Having specialised in editing and post-production, we are here to share our experiences of working on the project Tea Rebellion for the Kodak/NAHEMI competition from our final year, where we contributed as co-editors.
The main reason why we chose to be a part of making this 30-second video was an unconventional concept that both held the entertainment value and served the brand’s needs. Presenting a large demographic of McVitie's consumers, creatively showing the brand’s dominance over competitors and structuring the video as a fast-paced rollercoaster ride of vignettes were among the strong points that made us join the project. Furthermore, hyperreal aspects of it promised to be a nice editing challenge. For example, making cups of tea look as though they move by themselves was perceived as a chance to boost our command of softwares such as Avid Media Composer (employed mainly for editing) and Da Vinci Resolve (employed mainly for colour grading).
As editors, we were mainly involved in pre-production and post-production. Our pre-production contribution was all about discussing with our director, Mason, about his stylistic and narrative inspirations. Reflecting on those discussions allowed us to unleash some of the creative ideas of our own.
We also had a chat with the director of photography, Casper, regarding shots and storyboards. Around the same time when we saw the shot list and the storyboard, the filming location got confirmed – the logical next step for us was to join the crew in doing a location recce. Materials that we gained there, such as pictures, camera rehearsals and more in-depth conversations about what the shots would look like, were all used in putting together a pre-visualisation animatic. Not only did the animatic present the finished edit in our heads before the crew even started filming, but also allowed us to work on the timings of each shot to make sure that the whole product fit into a 30-second limit. These timings were also used on set to get it right.
Being BA (Hons) Film Production students, editing a commercial and guiding its post-production helped us to explore something new by letting us learn different aspects of editing. We also got a great opportunity to learn about the commercial industry, similarities and differences between working on commercials and short films. Furthermore, working on this project introduced graphic design and its importance when it comes to advertisement, such as logos, fonts and colours.
Our editing work took about three days to complete, as we had to follow a strict deadline. This was very helpful in terms of getting a professional experience and having an idea of what it’s like working in the real industry with clients. It was challenging to know when to stop experimenting with various alternative ideas and to say we got the final cut. We both believe it is one of the biggest challenges as an editor to know when to stop and pass our work to the other post-production departments – to the colourist and sound designer.
Overall, working on this commercial was a very fulfilling experience and one of the highlights of studying at AUB for both of us, accompanied by a large amount of knowledge and technical savvy, which we took with us upon completion.
