Editing Day 2

Today I finished separating all of our footage into chunks for each shot, and actually was able to do some real editing. I also came after school for a little over and hour to get some more editing done. However, I still need to re-learn how to extract the audio on some of the clips so we can put that over some footage for a voice over. I still like editing, but, at the moment, I'm feeling a little pressured from our time constraint and rapidly approaching deadline. This movie's editing is much more in-depth than than "the pencil" movie's editing was. But that's ok...it just means that our final product will look much better and will give us a greater sense of accomplishment.

I'm watching tutorials of Final Cut Express right now to hopefully answer the questions I have and to generally familiarize myself with it as much as I can to make sure I am editing in the most efficient way. So far, I've realized that, right from the beginning, I don't really think I am, since all of the clips automatically went onto the timeline just by importing our footage, whereas, on the tutorial I'm watching, it seems like it first went to a list box over to the side, so the clip can be trimmed before it's put on the timeline, and so multiple takes won't be on the timeline all at once. Note to self: turn the snapping button ON!!! One little annoyance that I've had today was getting the clips exactly together. I didn't remember having this problem on "the pencil", and now I know how to fix it, as long as I still remember this info by tomorrow. Ah ha! And use Shift + delete, rather than just delete, to keep all of the clips together when I delete a clip in the middle. Wow, these tutorials really help! I'm starting to see why Final Cut Express is such a credible product because of all the different things it can do to enhance a movie. Hopefully I'll retain at least some of what I just learned. The only problem is, I'm not sure if I'll have time to really fine tune our movie with this impending due date. Too bad I don't have a Mac. There's no chance I could borrow a mac book for the weekend to really fine tune the movie, and learn more about Final Cut in general, is there???