Final Cut

Awoke after a fitful slumber at 3 a.m. yesterday, feeling restless, I poured myself a Soju mango cocktail and got to work, at last, on finishing this thing. Finishing something, at least! Something! So, thirty-two hours later – a nine-hour workday and a typical Friday night at The Underground in between, of course – I have, at long last, finished…something.

In spite of my slight embarrassment, I do feel a short disclaimer here is warranted and justified. So, here goes. As a college student (and an English teacher in South Korea), the acquisition of new editing software was (and still is) not an option (sadly) and so after many hours of woe, I finally surrendered to the fact that at this point in time the only feasible way for me to cut this film would be via Windows Movie Maker. (Boo! Double boo.) That being said, I have encountered lots of obstacles and little annoyances throughout the editing process, never truly feeling satisfied with the output. But. Despite my frustrations with the project and my disappointment with the final cut, I think posting what I have produced, regardless of its sub-standard quality, is still better than nothing, especially considering the time that volunteers have spent being interviewed (their generosity and patience) (when they could have been out playing in mud) and the nights spent trying to get around WMM’s single-track simplicity with the naïve hope of creating something worth watching.

So, on that note, I downloaded a trial version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 in order to output the project because WMM can only handle about three minutes of video at any given time (argh!), but the trial version, it appears, is missing a heap of essential features and won’t allow me to export a clean cut with the proper frame size. Anyway! I digress. The moral of the story is that technology can be a saving grace (what I would do – what I wouldn’t do! – to have Final Cut Pro at my fingertips!); it is also possible to do something with a simple program like Windows Movie Maker. And, at the end of the day, all you can do is your best and your best is as good as it gets (mine anyway!) and that, that is good enough. So, I do apologise for the sometimes awkward transitions and the poor audio quality, but I have done my best to make it bearable! I hope you can put it out of your mind for the duration of the film. It is, after all, only seventeen minutes. What would you have done with those seventeen minutes anyway? Make some toast. Maybe eat it? Play some War Craft? Melt some cheese? Put it on the toast.

To find out more about volunteering in Seoul, please visit: Mustard Seed Seoul and Volunteer for PLUR! on Facebook.