editing blog, round 2

Before I even get into my little blog here I feel it's necessary to note that it is 9:51am in Australia, I have been up all night and it's likely my spelling and grammar will be greatly effected (or affected?) by this.

So the project is really coming together nicely. The editing is quite close to completion and I have to say it is looking freakin' awesome. Now I don't want to sound like too much of an arrogant jerk, but what we have blows away any other edits I've seen of the Gift footage (mostly due to the fact we're using footage from every camera over all the shows)

The last week and a half has been insane. On top of editing our own stuff, Ash512 and myself have been working hard absolutely drilling our editors, trying to squeeze every drop of awesomeness into the edits. I'm pretty sure they all secretly hate us.

For those who don't know how we're running this, here's a quick explanation... We have a team of six awesome editors from around the world who are all editing five or so songs each. Once an editor has finished their songs they upload them to the net for the head editors and producers to see. Ash512, icklekitty and I all watch through their songs a few times and write down the parts we love and the parts we think didn't work so well. Our opinions are then collated and we post the final list of thoughts on our production forums.

The editors then go through all our comments and make necessary changes to their edits, tightening up each song and improving it. This process is then repeated two or three times until all that's left is the best of the best.

It's a system that works. When you're editing you can easily trap yourself into making certain cuts that you believe will be alright for the edit. If no one questions your choices you just accept your average cut of the song and move on. This method of trying to improve everything all the time really does get great results, and as editors we're always surprised by the amount of cool shots and cuts we initially overlooked. It truly is amazing that a little bit of objectivity can make you see how much your work can be improved if you just try a few new things.

To give everyone an idea of how many notes we write, here's a screenshot which includes most of our collated thoughts so far. It reaches about 18,000 words but we expect to hit a good 30,000 before were done (thank you trivial editing details!). This is all in dot point form. Now you see why the editors hate us :)

- sa_nick, Head Editor, thisoneisonus.org

PS: Here's a little teaser shot of my Survivalism edit. It shouldn't give too much away, unless someone feels like recreating my entire timeline ;)