Editing & Commentary

We are coming to the end of our editing now and we have a good picture lock that commentary will flow well to. What we originally planned out in our edit we realised just didn't work. We had bulked our interviews together and therefore it was very boring to watch and had no real story. After a lot of discussion we decided it would be best to go back to the transcripts and re edit them to make a flowing story between the two interviews. We were given the advice to 'drip feed' the audience information about the vultures so what we did was begin by talking about Doddington Gardens, then general information of the Hawking Centre. We moved onto Julie discussing Morticia and why Vultures are such fantastic birds of prey before going into the dangers that are surrounding the species. The idea of this was to make the audience care about the vultures so that knowing they are in danger will have a bigger impact on them. We have left the Vulpro information until nearly the end as we want to provide a sense of relief that the vultures are being helped and that they aren't just going to die out. I think this works very well in our edit and I am proud of what we have come up with. 

Now that we had a picture lock secured, we began writing a commentary script that went as follows: 

Welcome to Doddington Place Gardens in Kent - (Wide shot of lake)

I’m here today to meet some fascinating birds of prey - (Darren walks into frame) 

The picturesque landscape at Doddington is set in the grounds of a Victorian mansion, abundant with many plants and wildlife that stretches 10 acres of land (House shot)

The Hawking Centre is the main attraction here at Doddington with the falconry experiences proving to be a hit with the public - (sign and hawking centre)

Home to many birds including owls, falcons and vultures - (clips of birds) 

I will be meeting Jo, the owner, to find out about what goes on here at the Hawking Centre - (action gvs)

Here at the Hawking centre they train all of the birds to fly for the falconry experiences. I’ve been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to be the first person to see Irena fly.  (Shot of Irena) 

Julie is a falconer here at the Hawking Centre, she takes care of many different birds of prey. I’m about to meet the youngest vulture. (Julie’s intro) 

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to hold Morticia - (flying shot)

The birds are all fed dependant on their weight. Morticia here, gets three chicks a day - (Morticia wandering around)

The chicks come from an egg farming company that donates them to the Hawking Centre instead of disposing of them - (Morticia feeding) 

Vultures aren’t always able to get a regular supply of food in the wild, we spoke to Julie about the common threats they are facing - (Morticia feeding) 

Vulpro, a vulture conservation charity based in Africa are working hard to educate local farmers about these endangered creatures. - (Vulpro website) 

In order to support the charity, people are able to purchase wristbands, t-shirts and other merchandise to raise money and spread awareness. (Wristband shot) 

Vultures were critically endangered in the wild, however, with the good work Vulpro have been carrying out through education and captive breeding programmes, the vultures numbers that were so badly hit are now slowly turning around (gvs)

We read the commentary out to time how it would fit with the edit and we realised we needed to add in more breathing space/music sequences to make sure that we were not overloading the piece with information that the audience would not be able to cope with all at once. This was a minor detail that could easily be fixed.

Darren came in at 11am today to record the commentary. We used the software Pro Tools 10 which none of us had ever used before. This was a great experience and using the sound booth it has allowed us to have some really nice crisp and clear sound that brings our whole documentary together and lifts the whole piece.

Now we have edited in the music, bird noises and commentary we have a very professional looking piece that I am proud of.