1. 14/03/2016
Editing a ChaseSequence
Chase sequences are usually fast paced, montage edits consisting mostly of jump and
cross cuts following a protagonist and antagonist through a series of locations as one
attempts to stop the other.
The challenge to shoot and edit a chase sequence proved to be a difficult task. This was
due to several different factors. The first being that the footage had to be shot on a
mobile phone, meaning that it was all handheld and extremely unsteady due to mobile
phones having a high sensitivity of movement. This made editing the footage together
challenging because every clip was moving at a different pace and also consisted of
movement within the frame, making cutting between two clips more jarring than
seamless. To avoid this problem, the phones could have been mounted on bags, walls or
benches on location, rather than being hand held, in order to keep the movement
within the frame rather than throughout the entire clip. Although this was an issue, the
movement of the camera did add pace to the film that was otherwise missing due to
lack of coverage.
Another issue that arose during the edit was the lack of coverage within the footage.
This also made cutting the footage more challenging because there wasn’t a variety of
different shot types to separate the clips with to make the film more interesting. This
also meant that key moments were left out of the story such as a close-up of the skaters
attempting to pick the lock of the car at the beginning to reveal to the spectator that
that is the reason for the chase to begin. More close-ups and wide shots would have
been useful to cut to between shots to provide a different perspective of the chase and
to make the footage more interesting by having a larger variety of shots.
Overall, to improve the film, more planning should take place and shot lists written,
after studying famous film chase sequences, in order to gain more coverage of well
thought out shots. This would make the edit more interesting because it would contain
cuts between a variety of different shots rather than cutting from one shot to another
very similar shot.
https://youtu.be/6Sk7R2cQGeQ