Construction: Editing - Review & Changes

After watching the product all the way through with peers, tutors and Tom, I discussed what they felt should be maybe changed or added to the film to create a more effective product:

• The Music in the Second Half - I felt that the music in the second half wasn't very fitting to the emotion conveyed and for some reason it just didn't fit very appropriately into the film's soundtrack. To address this, I decided to replace the song with Coldplay's "Paradise" which I felt had a more lyrical connection as well as a very charming and uplifting tone. To fit the song appropriately into the space of the other, I edited the song in GarageBand reducing it to around 1:40. 
• The NERF Gun Scene - Tom didn't feel comfortable with this scene, saying he personally felt it appeared as if he was bullying his brother, I explained to him that the scene was meant to convey happiness and a healthy relationship between him and his brother, so I decided to simply cut this scene to make him happier.

Construction: Editing - "The End"

The end of the documentary marks Tom's overcoming of Autism and to follow the journey into his new lifestyle, I decided make a physical journey with Tom to the airport, cutting back inbetween to shots of him enjoying himself with family.

After the brief shots of the NERF gun fight, we see Tom in the car, heading through the night to the airport, cutting at the speed of the beat in the music and this creates an aesthetic look and feel to the camera work. I also sped up some of the footage in the car to create a more visually interesting effect of the journey, also using focus pulls to show the "bokeh" of the street lights. After cutting to shots of Tom playing the PlayStation with his brother, we see Tom walking past various pieces of Airport scenery under the full moon of night, and by the glowing neon of the runway lights. I decided to end the film with Tom's silhouette hovering over the runway and this created a strong connection with his interests in aviation, I felt this was the most appropriate way to sum up the story.

Construction: Editing - "The Sound Transition"

Today's lesson involved adding the sound transition to the second half of the documentary; a happier and more uplifting tone.

The crossover involved a few changes to the soundtrack, using Coldplay's "A Hopeful Transmission" until the door is opened, where it fades into the next track "Don't Let It Break Your Heart" signifying the extreme change in mood.
The two Coldplay songs when imported separately created a gap, that even when overlapped, lost a few seconds of sound. After spending some time editing the sound, and not being successful, I decided to research online for other methods of "merging" the tracks. I found that iTunes itself had a feature, that allowed tracks from a CD to be imported as one track. I inserted the CD and the song's were ripped into iTunes using the "Join CD Tracks" feature, which reduced the "jump" between tracks and successfully merged the tracks together as one.

Although the sound transition is now a lot smoother, due to iTunes' "Join Tracks" feature, the track itself is too long and needs to be cut considerably for it to end with the end of the song without dragging on further. To do this, I created a new project in GarageBand and imported the track from iTunes.