Final Cut

MERA LAHORE from Riffah Munir on Vimeo.

Editing

Rough Cut

So finally came the stage of editing. The first and most important part of editing is the rough cut. We just had to arrange our selected clips in an order they were supposed to appear.

When starting our project in premier we were taught that we should save the project in the location with the most space. In my computer system disc drive D had the most memory and we saved our project in it.

We made a mother folder with the name of our project and then made sub folders in it with the selected audios, videos and pictures that were later on used in our film.

After saving the project began the real task. The first step in premier was to import the selected videos and then arrange them on the timeline in the correct sequence. This was a bit troublesome as we didn't rename the files. once we imported them to premier we didn't know which video had to come first just because we didn't label them. However we looked into each video one by one and managed to put them in the right sequence in the timeline.

Importing files to premier. (shortcut to importing files is CTRL+I)

Dragging videos to timeline and arranging them in the sequence

After arranging videos on the timeline, our rough cut was complete. We were ready to go onto the next stage which was adding effects, adding audio and other titles etc.

Day 3

Today was the final day for our shoot. We had to finish up our shoot today because it was getting to late and our final date of submission had arrived.
It took us a whole day to do our shoot at anarkali and minar-e-Pakistan.
Managing crowd at such public places was the biggest problem that we faced. Whenever we started shooting, everybody started to gather around us. However we exploited the situation and took shots that showed events that have been part of the history of this place.

For the shoot at badshahi mosque and minar-e-Pakistan we set the ISO at 160, the shutter speed was 1/30 and aperture was 3.5.
The main problem was framing the minar-e-Pakistan. We had to take several shots in order to get to the perfect shot where we used the best framing we could.

For the night scenes the ISO was 800, the shutter speed was 1/30 and the aperture was 3.5.

Day 2

It has been raining since the past 2 days; our shoot needs to be re-scheduled. We have decided that we would first finish up our indoor shots and maybe by then the weather conditions might improve.

Today we shot the first scene of our film in which the protagonist is show writing and after this point he goes into flashbacks of the Lahore he remembers. The shoot was quite easy. We just had to take a shot of Hamza (protagonist) bent and writing something. We took this shot from two-three perspectives showing his side view, his front view and the back view.

The main problem we faced today was that we got late for the shoot. Due to some unforeseen circumstances our actor got late for shoot. By the time he arrived there was not sufficient sunlight and we could not delay our shoot so we decided to take this shot using a lamp light. 

Zainab doing makeup touchups before the shoot:

Before the shoot.

(Before the shoot) Discussing the next few scenes with Hamza.

Zainab and I with the camera. Checking the lights and setting the ISO and shutter speed according to the setting.

Day 1

Due to weather conditions we had to reschedule our outdoor shoot today. As previously planned, we had to postpone our plan to shoot at Anarkali. Instead we carried our indoor shoot which was actually scheduled for the next day.

Though we didn’t have any preparations but thankfully we were able to arrange for an auditorium at such a short notice. The next issue was to get the perfect lights that we wanted. Was a tough job but we still managed. We covered the white lights with yellow tinted paper. Rest we adjusted the aperture and iso accordingly to get the desired effect.

We then made up a set i.e. a solitary confinement using Styrofoam sheets. Luckily it did create the effect that we wanted.

The result was good and we were successful in shooting what we wanted.