Production – Editing Skills

(Using final cut pro)

I will be explaining the

main editing tools that I’ve learnt how to use. These

are:

Cutting Clips:

The ‘razor blade’ tool cuts a clip in the sequence and splits the clip into two clips. This is done by cutting a single clip, along with

any clip linked to it in the Timeline, into two pieces. This edit point is

added at the frame of the clip item in the Timeline that you click. This can be useful for rearranging clips

in the sequence or deleting a section of a clip, or applying an

effect to a specific part of a clip, or moving a piece of a clip to another

track.

After the razor blade cuts a clip into two pieces, I was left with a red marker

which notifies me that the clip has been cut. I can now rearrange the clips

or add effect in-between.

Colour Corrector:

Before After

Throughout the music video we’ve decided to use the colour correction tool to improve the colour of the clips. This tool allows you to improve the lighting of the clip, but we’ve decided to change the ‘white’ level and chose to use the tones of Blue and Cyan, because these colours emphasis the coldness and fits well with the emotion of the song.

Blurred Background:

The Eight-Point Garbage Matte is a new blur tool that I’ve come across. It generates into an eight-point polygon, which crops out portions of the clip. The eight-point

control allows me to define the polygon. The Smooth slider rounds off the corners of the polygon to create rounder mattes. The Choke slider allows you to expand or

contract the matte, and the Feather slider allows you to blur the edges of the matte. The Invert checkbox reverses what’s matted and what’s transparent, and the Hide Labels checkbox hides the number labels, which indicate which point of

the matte corresponds to which point control of the filter.