Post-Production Self Evaluation

 
The first project we were given was to edit a documentary on spoken word poetry in pairs, where I partnered up with Jay. The strengths of our film were, firstly, that the narrative was structured very clearly and effectively due to the considered pacing and attention to content produced by the interviewee. This was also helped by the way we moved from one location and interview to the next, through the continuation of the contributor’s poem throughout the narrative. When dealing with the interviews, we looked through a large amount of footage, around 30 minutes of just interviews, and carefully selected what was interesting and what worked well in conjunction with the others. From this we built up a large amount of empathy for the contributor, and gave an effect insight into his life and personal ambitions which allows the audience to get a rounded opinion of him as a person. We used voice over with split cuts very well by using relevant cut away’s to back up assertions made by the contributor in the sequence. We also used cut away shots to give the film an artistic, professional style theme which increased the empathy towards the contributor, as well as progressing the narrative in an engaging way.

However, there were a few weaknesses in our film, the more obvious ones surrounding the audio and sound edit. There were some roughly cut pieces of dialogue that came in or out to rapidly and made an obvious sound edit, especially when used in split edits as the audience has a pause in dialogue and waits critically for the next piece of sound to come in, making the lack of fades more obvious. Some of the interview sequences we put in dragged on for a bit too long due to us pushing perhaps too hard to get the audience to empathise with the contributor. Leaving these in made the film drag a bit and lose audience engagement and interest, as what was being said wasn’t particularly powerful or stimulating and was mainly just the interviewee ‘waffling’. Finally, showing our lack of familiarity with editing documentaries, we began the film with the contributor introducing himself which is a very weak and lazy approach to inducing a narrative, and shows a level of unprofessionalism straight away. When starting a film, especially a documentary, you need to begin with a hook that instantly engages the audience and makes them want to keep watching the film and then after that, begin to start to build empathy and a connection with the main focus.

We started the editing process by watching through and noting which clips we would want to use and that we thought worked to start to create a sequence. There was a very large amount of footage to choose from as the original project was for a 10 minute film and we had to cut ours down to just 5 and this proved quite difficult at first as we weren’t the ones who recorded all the footage so we didn’t weren’t entirely sure what were that ‘bad bits’. “The goal of narrative films is much more complicated because of the fragmented time structure and the need to indicate internal states of being, and so it becomes proportionately more complicated to identify what is a “bad bit.”” ^[1]  

Although what we edited was a documentary, this extract is still relevant to it as it is obviously filmed at different times and in different locations so jumping between these can become problematic in keeping the audience engaged all the time. To solve this issue we kept cutting back to the contributors own poem, and him performing it in different places to make the whole thing flow a lot smoother and to give a constant theme running throughout.

What I learnt from this project, amongst numerous technical skills on Media Composer, was the importance of character empathy and how to build that up to make the audience engage more and want to watch the film. I also learnt the advantages of working in a group and always having another editor’s opinion on what works well and what doesn’t. “You could sit in one room with a pile of dailies and another editor could sit in the next room with exactly the same footage and both of you would make different films…” ^[1]

The next brief was a non-sync drama called Night Journey, which we also had to edit in pairs. This was by far the most challenging project for Jay and me, but the film still had a few strengths, the main one being our use of music throughout. The impending danger that it connoted worked really well with the context of the narrative and it was exceptional at building and breaking tension.  This was down to the actual sound of the piece, but also where we placed it in the film in conjunction with the voice over, as well as where and how we cut it and what followed it, for example, cutting it out to complete silence after a long build up, and then following to some disturbing and intriguing voice over. Another positive was the actual use of voice over throughout, as once again we had been given over 20 minutes worth of narration that we had to cut down to 5 minutes. This meant we were tempted to oversaturate the amount of narration we used making the whole film seem overcomplicated and too much, but instead we were able to pace out the voice over quite efficiently to allow thinking time for the audience, as well as atmos and music tracks to aid this contemplation or to build tension. 

The weaknesses of this project were unfortunately quite major, as right from the start we had issues trying to create a clear and interesting narrative from the narration and rushes we were given. The transition into the Amsterdam sequence near the middle of the film was unexplained and out of place, with no real context to drive the narrative in that direction. The ending also felt very forced and confusing, especially when the music drove the tension up heavily for it to just be taken away with the image of the man leaving the carriage. The reason I think this occurred was due to the lack of characterisation and empathy built for either character. This was due to us cutting the pictures poorly around the narration, making the audience confused as to which view point we were hearing this internal monologue from. This partly mimicked our own confusion with the narration as we weren’t sure when to show any footage of the other character over the cannibal in the sequence, as we believed the narrative was all from the cannibal’s perspective. This meant we ran out of useable footage of one of the characters and had to work around that, making the visual side of the film very confusing and rough.

As I said, we had issues finding and understanding the narrative ourselves from the very beginning, which meant progress throughout the project was very slow and erratic and it felt as though every step forward we made, we had to take 2 steps back. This meant we struggled with pacing, one of the briefs, from the go and really tried to focus all our efforts on sorting that out before moving on. I believe one of the reasons we struggled so much was that instead of trying out a load of different ideas in the assembly stage of the edit, we moved on to the rough cut too soon after getting a rough narrative, and then tried to change everything after already having placed visuals down to accompany certain areas of the voice over. This meant we weren’t as flexible as we should have been with rearranging the narrative, and I think that definitely hindered our film overall. I did learn, however, the importance of music in a drama piece, and how to effectively use it to manipulate the audience’s emotions and get them to engage more with a more abstract film like this one.

Once again, Jay and I worked well together on a technical level when tackling Media Composer, but did have issues communicating our own interpretations of the narrative which definitely affected the overall quality of the film. “The main advantage to collaborative editing is speed; the main risk is lack of coherence.” ^[1]

The final brief was a synch-sound comedy edit which was a solo project. The major strength of this film was the overall visual edit for the whole film in terms of is technical form, as well as narrative strengths. I used the majority of the film to focus on the main character of Alf so I could create the most empathy with him and make his character the centre of the scene. I did this by using a few wide shots and mid shots of him in the beginning, but then almost always cutting to close ups when he was speaking after that, depending on the performance. I also chose to do the same sort of thing with the other two characters, by cutting to them in close ups when they were speaking, or to a mid-shot when Alf and Tony were interacting with one another to get both reactions in. Linking with this, I also made good use of cutting away to reaction shots of Alf when he was being spoken about just to create more audience empathy with him. Finally, the pacing of the film was very solid throughout by intentionally leaving gaps in exchanges in dialogue when jokes were made, this was for comedic timing to improve the quality of the film, as well as to allow reactions of the characters to be shown instead of just rapidly moving on to the next build up.

The main weakness with the film was the sound design. This was because there wasn’t much evidence of the creative implementation of it in the scene, due to there not being much room for it to be used. The scene itself is very straight forward and, due it being filmed with sync sound, there wasn’t much to add to the very dialogue heavy scene. Although I didn’t think it was a problem at first, upon showing it to the rest of the group I realised that the lack of sound design made it very obvious that it was a scripted and constructed film, instead of making the audience feel as though it was a ‘normal’ and real experience. Another problem with the sound was that some of the dialogue overlapped which meant cutting between shots was very difficult around these parts and I think it shows in my final film in one or two places, as there is a dip in the volume of certain parts of dialogue, even with my best efforts to mask these with small fades.

I started out by selecting which scene I would edit out of the 4 we were given and I chose the tea drinking scene because it contained the least amount of continuity errors and had the best framing and lighting out of the others.  I focused on Alf throughout which completed the brief of building empathy for the main character and with this I paced the whole film around his lines and attempted the match them with comedic timing. The problems I encountered were mainly just around the dialogue overlapping at certain parts which caused me grief in the sound edit. There was also one or two continuity errors but I followed the advice of Walter Murch and focused on the emotions of the film over the continuity. “An ideal cut… is the one that satisfies all the following six criteria at once:… 1) Emotion 51%, 2) Story 23%, 3) Rhythm 10%, 4) Eye-trace 7%, 5) Two-dimensional plane of screen 5%, ^) Three-dimensional space of action 4%. Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing you should try to preserve at all costs.” <sup>[1] 

Bibliography
1. Walter Murch (1988), In the Blink of an Eye, Viking Press.</sup>

Research Topic - Widescreen Format

Widescreen refers to the aspect ratio of a screen in film, television and on computer screens. In television, it took over from the standard definition format aspect ratio of 4:3 in the 2000's for better quality and HD (high definition) televisions (HDTV). 16:9 is the standard aspect ratio for widescreen at it refers to 16 rectangle units horizontal and 9 rectangle units vertical that make up a larger rectangle that is the area of the screen.

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/16x9_by_Pengo.svg

Widescreen in film has been used since the late 1890's, starting with the film The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897) by Enoch Rector, and has since been shot on a number of different sizes of film 63mm, 70mm and 35 Anamorphic. There are 5 main types of Widescreen formats for film:

• Masked/Flat - Shot using spherical lenses but with the top and bottom of the frame masked by a metal aperture plate which was cut to the specifications of a theater's screen in the projector. The standard ratios for these are 1.66:1, 1.75:1, 1.85:1 and 2:1.
• 35mm Anamorphic - A.k.a. CinemaScope or Panavision where the film is shot 'squeezed' and the projector has a special lens that projects it to make it look normal. The standard ratio for this is 2.40:1.
• 70mm Anamorphic - same as 35mm but shot on 70mm film making the image quality higher, however has a high production cost so is rarely used. Standard ratio of 2.76:1.
• Super Gauges - Filmed using a wider gate which records on the whole negative frame and is then shrunk to fit in the release prints. Aspect ratio can be shrunk to any standard.
• Large Gauge - simply filmed on 70mm film which has four times the image area of 35mm film.

Seminar 11 - Senna Analysis

This seminar was the last one before the Easter break so we began by discussing the semester and the module and if there was anything we wanted to know/needed help with before we broke up. We decided to review our blogs to begin with and get some formative feedback from Chris to help us progress them over the holiday. When we reviewed my blog, I was told that I had given numerous examples of film analysis and research, as well as other research on sound within film and reflection on my learning process. I also had adequately shown my editing process throughout the module on the different assignments but I could use a few more screenshots to make it clearer. The things I needed to improve on were theoretical research and evidence of that (In the Blink of an Eye) as well as addressing the set film in the module, Senna (2010) by Asif Kapadia. As this was the case in many peoples blogs, we decided to watch the first 30 minutes or so of Senna and write any notes up about the editing and the film in general. After the seminar I went home and watched the rest of the film and continued to analyse it.

First and foremost, the whole feature length documentary contains only archive footage of back when Senna was still alive, with a mixture of racing footage, television and interview footage, behind the scenes footage and family home video clips. The fact that these are used alone in a film of this length really allows the audience to feel immersed in that time period and not have any jarring cuts of archive footage into full HD quality footage. It makes the film flow a lot better and brings the audience back in time as if they were watching this story unfold as it happened. The use of just archive footage was definitely considered from the start of the production as there are more recent interviews with various figures in Senna's life and professionals of the motor industry at his time, that are used as voice over in the film with no talking heads like you would expect from a conventional documentary. This is once again to not ruin the immersion of the content of the film and pull back to other people so that the audience can focus on the one character that matters, that is Senna himself. This also allows the audience to feel a more personal connection with Senna as we see him in almost every clip in the film and he is discussed by all these different people.

This technique however, raises the issue of the audience not knowing who is giving the interview and how they are actually relevant to Senna's life, but a simple and effective work around of this that the documentary uses, is to bring up a on screen text of who the person is, and what their relation to Senna is. This can be argued as being quite dismissive of the persons importance to the story as they aren't important enough to be shown on screen, however as the narrative is focused on building up Senna as a person, it is used very effectively at keeping the audience informed and engaged on the main character, Senna.

Another major technique that is used very effectively in the narrative is focused heavily on the rivalry between Senna and Prost, making the film become more of a drama piece about the events occurring between the two over the course of their careers. The way in which this is done is partly through the selection of footage around the two and how the audience is lead to empathise with Senna over Prost through more footage of him being shown, both racing and in interviews, so the audience can get  more of a rounded perspective on him as a character whereas Prost's history isn't shown at all. This is to set up the narrative as a classic story of protagonist v.s. antagonist which builds up the drama and friction within the film, making it more enjoyable for the audience to engage with. It is constructed in a way that makes it an underdog story, with Senna being described climbing from racing go-kart's to becoming F1 Championship winner. This is much like the documentary brief we were given at the start of the semester, The Movement, as they both follow one persons goals and dreams while building empathy for them with the audience and representing them as passionate and iconic people in there respective fields.

Finally, the film is extremely efficient at building and releasing tension around the major plot points in the film through the use of both montage, and mostly, music. The use of music is very carefully considered as it is predominantly used with voiceover over close ups of senna or montages of him to build empathy for the character and to get into the mind of him so we can feel his emotions. However the music is almost always cut out when Senna is actually racing and is replaced by either just the sounds of the F1 cars by themselves over a brief montage of him driving, and then voice over is introduced from the more recent interviews of people talking about his driving technique or him as a person in general. This assertion is usually backed up by a clip that shows what was described, by him driving. An example of this is 12 minutes into the film when he is described by a voice over as being fast and that he pushed the car to its limits, then we see a clip of the car going around corners and wobbling dangerously as it appears to be struggling with the speed it is going. To go back to my previous point, when the music is used on a build up to a race, it normally builds pace or pitch to create a powerful tension, then crescendos by being sharply cut out and replaced with an loud engine sound of a car. As the audience knows that Senna dies in an F1 race, this technique constantly provides heavy tension then relief to the audience as they want his death to be prolonged as much as possible, due to the empathy towards him, built through a mixture of the techniques listed above.

Out of Date - Fine Cut

Unfortunately, when my hard drive was formatted I lost all my work including the Media Composer project for the rough cut of Out of Date. This was extremely frustrating as I had worked very hard with it in the rough cut and was almost finished, so I spoke to our tutor Chris Hall and asked him if there was any way I could get the edit back or if I would have to start again. He advised I go on the last computer I was working on and go to its hard drive and click on the users folder, then shared, then AvidMediaComposer, and then find the folder called Avid Attic. Avid Attic autosaves a projects bins onto the computers hard drive even if you're working on an external project, which means that after looking on a few computers, I found a fairly recent copy of my project and located the rough cut sequence bin. Unfortunately, all the files were offline due to them being on the wiped hard drive so both myself and Chris tried every way we could to try and reconnect them. After a while we discovered that it wasn't easily possible, and Chris recommended that I just re-import the rushes and link up the timecodes of the offline files in the sequence, to the newly imported ones.

Finding the timecodes and matching them up.

Reconnecting the sequence.

To do this I had to go to the start of the clip in the sequence and read the number at the top, in this case 00:33:19:24. I would then go to the newly imported rushes and using the display feature on the bin, locate the clip that contained that timecode in it. I would then put an in-point in at the matching timecode on the source view monitor, and then create and in-point and out-point around the offline clip in the sequence and then click the override button which would replace the offline clip with the online one.

Progression of reconnecting the sequence.

This whole process was very precise and time consuming, but finally I managed to reconnect the whole sequence and could continue with the fine cut. It did set me back on the sound however, as any alterations I had made with the audio mixer had been undone, and some of the ADR/voiceover as well as plugging the audio with room sound, was impossible to link up using the timecodes when there was no video with it so I will have to do that all again.

However, after doing this and trimming the video slightly again just to tighten the edit a bit more, I was ready to start putting the finishing touches onto the sequence. I started out by adding in foley sounds to add more atmosphere and realism to the scene, as well as to show creative implementation of sound design.

Adding foley sounds.

As these were recorded separately to the film and at different levels, I had to re-do the mix on them and the dialogue to make sure they weren't distracting from one another, but still have comedic effect.

Normalising audio to make scene flow smoothly.

When I was happy with the audio, I started to put the final touch on the fine cut which was the colour correction. Originally I thought the colour was fine in the scene, and that the lighting for almost all the shots not only worked in terms of visual aesthetics, but also in terms of continuity with the previous shots. However, there were some slight visual discrepancies in the boldness of colours and the whites, so I decided to use the saturation and contrast options to normalise the images.

Editing the saturation and contrast on specific shots.

Subtle difference in colour grading.

Progression of colour grading on sequence.

As I only used around 4 or 5 different shots in the film, I used the FX template on the colour correction tool to keep the colour the same on each shot when it was cut back to along the sequence. I did this by simply dragging and dropping the FX template onto all the same shots along the timeline.

FX template.

I looked over the whole film one more time to see if there was anything else that needed doing or stood out to me and after one or two small changes I had my final product.

The final fine cut sequence.

Hard Drive Issues

This week I got a new hard drive to accommodate the edit I was doing my drama film in the narrative strand of the project and so I needed to format it to exFat in order for it to work on both Mac computers and PC's. Unfortunately I had my old hard drive still plugged in when I chose to format the new one, and I accidentally formatted both the old and the new hard drives at the same time. This meant that all 900+gb of work I had on the old drive was instantly wiped, including all my post production work from this semester. I attempted to recover my files by downloading software that would help me do this but after 2 days of reading and recovering the files, it only fully recovered around 1000 files most of which were small and useless hidden files, and partly recovered 3000 more out of a possible 140,000+ that were present on the drive.

Attempting to recover lost files.

This meant that I was very unlikely to have recovered any important or useful files that would help me get back on track with the work I was half way through on Out of Date. It also means that I have lost both my Media Composer project files for The Movement and Night Journey, meaning that I cannot re-edit them at all and will have to submit the fine cuts we presented in class over the past 2 months.
Although this has been a major set back for me as I have also lost all my screenshots of the assembly and rough cut of the Out of Date project, as well as any others from seminars and past projects, I have arranged to meet with the tutor Chris to see if there is any way we can recover these files and get the ball rolling again so I don't have too much of a massive workload to complete by the end of the semester. As the formatting of the hard drive was completely my fault, I will be staying in university over the Easter holiday to catch up on my lost work so I can still submit professional standard films and obtain a good mark.

Wolf of Wall Street Analysis

The scene I have chosen to analyse in Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013), is around 1 hour and 58 minutes into the film where the main character, Jordan, has just taken a large amount of drugs (Quaaludes) and is attempting to rush home to get his work colleague, Donnie, off the phone as he has just been informed that the FBI are tapping it.
The whole of this scene is centred around the performance that Leonardo DiCaprio, Jordan, gives showing the effect and impact of these drugs. The reason I have chosen to analyse this scene is because it uses a variety of different techniques effectively to tell the story as well as keeping the audience entertained and engaged with it.
Firstly, we see the effect the ludes start to take on Jordan as he is on the phone which uses a mixture of static mid shots, extreme close ups, GoPro style mounted shots as well as dolly zooms. All these camera angles would normally be considered over the top and unnecessary, but here they are cut in with one another as a visual way of showing what effect the drugs are having and the confusion it is causing Jordan.

Extreme close up to make the audience feel as though they are in his head experiencing it with him.

Body mounted shot used for the same reason as the XCU.

Dolly zoom used to mimic effect of drugs.

All of these camera movements are accompanied by a voice over of Jordan explaining what is happening to him and what he feels like so the audience can still understand what's actually going on. Its also used because Jordan can no longer talk due to the Ludes, and instead we get a internal running monologue from him so the narrative can keep progressing. This technique could be seen as a lazy story telling device as the audience is basically being spoon-fed the narrative by the use of the voice over, however, as this scene is so centred on the performance of DiCaprio, it makes it more comical that we are being told what is going on in his head and him struggling to do anything about it.

The next section of the scene is when Jordan is attempting to get in his car and him arriving at his house which starts off with a series of wide shots after a close up of his face.

Close up to establish eyeline and reaction.

Wide to establish location and show distance for comical effect.

1st person POV shot to empathise with Jordan and get into his perspective.

This sequence is mainly built up of wide's for comic effect to show the distance between Jordan and his car (where he wants to be). It is really well cut from showing these wide's and mixing them with cut backs to his reaction and performance as a whole. It contains a long take within the sequence which is once again used for comic effect to see the extent in which the Ludes have effected Jordan through the physical performance DiCaprio gives.

Finally, when Jordan actually gets in his car and drives home, there as a lot of different cuts to other characters who are relevant to the scene. Scorsese uses this technique of limiting the voice over to just Jordan and his internal monologue a great deal within the film and then cuts to the other people that are relevant in the scene, to allow the audience to establish who is speaking. This is done mainly when people are speaking with one another on the phone like in the previous scene.

Cutting between characters and locations.

Cutting back to action to establish internal monologue as the voiceover.

Another reason why I believe this is used within this scene specifically is to distort the perception of time, as well as not allowing the audience to really see what is going on in the main interest in the scene, Jordan driving his car, to save it for a reveal later on for a bigger pay off.

This film is relevant to both the comedy edit brief and the previous project of Night Journey. The focus on the performance over anything else is what I will be attempting to do in the Out of Date edit as it is the most important aspect of any comedy film. The use of voice over in this film is relevant to the Night Journey brief, as it has taught me that you need to establish who's voice over it is and why it is being used.

Seminar 10

This seminar was used as a catch up session and overview of our whole learning process over the semester. We started by doing a group exercise of writing down 100 things about editing that we had learnt in the previous seminars and through our further reading. As there were only 5 of us in the seminar this task proved to be quite difficult and took quite some time to complete, but when we did there was a lot of subjects that I had personally overlooked and forgotten about and it gave me a chance to remind myself of them and their relevance to editing and my own learning.

The finished list we created of 100 things about editing.

This task was useful in the sense that it reminded me of things that we were taught about at the start of the year which I had subsequently forgotten, which I could use to either put here on my blog, or apply to my Out of Date cut I was doing to make it a professional piece. A lot of the things that were put on the list reflected the analysis we had done as a group in seminars on select films chosen by our tutor. My blog already reflects quite heavily and consistently on these so I had could easily relate and talk about them, however, the part I was contributing the least on was the theory and further reading side. This then made me reflect on my blog and my learning and gave me a goal as to what I needed to do to progress to a higher level of understanding in regards to editing, and I will attempt to execute this before the module is over to help my make the transition to the final year as smooth as possible.

After discussing this task, we went onto talk about useful things we may need to know when completing our Out of Date fine cuts for next week. We started off by talking about colour grading and how to do it effectively to only over or under-exposed parts of a shot. To do this you use the spot colour correction effect and using the shape tool, create a region that you want to change, then adjust either the colour or the contrast depending on what effect you want to achieve. We also learnt that you can simply drag the colour correction icon, when in colour correct mode, over any clip in the sequence to get the same effect throughout which is particularly relevant to the scene I have chosen, as it all takes place in the same location with only around 4-5 different shots, so I can keep the colour grading constant throughout the scene with no or little fluctuation.

Out of Date - Rough Cut

The main issues with my assembly for Out of Date were the pacing and sound. To progress into the fine cut stage I addressed these with the most attention and precision by starting to trim the video down and make the shots run more smoothly together to make the scene more pleasing to watch.

Trimming frames inbetween shots to make them flow more smoothly.

Cutting out beginning and ends of shots for a tighter edit.

The next issue I addressed was the sound and there was a fairly large amount to do on it. The main issue I had was that there was a lot of overlapping dialogue between characters on different takes which meant that holding shots and reaction shots after a line had been said for comedic timing, caused gaps in the audio to become obvious and make these reaction shots seem out of place and awkward.

Trimming overlapping audio.

Lifting audio out, before.

Lifting audio out, after.

Like I said, this left me with some gaps in the audio which didn't fit, so I got around this by plugging the gaps with other audio from either the other shot, or if that audio wasn't usable, then just using the room tone, or gasps or reactions from other parts in the scene.

Plugging audio gaps with room tone, before.

Plugging audio gaps with room tone, after.

Using ADR or different audio for voice over to plug audio gaps.

I used ADR to get clearer recordings of the characters that the mic not pointing at them when using a different shot so I didn't have to constantly have it changing from one person to another when characters had quick intertwining lines with one another.
Finally, when doing audio plugging and changing from one audio file to another, there can be a noticeable and distracting popping sound. To get around this I applied small 4 frame audio transitions to smooth over these audio changes to make them sound more crisp and less noticeable to the audience.

Audio transitions.

The rough cut has been a lot of work especially on the sound, but now I am ready to progress to the fine cut stage where I will tighten up the visual edit frame by frame as well as make the audio smooth and consistent to create a solid final product.

Seminar 9

At the beginning of this weeks seminar we reviewed the editing in the car chase scene in the film Bullitt (1968) by Peter Yates.

The first thing we talked about was the use of music within the scene and how at the start when the two cars are just following one another there is a quite low tempo soundtrack that plays underneath that mimics the casualness of the scene. However, it also builds tension with the horn sound that plays in intervals throughout combined with the steady drum beat to let the audience know that something is about to happen. When the main character Frank loses his pursuers and begins to follow them, the music changes again to a more upbeat, cop style show track up until the men in the other car attempt to lose him and start to speed away. At this moment the music is cut out completely for the rest of the scene and is replaced with just the folley sounds of the car engines revving up and down. The superimposed sound of the cars is used here to make the audience in the illusion that the cars are moving a lot quicker than they actually are and also so they are really engaged and immersed with the chase by making them feel as though they are actually in the car with Frank Bullitt. The sound is helped by the constant use of PoV shots in the cars and behind the steering wheel as it increase audience empathy and connection with the characters by seeing it through their eyes. Finally, the fact that there is no dialogue what so ever within this 10 minute scene is very interesting as dialogue is commonly used to enhance audience engagement with the film as well as to develop plot or characters, however, this scene doesn't need it at all as the plot is straight forward and told through the use of geographical space around San Francisco and the movement of the cars, as well as by the performances of the actors and use of a variety of camera angles.

Next, we looked at John Madden's Shakespeare in Love (1998) and its opening title scene to analyse the way the narrative was constructed and edited. The scene follows two characters, Henslowe and Shakespeare, from Will's house through a crowded street and into a shop. First noticeable thing about the scene is that it is extremely dialogue heavy in order to move the narrative along, however, this is masked by the way in which it is delivered and where it takes place. The fact that the two characters have a conversation in a crowded street, where extras are constantly coming in and out of shot would seem on paper as being practically un-comprehendable to the audience as there is so much going on to distract them from the story. However, the way in which it is done in this scene is very effective as it shows the main character Will in the frame at almost all times and then Henslowe keep coming in and out of frame to show the relationship between the two characters as Will being in charge. The camera movement being constant and rarely static until near the end of the sequence also makes the understand the rush and context behind the characters situations and personal interests, Wills being to go to his therapist, and Henslowe needing Will for his business. After this interaction between the two characters ends and we see Will in with the therapist, the camera movement mimics the more relaxed atmosphere and allows the audience to get a sense of the character more easily by slowing the pace right down and allowing them to reflect on the dialogue more. The camera frequently cuts back to Shakespeare as well which subconsciously tells the audience that he is the character of importance within the scene, and he is the one we should be attempting to read, understand and empathise with.

Out of Date - Assembly

After being given the brief for Out of Date, I instantly started to transfer and import the files onto my hard drive and Media Composer so I could begin editing them as soon as possible.

Importing Footage.

Before I did this I looked through the different scenes from the rushes to decide which I would prefer to do and after looking through them all, I chose the second scene where Alf and Tony go to Alf's sisters house and discover her online dating website business. I chose this scene because it contained the least amount of continuity errors and was both well lit and well shot, with a range of takes and camera angles on all the characters.
After I imported all the footage from this scene, I started to label it all and separate it into the different shot styles so I could easily find the shot I wanted when progressing through the narrative.

Fully labelled scene.

Now unfortunately due to technical issues with my harddrive which I will talk about in a later post, I don't have any other screen grabs of the assembly process so I will just be describing what I did that I can remember and discussing any issues I had.
I started out be watching through the wide shot of the whole scene so I could get an understanding of the script as well as where the different punchlines came in and the characters reactions to one another. After making mental notes of this I put the whole take of the wide shot into the sequence, and started to put in close ups or mid shots of the characters when I thought it was necessary. As this was only an assembly, I wasn't worried about the sound overlapping or dialogue being out of sync as I was just testing out where reactions should go and when close ups should be used to create empathy with Alf and to show the relationships between the characters. I also wanted to keep in mind the importance of the dialogues pacing and how key this is especially in comedies to get the comedic timing just right.
When I got to the end of the scene applying these techniques I went back and watched through it again and began to remove the overlapping audio and almost all of the wide shots as I felt they made it harder to engage with the characters and made the scene less immersive and personal. The whole sequence is still very rough and needs a lot of touching up in terms of pacing and sound consistency, but overall I was happy with what I had done so far and was ready to start moving it to a rough cut as soon as possible.

Seminar 8 - Introduction to Brief 3

At the start of this seminar, we looked through the last of the Night Journey fine cuts and gave feedback on them, and then we were introduced to the third and final brief.

Brief for comedy edit.

This brief was to edit a scene from a previous years final 3rd year project film which was a comedy called Out Of Date. We had around 7 scenes to choose from and we would have to select one and edit it down to a 2-3 minute long film. The learning outcomes and assessment criteria were much similar to previous briefs apart from with the addition of 'Develop your fine cutting skills'.
My initial thoughts on this brief are that it will be once again very interesting and challenging to edit just one scene from this 10-15 minute long film and compress that scene down to just 2-3 minutes. However, throughout this module, I have become accustomed to working with footage that I have never seen before and with narratives that aren't initially clear to me as an outside editor, so I believe that this brief will allow me to apply all the things I have learnt up to this point and create a really solid and tightly cut final piece. This is also the first chance I have had to cut a comedy and as a keen comedy enthusiast, I am relishing the opportunity to do so and apply all the knowledge that I have gained in comedic timing e.t.c.

Seminar 7

At the start of this seminar we discussed various editing techniques that may be useful for us in our other projects. First of all, I asked how you could mask something on Media Composer, for example a light or plug socket on a black background. To do this what you need to do is add an extra video layer and above the video you want to mask, create 2 add edits at the start and end of it (on the new video layer) and then drag the Spot Colour Effect under Effects- Image. Then use one of the shape tools to highlight the area you want covering, then turn down the contrast to you get the desired effect. You can also use this same tool to increase the brightness of a certain area by turning up the gamma under Luma Adjust/ Luma Range.

After looking at some useful techniques, we analysed the editing within a scene in The Servant where the characters Tony and Vera are in the kitchen surrounded by a lot of sexual tension.

As you can see there are clips in this montage from the kitchen scene with Tony and Vera.
The sound in this scene is very powerful as it is almost all silent apart from the movement of the characters, and an overlaying beat that mimics heart rate throughout. This starts off as being a constant drip from the tap that starts off quiet and slowly but then increases in volume and speed until an abrupt crescendo where it stops briefly, but is then carried on by the telephone. This use of sound is very effective at building up tension and making the audience empathise with the characters whilst getting drawn in to their emotions. The cuts in this scene are very slow which contrasts with the sound, this is because they are more focused on the performance that the individuals give and how they convey their emotions through their actions.
The second scene we analysed was from The English Patient (1996) where the character Hana is reading a book to Cout Laszlo de Almasy about 'Candaules tells Gyges...' a story from Herodotus.

The editing in this scene inter-cuts between two scenes, one from real-time and another from memory. This is shown by a long cross dissolve between the real life scene, into the memory as it shows the Count as being younger and not ill. This is an effective way in which you can transport a narrative between the past and the present with the use of voice over and with a split edit, where something from an incoming scene is on the outgoing one. The use of music within this scene is also very effective at building tension, as there is an impending sense of doom with a low humming sound throughout which is only broken half way through when one of the other characters in the memory scene tells a joke.

In the second half of the seminar, we looked at our Night Journey Fine Cuts. Myself and Jay went first as I had to continue editing for my groups narrative strand project. The feedback we received was for the most part positive, although there were some obvious errors which we hadn't addressed. Chris like the music we had chosen and how it built tension as well as how it released it, especially in accordance to the pacing of our voice over. The selection of our voice over was also very strong however, he said that we needed to find a clearer narrative, especially in the second half of the film, as what we had done made all the pacing and tension building up to that point seem pointless. The ebb and flow of some of the voice over needed some work as well, especially to build empathy with the character of the non-cannibal. That said, all in all he thought it was a good piece and especially liked the sound design we had done, and that overall so far, it would be a mid 2:1.
We have discussed Chris' feedback and we have decided that if it doesn't impend our progress with the next brief, we will apply it to our film and make the necessary changes to get the grade up to a first using the best of our abilities.

Night Journey - Fine Cut

In the last few days before the final viewing of our Night Journey films, we moved on to the Fine Cut stage in the editing process and began to put the finishing touches to it and make it a tight and solid film. After reviewing the Rough Cut over the past few days, we decided that the visuals we had put together worked well in conjunction with one another as well as the narration we had put under it, so in the Fine Cut we would focus mainly on cleaning up the audio and pacing, with only minor tweaks to the video to sync it with the sound. We started off by mixing the music together in a cross-fade to make the sound flow more smoothly and progress the narrative by building and releasing tension.

Using the quick transition tool to get audio cross-fade mix.

Executing this was relatively straight forward in that we only had to use the quick transition tool, however, because we wanted the one of the tracks to carry on subtly under the new one, we positioned to songs on different tracks and added a slow fade in on the new track as the other faded out naturally. This was to connote a change in the narrative and how the tension changes as the cannibal character loses control of the situation.
We kept our focus on finalising the music by next using multiple track audio keyframing to dip out both the music and folley sounds when narration came in so that you can still hear it underneath the voice over.

Audio keyframe layering to keep the mood consistent.

The reason behind doing this was firstly to make sure the audience can clearly hear the narration and not be overpowered by the volume of the folley and music, but also to keep both of these playing in the background faintly, so the immersion of the audience into the story isn't broken due to the voice-over being introduced.
Layering the audio correctly and effectively was also a big concern, due to the amount of different aspects going on within it.

Audio mixer showing different levels of each audio track.

We were taught to always have the dialogue tracks as audio tracks one and two, as well as to have each pair of tracks to contain the same audio on where possible (using stereo instead of mono). The organisation of our tracks mirrored this as you can see and we kept it as neat and simple as possible to make the edit less problematic and more efficient.
When all these different layers of sound are occurring at the same time, the noise can be too much for the audience to process as well as being technically incorrect by the levels peaking and distorting the sound. To combat this, we relied heavily on the Audio Mixer tool in the Fine Cut to constantly re-adjust the levels for each pair of audio tracks and make sure they didn't peak and distort the sound.

Multiple audio tracks playing to monitor the levels and adjust accordingly.

As you can see, the first two tracks are the loudest as they are the narration and we want this to be heard over all the rest of the sounds. If any sounds were too loud and made the narration difficult to understand, we would group the tracks that the sound was located on and turn the levels down (as you can see in tracks 3,4 and 5).
Finally, after doing all of this audio editing, we decided to go through the whole film one or two more times in order to review what we had just done, as well as spotting any errors or ways to improve anything. Near the middle of the sequence, when the male character goes into a small dream sequence, we thought that it wasn't entirely clear that it was a dream and that this ambiguity and assumption we made wouldn't be understood by the audience. To combat this, we moved the narration around slightly, as well as adding a flash cut from where the sequence starts and ends.

Dip to Colour transition effect used to mimic flash cut into a different space.

We also assisted this connotation by cutting the music out of the dream sequence completely and replacing it with folley atoms which we believed worked effectively at drawing the audience out of one space and location to another.
After viewing the whole film one final time, we decided that we were happy with what we had produced, minus a few small sections, and that we had thoroughly improved and advanced since the last project as well as massively improving the rough cut.

Final Fine Cut sequence.

We will show the final export in this weeks seminar tomorrow and get formative verbal feedback from both the tutor and our peers which we will reflect on and use to apply to the final brief.

Night Journey - Rough Cut

Over the course of this week we have been building on the assembly for the Night Journey brief to progress it into the rough cut stage. We started by reviewing the assembly we did and identifying bits that felt untidy or out of place. Near the start of the sequence when we are syncing the images to the audio, there was a gap in one of the beats which made the whole sequence seem a bit jagged and didn't flow smoothly. To get around this, we composited an image over the previous one in time with the music which worked effectively with the voiceover.

Using the Superimpose effect to composite images onto one another for music syncing.

After going through the whole sequence and doing these kinds of 'touch ups' on the video tracks as well as rearranging some voiceover, we started to move the music tracks around and fade them in and out to create dramatic tension and build on making the narration more powerful. To accomplish this successfully, we used audio keyframing to make the fades out more controlled, as well as allowing us to dip the music out slightly to hear the narration more clearly.

Using Audio Keyframes to hear narration more clearly.

Whilst looking at the audio, we also decided that it would be a good idea to sort out the levels of the narration as well as following Chris' advice when dealing with mono sound. This was to duplicate the mono track and using the Audio Mixer on Media Composer, have one track playing out fully in the left speaker, and the other playing out in the right speaker. This is to make the audio more clear and sound better from a surround sound/stereo mix.

Adjusting the narration tracks.

Next, we started to add in folley sounds from the Audio Rushes files we were given with the project brief, as well as adding in some of our own from copyright free websites. This made the film seem a lot more smooth and tight as there were no longer any pauses of just no sound or just simply music. This was also really key to the pacing within the film, as it allowed us to get away with having gaps in the narration and music to once again build up tension but also to release it as well.

Finding folley sounds online for Night Journey.

Adding folley sounds into the timeline.

After adding in these sounds throughout the whole sequence we had a respectable Rough Cut that we would show to Chris and the rest of the group in the next seminar.

Final Rough Cut sequence.

The project is going quite well so far and both of us are happy with our progress, however, we are still having trouble building up empathy for the male character that isn't the cannibal, and trying to find a very clear and concise narrative to show. This may be due to our focus on the sound and voice over too much and potentially over using these two things, but we will take on feedback given in the next seminar too help us get around these issues in our Fine Cut.

Game of Thrones Analysis

The TV series Game of Thrones is structured much like a sitcom, as it jumps from character to character following their story and how it intertwines with the rest. What it does more remarkably than others however, is the sheer amount of different characters it follows and yet still manages to address them frequently enough so the audience doesn't get bored or forgets all the different stories going on at the same time. This is helped out partly due to the length of each episode and each season, each episode being just shy of an hour long and the series containing 10 episodes, as well as the way it is all cut together. For example, I have chosen a short scene from episode 3 of season 2 around 26 minutes in where Tyrion Lannister is talking to 3 different characters in his office, all at separate times so they are being spoken to individually and aren't aware that the others have been spoken to either. Now normally, having these separate conversations would take some time to happen with arranging them to come in at separate times e.c.t., but this sequence is edited in a way to mask all these transitional periods and save time.

The scene starts on a wide shot of the room with both characters in the centre of the frame, this is to establish the location and the characters in the conversation. After a brief interaction, Tryion walks away to a table out of shot and the framing changes to show him at the table with the other character in soft focus over his shoulder.

It then cuts away to a close up of him pouring wine into a goblet and then, as he starts to walk away, it cuts back to the same wide shot at the start apart from with a different person in the chair.

This same technique is then repeated with Tyrion walking off screen from a wide and then back in when the other character changes.

This is a very effective and entertaining technique of editing as it not only saves time like I said previously, but it also wraps the audience into the narrative more by showing more interactions between characters, giving the audience a better view on what they are like and how they are important in the story. It also shows that the important character in the scene and narrative at this point is Tyrion, as he is the one who seemingly controls the pace of the scene and is always the one that is in shot. Finally it progresses the narrative in a clear but clever way as it is easy to follow as well as being aesthetically well done.
The reason I chose to analyse this scene is to use the convention it does of showing the most important character on screen at almost all times, and apply that to the Night Journey cut I'm doing at the moment. This is to create empathy as well as engagement with one of the characters and focus on what they are doing to allow the audience to understand what is actually occurring within the scene. As we are having problems with creating a clear narrative in our edit, hopefully this research will enable us to progress and create a better, clearer final film.