Being an Editor For A Week In Yogyakarta!

For several years now, I've done some filmmaking projects participating as footage editor, director or even actor (but, this one's embarrasing, and I'm not very much to it). It was all worth every effort tho (meant; making something great needs effort, but sometimes I don't feel like giving much).

One of the most interesting part about filmmaking is you can create some sort of scene you want it to be, develop your own imagination into visual, and the best part is when you mix them all into one final result, the editing part! you can cook those footages up.

On February 9th me and my friends made a group of film enthusiast called "Anthieves" just to make something that we can call on rather than "we" [Anthieves Production] PT. Jemari Tiga Sinergi is one of our call to gain some experiences troughout the industry, honestly for me personally I don't like being in a part of a movie or filmmaking (at that time) but we're slowly getting closer to it, because; of the environment and never thought it was going to be like this. Filmmaking is such fun and exhausting at once, It is hands down the most exciting moments in my life, imagine like building a spacecraft and made it working. Anyway, today I'm just straight away going to share my experiences of being a footage editor for PT. Jemari Tiga Sinergi.

Little did I know, here's what a footage editor has going for:

1. Fixing minor problems on the set.
2. Refresh the looks brought from the raw footages.
3. Improving the cut-to-cut transitions between two clip of footages.
4. Put in some animations.
5. Visual development.
6. and the most sucks but exciting part of all, is audio enhancement.

It becomes a lot easier when you craft the audio first rather than mixing the clips, audio gives the timeline a feel, vibe, rythms. Through intuitions, you can easily match the clips, oftenly I use Spotify and SoundCloud to search some sort of reference tracks that is "edible" to the timeline, or I could call my editing concepts. But, one thing to mind is; all responsibilites, all comprises, and agreements with the director would be some kind of pressure you don't have much time to play around with music. When becoming an industry-editor (idk if that's a word or not) you have to rush through deadlines and it's companion.

Some other bad experiences when editing a footage are like; when you couldn't get the feel of the clips (you don't got into the mood of editing) but at the same time, it's also your job to make audiences get the meaning, and message. You may struggle with some footages, dumb footages, fails, like: blurs, not stable, rolling shutters, etc. They're just don't work as it should be, but it's like; it's your fault, why to choose that? It would be a such work of dissapoinment, which feels so terrible. Am I  exaggerating? nope. And also when it comes to a competition, for me by the perspective of a director, I feel like I can't compete among those great filmmakers, because of thoughts like "am I doing it right?" (that's when inferiority comes in).

But those pressures brought me away from my lazy-side, and I have to learn some skills, also discover the use of some softwares, discover more and more, then it turns out to be a habit.

Eventually, editing footages is a such fun, surprising and mesmerizing at the same time. Editing software is my playground now on, It's like playing a video game instead of a workspace, for your information I use Final Cut Pro to do pretty much all of the editing stuffs, Final Cut just works for me, and always gets the job done, everytime (and everything), a complete and such perfect features I can interpret, and found both on Adobe's Premiere Pro and After Effects (I mean not at all, but plenty of the features). Final Cut Pro is a great value with a lot of features I can get and I couldn't say much, however it can be used and working only on macOS devices, and also litte did I know that they balooned it's price around $399 (not-sponsored anyway).

A little throwback story, back when I was an intern for a regional well-known company with some of my friends (Aziz Ramadinata & Enggar Prastyo), we had a beautiful chance to get a trip to Special-Region Yogyakarta, Indonesia on February 2017, although It was (still) a job, five days, work, sleepless. There, I  took the responsibilties as-well-known-from-the-topic being a footage editor, but for that time It's more likely to be an offline + online editor (for the sake of good and proper name). My other two friends were on the field, as a camera operator, both using same camera Canon 60D within some additional lens kit. 

"60D berat, mending 700D"
- Aziz Ramadinata

To be an editor, I have to race upon the deadlines given by the director, imagine how many footage documentations compiled from the very first start client arrives on the spot (it's the second night of our trip) until their very last event (fourth night) it's approximately a couple of hundred gigabytes, ±250GB. We even used our mentor's hard drive, just in case we ran out of storage, back to the topic: deadlines! honestly If I don't stay at the hotel cleaning and selecting footages to the timeline of my editing application at that time, I'm (very) not sure we can make it through the show night (the final night of client's event), our director gives us one day (approx. 12 hours calculated from two days) to made a highlight video of the event (so they can play the result video on the spot, at the final night) – me and my friends were agreed to set a plan, for me to: stay on the hotel, stacking, trimming, cleaning, fixing, dispose and also sort footages that can be used to the timeline (best footages from that rough, ±250GB calculated) on the first day. I end up having some variation of the same conversation. This time it was (let's call It) Setya but honestly it could have (and has) been with a lot of people:

Setya: Kenapa nggak di edit dulu footage yang udah ada, trus lanjut lagi ntar kalo Aziz & Enggar udah dateng, biar ngopi dulu sini.

Me: Enggak bang, ntar bingung saya kalo gitu, saya jadi gatau footage yang bagus mana yang harus dibuang yang mana.

S: Bukannya jadi cepet kelar?

M: Saya pake waktunya buat ngerapihin footage aja, jadi enak pas bener-bener selesai acaranya ntar tinggal di edit, kan ada waktu lumayan tuh.

S: Gak perlu repot-repot lah ngedit mah, yang penting bisa sesuai aja videonya.

M: Santai aja bang itu mah.

Why don't edit the footages first while waiting for the rest to come, the answer is "it'll be totally confuse me! (because of the unorganized footage timestamps), and harder to pick what's best. I'm a type of person who delete the raw footage after it's getting rendered on the timeline. It tooks some time cleaning on the editing application, but it's a worth when comes to the editing section, I guess they know what I meant about, and also maybe a little procastinator blood of me makes a role in it too.

Enggar on a Lava Tour Trip.

But, It doesn't go as well as planned before, It's friday and I don't estimate the jum'a prayer on twelve, the rest of the footages (like the very last) will comes right before twelve after Aziz & Enggar finished their "Lava Tour" with the client, I have no time left to edit before the night.

"Gua berasa gapunya tangan sama kaki abis pegang kamera gak duduk-duduk."
- Enggar Prastyo

But the good thing is: I had a backup edit at the night before – But, It doesn't help at all, I got a revision from my director to make it more complex and improve some clips (why).

Me and Aziz at the hotel.

The most striking thing is: I just got 5 hours left to edit and also encode to mp4 (estimated from 13.00-18.00), I mean to make it more complex (I'm literally confused at that time) I even call my uncle to come to the hotel, pick me up and take a little stroll around Yogyakarta, just to refresh my mind (yes, my uncle's home is near from hotel, he works at Yogyakarta fyi.), So, back at the hotel! I make it from the start. Why? It's much easier to do, than disposing the clips that have been added to the editor app. thankfully I had organized the footages, see? that's the point of cleaning it up – At that narrow-time (injury time), I have completed stacking videos up and syncing with the audio, also tracks for 2 hour and a quarter, and has been accepted by the director, to take it to the final result, he said.

"Bungkus!"
- Bang Jaung, Director

It's not finished yet. There's still a lot of things to do: color correction/grading, stabilization, additional black bar (fake anamorphy) and additional texting to the frame – got those rush moments at the hotel, back then, Aziz and Enggar are still on the hall of this hotel with our client, taking more documentations (but the footages doesn't get into this highlight video). Minutes after minutes, I did as fast as I can (and maybe the fastest I ever did) to make it through, you know you have to make it faster when a lot of peoples around are saying and asking the same context (not to me) with different words: "where's the video?," "the video? is it working?," "can we use the video?," or "is the video finished yet?" I'm not panic, just a bit of rush through the situation – Honestly, I don't feel like and don't know if the video is good enough, worthy, decent or fit into the final night I feel like (scared) I can't offer the vibe to client and make the video just an ordinary, odd and awkward. But, I just give them, and don't think about it ever again. Yes I finally finished the video and directly encoded right before 18.00, it took a lot of time but, we can make it through! 18.20 (if I could remember).

"Santai aja, kalo belum selesai ditungguin."
- Rizki Malfian, Event Coordinator

I feel like very tired after all, like I haven't even have time to do anything other than editing, so I took a little nap after bath and I even missed the final night. 

But, here's the interesting part and the most pleasing moment of all, I got to the hall at 9 I guess, where Aziz and Enggar still do their job (documentation) AND GUESS WHAT! – we finally make it, man. They told me: the video was on point, you need to be in the situation to feel the vibe, you killed it man. (which technically "we" who killed it, guys) something like that. They were very focused to the video from the beginning to the end, even in the end they said "play it again!" and "oh maan, that's the end of the video," Enggar said there were a lot of standing applauses, shouts, and cheers upon the audiences (client), I forget to mention that our client is from Badan Litbang Kesehatan – the ambient, the feel is very cheerful there. I also told by Aziz that the music fits the crowd and a such dope selection, the most important is the bass, that's so powerful to give the vibe, I didn't see that coming, he said.

"Ada yang tadi pengen ke kamar mandi gajadi, karna liat videonya diputer."
- Enggar Prastyo

Those cherishful ambient when I come to the hall, charges up my mood and makes me forget that I have been tired before, I feel like forget every bad things that happened in my entire life at a moment (literally). This is the video I was talking about if you're in need to watch. Fyi. I accidentally deleted the real one (wow) (proud) and this is the re-encoded one, please enjoy:

That's what makes me feel like making video is the best thing ever happened in my life, also what makes a crowd happy and cheerful from what visual can provides and serves them. From now on, I have been used to do some projects related to making videos for an event such as: graduation, gathering, etc. – I will surely got all of this and will likely to fuel my curiousity upon this industry, will always improving and such a pleasure to edit some footages on an event (again) someday.

All of your efforts, distress, worries, troubles and inconveniences in the end will worth every breath. That's a little story of me being an editor, what's yours? – I guess that's a wrapped up! very much it, see you on the next LIFELOG–Life In Motion!