• TV reporter audio 

• Audio quality (overall)

• Sped up sequence 

  
  

Firstly, they both suggested I change the TV reporter's audio to something else since it felt so unnatural. I felt the same way so I knew I had to do something. How it was you could barely even tell it was simulating a news reporter. Peyton informed me that on CapCut there was a voice-changing feature so I could manipulate my voice. I decided to go through with this plan and instead of filming a series of news headlines, I made my voice narrate one longer headline. Once I extracted the audio and imported it into CapCut to replace the preexisting news reporter audio segments I added the feature “Loud-speaker” which best emulated a news report. I adjusted the volume to be the same as the voiceover segments and I was set (looking back the “Loud-speaker” feature ended up increasing the volume as a unit so I should’ve lowered it further). 

Somehow, the clip still felt unnatural. So I went back to my trusty research to find a movie that used this element and rewatched it for what was different. After analyzing the movies again I realized there was a radio static and then the news reporters went on. I knew I needed this sound effect and as I was playing around on CapCut I saw there was a feature that had pre-loaded sound effects. I searched for static but the audio provided wasn’t what I wanted. So I went onto Google and found soundstripe.com which had “Old Static Hum 02” which was exactly the type of effect I wanted. I exported the audio and inserted it. I made sure to adjust the sound so it would be louder and then fade out to a lower hum in the background of the headline running. When I watched the clip over again the audio felt much more cohesive. The sound layering in the first 30 seconds of my film is insane! I have the music, police car/sirens, TV reporter, radio tactic, and ambient noise from the clips on the busy road. The sound mixing worked out very well tho. 

In total, my editing process is coming to an end. I have a couple of edits to make and then it will be all set to go. Remember to set your reminder for March 15th, 2024 at 7:00 pm EST for the official release of Fatal Flaw: The Elena Mercer Case crime documentary. It is going to be spooky so get ready for some gore. See you then!