Construction : Post Production - Editing Process Pt.1

 After I had imported my raw footage from the camera, I started to edit it. The first thing i did was separate the footage for the 1940's part of my video and the present day footage.

I then started a new project in Adobe After Effects, Importing all my 1940's footage into it. 

Firstly I selected the footage of my singer lip syncing the song and changed it to black and white - the image to the left is the measurements I used for my black and white. 

I did this to make my footage look more authentic for the 1940's part of my music video.

The next thing I did was to make film grain and dust. I did this bay layering things on top of my footage.

'Fractal noise' contrast 100.0

I firstly added a new layer as a black solid on top of my footage - naming it 'Grain'. This is the layer that I added the film grain to, I did this by adding the 'fractal noise' effect to it (this is what the picture on the left is). With this I adjusted the contrast up to firstly 100.0, but I didn't like this look so I increased it even more. I decided that I liked the look of the contrast a at 640.0

'Fractal noise' contrast at 640.0

I decided that the 'fractal noise' contrast at 100.0 was not striking enough for what I wanted which I why I changed it to 640.0.

I then changed the 'fractal noise' brightness to -200 to try reduce the white area. After I did this I decided that there was still too much white space in my grain, so from here I decided to make it more negative.

'Fractal noise' brightness at -200.0

To the left is the brightness at -200.0, From -200.0 I increased the negativity to -250.0 after looking at this and getting a second opinion from someone from my target audience, I decided that I still needed to get rid of some more of the white space, as it may negatively effect the authenticity of footage. Therefore I decided I needed to go more negative again.

'Fractal noise' brightness at -250.0

From -250.0 I went to -260.0 for the brightness to create less white spaces, but still enough for there to be noticeable grain on my footage.

'Fractal noise' brightness at -260.0, with 'curves' added

Then to increase the contrast even more I added the 'curves' effect. With this I played arought with the brightness and the contract within the effect for a while, until I got the ''perfect'' brightness and contract of the grain itself without editing the size or rate of the grain.


To make the grain move within my footage, I went to the 'evolution option' and ''alt''click on 'random seed'. Then I typed in ''random()*100'' to generate a random number between 0 and 1 and multiply that by 100 to create a new random seed, which will create a new set of random values. Thus making the grain move on top of the footage.

The application of 'random seed'

Finally, I right clicked to 'pre-compose' the grain calling it ''Grain'' and changed the blending mode to 'add' so the grain would be white marks on top of the footage.

I nliked what this finally came out as because it looks realistic and the footage is still clear. I think this would appeal to the target audience because it looks more authentic, than fake.

'Pre-composing' the footage

After editing the footage, I shortened the grain to match the footage and then rendered the footage, so it could be exported as a .mov file and then I could import the footage to Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Final edited footage

Also with 'pre-composing' the grain it meant that it could be copied and pasted to my other pieces of 1940's footage, so that all I would have to do with them is change them to black and white and make sure all the measurements for that fit my original one and then render them for export.

These show how I pasted the grain top of my other 1940's footage and added the black and white. Then finally rendered the footage.