Standoff: Editing Exercise

For the final project in Nonlinear Post Production, the class had to collectively edit an entire episode of the cancelled FOX show, Standoff, starring Ron Livingston. The show is about FBI hostage negotiators, and has a few familiar TV faces on it besides Livingston. (I was happy to see Firefly's Gina Torres having a small part as well.) It only aired 6 episodes, and we got allllllll the footage they shot for the episode entitled "Heroine". After this project, I got to say "Look Ma! I edited a whole TV show!"

The class was divided in teams of two, for each team to edit one of the four acts. One team volunteered to also tackle the trailer for extra credit. I was appointed Supervising Editor (a decision made based on the quality of my previous work in the class, such as the shoe commercials and an edited scene from the TV series Angel.

This was the first time I have edited with a partner or collaborated with anyone really. My partner, Andrew Darling was also appointed Supervising Audio Engineer for displaying his own proficiencies at soundscaping and audio selections on other projects. He is a skilled and easy-going partner who also wanted a professional end result. Sometimes we edited together, getting and giving input on editing decisions, and other times we worked alone. Both methods worked out fine, and the end result speaks for itself.

After our act was finished I also had to edit the others for continuity, content, and time. The final cut had to be 44 minutes, and ours was 49 all together. As Supervising Editor, I had to cut scenes that were not necessary, trim dialogue, and cut long segments (instead of a continuous shot of someone walking to get a door - I just showed the door opening). I had to color correct certain segments, and seek footage that was not included for our project. I searched for HD footage of Los Angeles to use for scene transitions, and grabbed some footage off of the Hulu video of the same episode (such as opening/closing credits). It was an intense project that required many hours of work, but was a blast and I'm very proud of the show and the work my fellow classmates put in.

The clip below is the climax of the show, and the act Andrew and I edited together. Sorry it isn't in YouTube format, they claimed I violated come copyright stuff, and some morons didn't understand the refute I sent them.

*Update: Here's the embedded video courtesy of Vimeo!

Rack Room Shoes :30 Ad (2)

This is another commercial for Rack Room Shoes, and the assignment was the same: create a 30 second commercial using hours of footage by the same guy who directed the other one. This one is pretty self explanatory, I color-corrected the whole video with a little more yellow to give it a south-western flavor. The rotating shoes at the end was done with some chroma keying effects (green screen) and was the first time I ever used that effect. (I just watched some tutorials online to figure out the basics). The music is "Hello Operator" by the White Stripes, and it's only a coincidence that there is currently a Converse commercial using it nowadays. Or maybe they got the idea from me...

Rack Room Shoes :30 Ad

In my non-linear post production class, all are assignments are given to us with all the footage, and it is up to us to turn it into something useful. These projects are "tests" that are given to prospective editors to assess their skill level and creativity.

For this project we had to create a 30 second ad (which of course means 29 seconds and 29 frames - that last frame is used to signal the next commercial). The add could not be any longer or we would lose points (makes sense to me). We were only told to use 3 computer graphics: "Smart Shoes" "Dumb Boyfriend" and "Rack Room Shoes" (The shoe company for which the commercial was made for in the mid 90's)

The premise: a daughter invites her new boyfriend out to lunch with her parents at a diner. The father is skeptical of the new guy, and the mom is trying to play peace keeper and just have a nice family outing. Meanwhile, the new boyfriend (Judd) engages the girl in some good ol' fashioned footsie. She gets up and leaves (probably cause she was getting too excited...) and Judd realizes that he was just feeling up Dad.

The difficult part came from culling together the right "scenes" of the commercial from literally hundreds of takes. The project was headed by a first-time director, and he didn't quite know what he wanted. So there were no less than 20 takes of the boyfriend walking into frame. It's kinda nice not having to go out and shoot once in a while...but at the same time, it was super frustrating knowing that these shots could have very easily been gotten without all this hassle. There were also entire sequences and lines that would have been impossible to include in the 30 seconds.

I chose the Black Keys' tune "Howlin' For You" (off of their latest album, Brothers) because the commercial was intended for girls in the south. The southern-blues song has the right mix of sexy and playful moods and has a fun sing-songy chorus. I made the graphics in Photoshop because I thought it would be a good idea to manipulate a single image of text and the arrow instead of using Avid's title tool and then creating another arrow. I also grabbed the Rack Room logo (thanks Google) and threw a light glow around the .png. I thought it turned out pretty good.

Keep in mind...this was shot in the mid 90's...so don't go blaming me for non-HD and whatnot.