Marco & Micro. Editing not economics. (Post-Production Day #1)

I can’t believe I’m finally saying this, but now that we’ve wrapped up filming, we have to start post-production (mostly editing). Since we’re about a week behind schedule from our original plans, Jake and I have decided to waste no time and jump right in! Today we talked about setting up a schedule to virtually collaborate in the editing process. 

We first decided on what part to start editing, we both agreed that we would both be more comfortable starting well, at the beginning! Neither of us or our family is sick and we’re comfortable being around each other’s environments, but we still want to follow a certain degree of social distancing in line with recommendations from the CDC, our school, and local government. To edit online we’re using the online editing platform WeVideo. Though we have more than enough time to teach ourselves a different more capable platform, WeVideo allows us both to share the editing process by giving us both access to editing and sharing files via the cloud. We’re also both very comfortable with the interface so we are confident we can work efficiently. 

I suggested we broke down the editing process into editing sessions, Jake found that by doing so we could also break it down by scene. So that’s what we did, we broke down the editing process by scene. Longer scenes like 1 or 5 will take more time to edit and thus, we’ve scheduled two editing sessions for them instead of 1. 

Since Jake and I have worked with each other’s in the past before, we know each other’s editing style and strengths. Our styles are what I describe as Micro and Marco editing. Jake Marco edits meaning he is good at piecing together the scenes and setting up the flow. I Micro edit, meaning I tweak the details and go frame-by-frame if need be to figure out the pacing and make the scene’s flow smooth. Thankfully, our editing styles are complementary! Having and knowing how complementary our skills are helped us set up our sessions in blocks. Jake would go in and edit the macro for an hour and then I would go in and edit the micro for an hour (which is just me lying to myself because I’m sure I’ll take more time).

Just to make sure the quality of the piece is what we both want and we both have the ability to discuss the artistic choices in the editing, we’ve decided to set up two meetings to polish up the piece. We put our schedule on our shared Google calendar and we’re ready to get started! 

Signing off for tonight!