Now that our documentary is finished I thought it would be nice to do a series of reflective blog posts on different areas, which will also include reflections on other people’s documentaries after the screening. I am going away on the 3rd of November, so I really need to get these done before I leave.
I didn’t write a blog post on our own in class assessment because I thought it would be more worth while to write this after the editing process had finished so I could talk about my role as producer, director and also editor, and then reflect on my changed attitude to filmmaking or really what I’ve learnt about group work and the processes of a documentary production.
Producer
I would probably say that this role was the most difficult and frustration, especially when your subject is constantly on a rollercoaster of massive mood changes and therefore made the process of organising film dates almost to the point of impossible. I think I did well to deal with this myself, yet didn’t really communicate the difficulties I was having to my group members, which I assume would have been very frustrating for them. Producing is the most stressful because people are busy and you have to finalise dates and always be on the ball communicating between your subject and group members. It is also about being on top of all that pre-production stuff and being extremely organised. In having produced our drama last semester I have to say that producing drama is a lot easier because it’s formalaic, with everything lined out. Your director gives you a shot list and you strategically and practically go through it to create a schedule you cann actors who legitimately want to be in your film for rehearsals and everything is very formalaic you can write a step-by-step list of everything you have to do. In documentary because it’s less structured, a lot of the information is in your mind and you write down some shots that you need but all in all you have to work around your subject who is often unpredictable. What I learnt was a large degree of patience and that it is more important to make your subject happy than really anything else because you have a great crew that will organise everything else in terms of technical requirements. Especially, with Maggie it was about reassuring her making her feel as comfortable as possible in front of glowing lights and a camera.
Director
Perhaps I’m not cut out for this role, because it’s really difficult. I worked really well with Meenal to come up with a visual style and then was happy to let her go with the camera because I had built a trust with her and was fully trusting of her capabilities to use a camera. This is one area of the group work I was really happy with as it made me way less stressful on the day because all I had to worry about was communicating with Maggie and making sure we got the stories and information we wanted. Again, with documentary this is unpredictable; things that she had talked about previously with me she didn’t want to talk about to the camera. Yet, I was happy with this as she seemed in control of what she wanted and didn’t want to say, which was one of the ethical things Liam brought up when you’re dealing with vulnerable subjects- that they told you things that they didn’t want to. I would always say I don’t want to trick her into saying anything because that is being unethical and taking advantage of that vulnerability. In the first interview I probably didn’t go in as hard as I would have liked and talked to my group about what we NEEDED from the next interview, which made it a lot easier, except that Maggie wasn’t in the best place. Ultimately, what I learnt is that you need a lot of time with subjects like Maggie and heaps of flexibility so maybe if this was not a uni subject and I had infinite time to interview we would have kept building the trust and got a lot of information. However, I think all my previous research into aesthetics and what we were dealing with really made me prepared for what Maggie was going to offer.
Editor
I really loved editing. I literally edited as much as I could and it really paid off on the final days of editing where we could really focus in on fine-tuning. What I learnt: editing makes a film. That is it and also mastering Final Cut to a higher degree. I really understand now the reliance Observational doco makers have on editing because it allows you to embed meaning and make what your subject says more important mimicking how you saw it on the day. This goes back to all that pre-production stuff of really knowing your subject and being able to use your editing to convey what they want to say as truthfully as you can, because sometimes when they say something important to them they rush it and it now emphasises something unimportant. This was all about timing. What I also learnt: give your subject time. When we started editing we knew that Maggie was very spaced with her words or rushed through them and I think we were too eager to cut everything down to being really precise and fine, when we really needed to give Maggie’s words space, to let her ponder and let the audience wait to hear what comes next. When we gave Maggie space everything was a lot clearer, you could hear Maggie clearer and her words meant more, which was really important.
Overall
I want to edit. If I spent my life editing I would be happy. Editing is when you can really just think about everything and get to know your footage, whether it is good or bad and just let it speak for itself. It allows you to be 100% creative without having to worry about technical limitations, things going wrong, etc. It is also very inspiring and I often found myself going home and just thinking about the footage how we could structure it and how everything could link together to create a whole. I think I like editing the same way that I like writing essays or watching films, it’s about analysing each bit of footage and then putting it into a context that gives it meaning. It’s like making your own topic sentence and then filling in the gaps that convey that topic. Except, with the structural freedom that you don’t get with an essay. Editing is right up my alley it’s about seeing what isn’t there, what is there and then analysing it, creating and forming meanings that you didn’t think were there in the first place. It’s like being utterly shocked and suprised when that film makes that fatal twist.
Filed under: tv2 | Tags: documentary, interview, production, reflection, shoot
Well our shoot was pretty good. However, we need to do another one and have scheduled that for next Thursday. Technically speaking we had some sound issues that were rather strange and Gina called Robin to talk her through fixing the problem, unfortunately this did take some time. While this was being fixed I talked to Maggie and talked to her while Meenal got some great visuals of Maggie and her surroundings. This was the first time Maggie had ever been in front of a camera so I can imagine it was a bit of a daunting experience. Therefore I made sure that she was feeling alright and informed her of the sound difficulties we were having.
In terms of our actual shoot it went pretty well and we got some great stories from Maggie, however what I realised is that she would reply straight to me question without contextualising each fragment. Therefore next week I am going to ask questions that being with How, Why or What and avoid using Do because Do leads to yes or no answers with little contextualisation if my voice is cut out. I also found that Maggie would avoid talking about the bad things that had happened to her or would go into a story and then abruptly stop at moments and then say a comment like ‘that’s in the past…’ and when I would ask her she didn’t want to tell me. Even though these moments are interesting in themselves we need to get contextualisation for some of the things Maggie has said. For example, she focuses a lot on how she has improved and is able to do things that she never thought possible. Yet, we and the audience have little to compare that to as she is scared or feels that the past should be left in the past. Even though we have snippets of her previous life such as robbing a milk bar and a few family members and friends exploiting her and taking her money they are only brushed over. I was thinking of ways in which next week I could aim my questions to get around these points because sometimes she would answer the question if it was phrased in a different manner. Yet, would this be a form of exploitation on my part. What my solution for the moment is to tell her that in order to grasp how well Maggie is doing now the audience needs an idea of what has happened previously and this will help to get her message across stronger, as this is something she is really trying to convey. I will then proceed to ask her more open ended questions such as:
- can you go through like a timeline the different places you have lived through your life? What I established was that Maggie has never suffered primary homelessness, so was never on the streets but is a more secondary homelessness where she has had to live under different organisations, family that mistreated her and friends and for the last 10 years she has lived at Bethlehem. What I think will be helpful is to get a sense of how hard it’s been and how much she has had to move.
- Tell her to tell us about her photos. Maggie has a photo board on her wall that has photos from different aspects of her life from childhood to now. Maggie’s biggest avoidance was her childhood where she only really claimed it was a shambles and that she never went to highschool. I know slightly more than this but feel that she needs to tell the camera. I think that maybe if she talks about some of the photos when she was little we will get a better sense of this and also she will be more accustomed to the cameras.
What I found truly inspirational about Maggie was that she could feel lucky in comparison to others when her life has been fraught with sickness and constant exploitation along with being a mother to her son Rodney that she had when she was 24 and who got taken off her. She still feels that she has a lot to live for, yet still a lot to overcome. However, I also found a contradiction within this where even though she says she’s beyond it and doesn’t think about it she finds it extremely difficult to talk about things she can’t laugh about. There were moments when she went into these moments and her talking really slowed and you could see that she still has to deal with the past. I also thought it was enlightening that even the simple tasks that we take for granted such as walking down the street were daunting prospects for her, where once she was too scared to go outside that she didn’t leave her room for a whole month. I also found it incredible that she wasn’t angry at the people that exploited her she just sees it as mistakes, where she at one point claims that everyone makes mistakes.
Overall, I am really excited about seeing the footage and getting a sense of structure from it because I think there is a lot in there. I also want to look for those moments of contradiction and any moments that reveal so much about her character. Meenal told me that visually she saw a lot of contradictions between what Maggie said and her facial expression and more explicitly there is a photo in her room of her step-father that was a horrible man and her son in a frame that says friends.
I think with next week’s footage we will have a great combination of happy and sad that will bring our documentary together to create something that is truly meaningful. I learnt so much about the process and believe that our next interview will be even better.
Firstly the screening completely blew me away I couldn’t believe how good all of the films were and it was great to see the differences between the filmsof the same script. I wont review all the films (there were 20 of them) I will pick out some of my favourites and discuss why I liked them. I will also talk about some issues I had with some of them and how the story could have run better. However, first I will talk about the reaction to our film Doughnut.
I was so nervous when our film started to play and all these things were going through my head, what if they don’t laugh in the right spots? It was relief that people laughed in the bits that we found funny and it seemed that the audience had a good reaction to our film. What I did notice however was that our credits were really tediously long so I will fix that before I send a copy off to our actors. It was great to see our film on the big screen and that it looked great and all the sound was loud and clear.
Now for my favourite films…in no particular order
DIRTY LAUNDRY (Joshua Wellington, Nelson Chang, Melissa Kahraman)
In terms of technical perfection I would say that this one hit the spot, especially in terms of lighting. Obviously it was set at night and they managed to light all their actors faces perfectly in fibrant colours, yet still didn’t deter away from the fact that it was in fact night time, which made the film even spookier. In terms of conveying the plot I loved the way they did it and this is a result of mainly the set design. The moment when the gold fish appear in the champagne glasses and the food turns to octopus is great and this is also a result of really great editing. The editing really created suspense and was used to create a division between everything appearing somewhat normal to the wedding scene. The editing of the main character’s transformation in a tuxedo is disorienting, which reflects the feeling of the actor and therefore becomes subjective. However, what I really appreciated about this film was how unique it was in capturing something truly weird. It really was adventurous in achieving a disorienting freaky film that really lured me into the storyline. The acting was also superb, she was truly disgusting a vulgar rubbing her lips against the glass and he was really great, slightly over the top but looked truly freaked out as he should be.
There is one thing that I think the film should have done to make it even better. If the two characters switched genders I think this would have made the film even more suprising and different if it was a creepy man that just wanted to get married and a scared woman I think this would have created a greater dynamic between the characters.
LUCKY GAME (Eric Calatayud, Sarah Furness, Melissa Toh, Aloysius Teo, Hui Xiong)
Keep it simple. I was really impressed with this film in terms of the performances of the two young boys I thought they were great. The way the story unfolded was fantastic as well as the editing cuts to the pile of toys building and building up next to the smug older brother, while the younger one collects meaningless objects. The story was simple and I was in hysterics by the end, where luckily the younger brother had previously got a knife to take the other brother’s blood. It was totally unexpected and I really enjoyed the shock value of it. The acting by the younger brother really hyped up the drama, where your sympathies really lied with him as he was continuously out of luck and bullied by the totally unsympathetic older brother. A simplistic story told and executed well.
NEUROTIC MEETS NORMALITY (Ivan Tay, Kim Jensen, William Loh, Ashlie Goh, Rizki Sati)
Even though I was not totally impressed by the storyline I felt like it was missing some form of closure I was totally impressed by the way that this film was shot, especially concerning the beginning credit montage. The delicate close-ups of the breakfast cerial, the ticking clock, etc. in conjunction with the repetitive music and counting created a fantastic dynamic and build up into the film. His performance was someone neurotic was also superb and really believable, where the shot of the close-up of his eyes really made me feel truly sympathetic towards him and the younger girl played the stereotypical teenager perfectly through the bopping the her ipod. This film was really executed well, however I felt that it wavered in the middle and seemed overally dramatic as she bangs on the door and perhaps this middle bit could have been a bit more contained, I would have liked to see more of his totally nervous worry. The ending returned to glorious close ups and used flashback really well to convey that he has been affected by this encounter, however I would have loved to see this even stronger, where there was a more prominant change.
IN THE DARK (Flavia Browne, Gina Liu, Diane Vu, Alana Ward, Nick Schomburgk)
What a great ending to the night and a bizaar way to film, in terms of a film about being in the dark. This film probably tops Dirty Laundry in terms of technical brilliance. There was not one moment out of focus, not one edge of a boom pole, nothing it was really fantastic. The drama was conveyed well by the characters and I really felt there desperation, especially hers in discovering whether or not she was pregnant, and I felt really angry at him when he had a lighter all along. The story was simple but really created this great desperate dynamic between the characters as they went through a bit of an up and down moment. The dynamic between light and dark worked really well, from the flickering of the light, which brings a moment of hope to the loss of that hope when the light flicks out again. Building and building up hope and distinguishing it. The twist at the end is also totally unexpected and again your sympathies go straight to her. However, I would have liked it if she called up someone else, to totally shock us. Our sympathies (well mine) are with her the whole time it would have been great if it was her that was seeing someone else, which would have made a pregnancy to someone else totally devastating. I think this would have worked better.
I really could talk about so many other films so I really want to briefly talk about things I really liked in the other films.
The cinematography in RED was really lovely as the storm clouds came and the red ball against a mostly dulled monocromatic background was superb.
The editing in the other DIRTY LAUNDRY as the creepy man magically appeared in different places as the film cut.
The acting of the pyschiatrist in the second HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? She was really twitching and conveyed someone on the verge of exploding really well. She was fantastic.
It seems crazy that our film has now been completed and overall I am really pleased with it. I thought I would look at it and be self critical looking at things that worked, things that did not work and how they could work better next time. I think I’ll do this in a list type of way to make my thoughts more coherent. I will pick out things from all stages of production from pre to prod to post.
ACTORS AND AUDITIONS
Always choose more than less, people are busy. I wanted to narrow down the list too much I should have just asked everyone to audition. Choose as many people as possible as people are busy and can’t always make it.
Have more than one audition slot people work. Our first audition slot was on a Wednesday morning between 10:30 and 1:30 this was rather stupid as we only thought of it in terms of when we were free. Always have an evening audition slot from 6pm or later, just because we don’t work doesn’t mean that others don’t.
Don’t wait for a free room. I found that getting room access always took time and I wouldn’t inform my actors before I got the room. In hindsight just tell them to meet you in a certain spot and then take them to the room. It became that I would leave things to the last minute, which was unhelpful to my actors.
Rehearsals are the best thing you can possibly do to prepare your actors for the day. Having auditions made the shoot day run really smoothly in terms of direction for the actors. They all knew exactly what they had to do and therefore made the day run smoothly and quickly. Hence 2 and a half hours early.
ALWAYS get your actor’s mobile numbers even if they insist otherwise. Email does not work when your actor shows up an hour late.
SCHEDULING AND THE DAY
Your schedule goes out the window about 2 hours into the day. You can never truly anticipate how long anything is going to take. Keep your schedule flexible and chat with the director every hour or so in terms of how the schedule is going and re-schedule if need be. Eliza and I had a brief meeting at lunch to go through what we had to go through next and the order we had to do it in. This made us both aware of exactly what needed to be done.
Think of every possible shot that you could possibly ever need. Even though we finished up early we still should have got more shots, as we only had some shots from one angle we could have had more. I think we just really needed to think about what every shot should look like. The storyboard really should have been used more.
The 180 degree rule will kill you. It’s more confusing than you think, where we do go ever so slightly over that line. In your floor plan draw so many lines, as many lines as possible, and because we couldn’t see the floor in any shot we should have jus masking taped the whole location.
Tapes, buy extra, always buy extra.
White balance- it is easy to turn everything blue just use a light cream piece of paper
Never use the screen on the side of the camera as your screen always look through the viewfinder as it is a larger frame and boom poles are very annoying.
THE EDIT
Be organised and book all your edit time in advance.
Communicate. I found this way a major let down in the editing process because it got to the stage where I got no reply from anyone in terms of who was editing, which became quite frustrating. It also got very confusing because I never knew who was coming to edit and people would just rock up. To solve this I think that it really just required us all to sit down and go through how we were going to edit beforehand rather than letting it be all muddled up. Delegate tasks for each person to do in terms of what they need to get done in editing, and then it doesn’t leave the task of editing to only a few people because everyone has a responsibility.
Spend more time rather than less time and double, triple check everything. Editing takes time and patience and can get ridiculously tedious and frustrating. Keeping everything organised can be really helpful in terms of minimising confusion, keep everything in folders and edit your scenes seperately before you put them together for the rough cut.
OVERALL
For a project to be successful it needs to have really good communication between all your group members everyone needs to know what is going on and everyone needs to talk. Awat from communication everyone needs to know what they have to do in their specific role and try not to dominate it needs to be a fair working environment.
As a lover of individual work this project has been an amazing learning experience, where I now feel a lot more competent in terms of working with other people and creating a great environment to work in. It’s been heaps of fun and I really look forward to next semester
I thought that it was about time I went back to the digital dossier and looked to see if there were any examples on editing and luckily I found one. I have been struggling in editing to cut in ways that don’t simply represent continuity. I want to look for other ways to progress our film towards its climax and end. I came across Muriel (Resnais 1964) in the digital dossier, with the little subheading saying DIRECTION/ EDITING so I thought why not lets check it out.
In watching the clip I aim to ask myself these questions which accompany the sequence in the digital dossier: why were these choices made? What is the effect? Notice the staccato edit rhythm. Whose point of view is foregrounded? What does the soundtrack add?
I want to think of this clip in a truly editing sense in order to think of different ways to edit our short film.
In terms of why these choices were made I think that the staccato like rhythm sets the setting of the antique shop by showing numerous bits of furniture. As the dialogue continues over this montage of household and antique items you get a feel for what type of furniture the woman is looking for. You also get a sense of uneasiness like she does not really want to see these items, or maybe a tension between the characters, where the buyer is quite forward “I’m relying on you.” It seems very tense and artificial, which is usually the case when you buy something the artificial niceties of costumer to shop clerk business. This is highlighted more when the customer leaves and the editing resumes to a normal if not lengthened slower pace, where it is not the editing that is creating pace and unease but the movements of the woman herself, which the camera tediously follows without cutting. This long take creates a completely different mood to the highly quick cuts in the montage of the furniture. Therefore it highlights that this lengthened pace and conversation holds more significance to this woman than selling antiques, as the whole antique process seems like a blur that she forgets about as soon as it’s over and returns to the regularities of her life. The editing represents the fleeting easiness of selling antiques as opposed to the uneasiness of what is alluded to as “he could be your father.” This is obviously a moment of perhaps dread as the camera lingers without cutting for an extended period of time.
In terms of the soundtrack it is quite disorientating in that it is exterior noises of what appears to be a rattling train or tram, and therefore contrasts strongly to the interior shots. It creates this sense of movement that everything must be rushed a moving forward at all times, which increases the uneasiness and speed of the montage sequence, yet still lingers in the slower sequence, which still increases the uneasiness. I feel as though it is foregrounding something to happen in the next scenes, such as someone arriving on a train or someone leaving on a train or some form of public transport. Therefore it creates this expectance of what I would assume is the arrival of the supposed father.
In terms of learning from this and applying it to our own film I find that it can work to slow down and quicken up the pace of your editing. I always think that things have to be consistent. However, really it doesn’t as quickening up and slowing down can really change the mood of a scene from the speed of everyday business to the uneasiness of lengthened important subjects. In applying it to Doughnut I think that Bernard goes through different moods in his workplace from the boredom of everyday office work, to the excitement of getting his Doughnut, to the realisation and bullying of Jonathan eating his Doughnut to revenge. These are four different mood changes within the film and I think that we could really highlight each mood change through the pacing of editing. Boredom and waiting is always ridiculously slow, where time appears to go slower therefore the editing should be lengthened and almost verging on boring for the audience. In the expectation of Bernard eating his doughnut the editing should lift and be more fast paced so the audience can feel the expectation. Then it should slow down when he discovers that Jonathan has eaten his doughnut and linger on Bernard as he comes to this horrible realisation. In the revenge sequence things should happen quite quickly and show how the whole mood of the office has changed through editing. The shots of the colleagues should linger, especially on Andrew who has lost his best friend and mentor, however remain quick on Bernard who is completely satisfied especially when eating that “jam” doughnut.
Ok so editing has been an extremely tedious experience and one that still needs a lot of improvement. However, I feel like I have already learnt a lot about editing and using the software. I have also never treasured more the brilliance of having good footage in the first place. I wish, I wish our lighting and colour was all the same. However, it isn’t and luckily there is colour correction. Albert and I have been doing lots and lots of editing, with Albert doing lots of the sound stuff and me working on the images, with Eliza doing lots of work as well in terms of creative input in the editing. In doing our fine cut it becomes so intricate that I feel as though I’m being so petty, however I feel like everything thing we do will make it better in the end. Anyway here are some of the problems we’ve encountered and how we have achieved these problems, which I think is good to list if the same problem a occurs next time.
The first problem we had when putting all our footage together for a roughcut was that one of our clips was not translating across in wide screen, but in 4:3. This was solved by looking at the settings of the clip and finding that anamorphic was not clicked for some reason. This just required control clicking the sequence that the scene/clip was in and then clicking settings.
Second problems flipping images. We needed to flip one of our images to have it in align with the 180 degree rule and there was no flip option, which would be the oppriate name for the option, however no it is flop and is in the effects menu.
Third issues colour, colour, colour and lighting. This has been rather tedious in terms of finding the right tools to use in order to fix up colour and lighting problems. I have found the the RGB control has been really helpful for us because we want to maximise blue and make some of our images colder rather than warmer, which can be done by minimising the amount of red in the image. Colour correction has also worked really well for more specific colour problems such as making a white wall blue.
Fourthly music is always an issue with these projects because the always have to be under Creative Commons. Music is really when you need to have lots of people around you to make an informed opinion. I have found that it requires a lot of trial and error. You may think that a song sounds good for that scene but when you put it in it doesn’t fit. Therefore it requires you to try everything in order to find music that corresponds with the images. Sometimes music fits really well other times it doesn’t and people have different opinions whether we should have music in that scene or not, which can make things a little trickier.
The main problem for me in the editing process is a lack of direction I feel like we all have different ideas in terms of what we want with the film and therefore whenever anyone goes to edit they change lots of things that you thought were really good because they were going for a different approach. Next time before we go into editing or after we have watched all our footage I would have a long meeting in terms of exactly the style and tone and direction we want our film to go in instead of the feeling that your five hours of editing has gone to waste because it doesn’t have the right feel.
Anyway making films is a huge learning process and of course you always realise all the things you would have done differently after the film is complete, which is just one of those frustrating realisations. However, you then learn how to do it better next time or a different approach you would take. As our film approaches its final days of editing I think I will use this blog to do lots of reflecting on the whole process and work out what are the key moments of success, failure and turning those failures into successes next time. Everything you do is a learning curve, and its about embracing those failures rather than letting them get you down.
In the editing suites on Wednesday in our class we all watched each others films and then gave feedback, and what an interesting experience that was. It was unbelievable to be precise. What I learnt is that when you are so involved with a project you forget about the film making sense to others, because for some unexplained reason you expect them just to get it because you get it. OBVIOUSLY NOT! I found the whole criticism part of our class both extremely helpful and extremely frustrating. Firstly, Paul loved one of our characters whilst Christine didn’t, however most of the class liked this character so I’m not too concerned there. However, nobody understood the film, this is most likely due to a crucial bit of dialogue is currently missing, but also when we explained what the dialogue was people were still complexed: Saying things like ‘no I would never get that.’ The last thing you want is people telling you that your film makes no sense. People were like but who’s Jonathan, so when we add that dialogue people will not realise who Jonathan is. Wow I forget that people pay no attention to names in film. So what can we do about this? It is crucial that the audience knows that Jonathan was the bully of Bernard and that when the colleagues start talking about his disappearance they associate the name with the person. This is so very, very crucial. How are we going to do this. One option (which I don’t particularly like) is having a kinda flash back thing of Jonathan as Andrew talks about his disappearance, but this is so very lame and romanticised.
This is what I was thinking though. I was thinking that in the fight scene Bernard explains ‘Jonathan that wasn’t my jam doughnut was it.’ In this bit of dialogue there need to be a strong empahsis on Jonathan and indexically associating this name with Jonathan the evil tormentor. What I think we can do is have music up to this point and then cut it as soon as Bernard says Jonathan and in conjunction with this have a visual match between Bernard saying Jonathan and Jonathan himself, therefore having the audio dialogue over the image of Jonathan. I think this might help in emphasising that Jonathan is in fact Jonathan and therefore when his name is mentioned later people will know who they are talking about.
Christine also suggested that the beginning was too tedious and it made her feel unsympathetic towards Bernard because he bored her. I think there is a fine line between emphasising Bernard’s obsession with his daily doughnut and making Bernard just boring. Therefore we need to not have so many clocks, and liven him up a little bit to make him likable. This can be easily achieved through quickening up the beginning, but also not quickening it by too much. We want time to drag time on but we don’t want to bore people.
Christine also told us to re-think our dream-like sequence, obviously we cannot change this too much because it’s the only way we filmed this sequence, however she asked us to think about whether this is progressing the story. For me the dream-like sequence strongly emphasises a walking on a dream like atmosphere Bernard has just returned to the workplace in absolute ecstatic happiness, there is no hindrance on his daily doughnut anymore he can eat it in full satisfication. It’s like his biggest dream has come true and that’s why I think it should be reflected in that way.
To finish, as far as the jam/blood thing goes it almost doesn’t matter because it is about reflecting Bernard’s revenge whether he has made Jonathan sick or whatever. I think the swatting the fly emphasises that some form of revenge has been sought. As Christine states who eats human blood? I think its up to audience interpretation and really it doesn’t matter as long as the audience has the idea that some form of revenge has happened.
I came across a really intriguing article on editing and thought that it might be good to get my head around what makes good editing. As this notion in itself is ambiguous and still sits ambiguously. What I got from this article is that your editing has to fit the form and style of your film. What do I mean by this? Ok, well this article outlines that there are two main editing techniques, which are invisible and visible editing.
I’m not sure editorial visibility or invisibility matters, it’s a question of whether it gets in the way of the story or performance. Or possibly enhances those qualities. What is invisible to one person may be visible to another. When I’m watching a movie, I generally don’t notice the editing. If I do, it’s usually for one of two reasons: It’s either very, very good, or very, very bad. If it’s good, I often marvel at it in a way only an editor can. How did the editor do that? Why did it have such an impact on me? Why didn’t I think of doing something like that myself? If it’s really bad, I sometimes marvel at it as well… but in a different way… as in how it could have made it like that… all the way to the theater? But of course, it’s all subjective.
Richard Chew (The New World, I am Sam, Star Wars)
I think this excerpt makes a very valid point. Your editing has to enhance the quality or the storyline of the film. Unless your particular style is to disorientate the viewer, then you might go a slightly different direction. I also like the point that everything is subjective and up to interpretation. However, I think that as a media student I really am beginning to notice every cut and the function of that cut, well I’m getting close I think. Yet, I do realise that before being so embedded in the world of film I would have probably never noticed editing. The first films I really noticed editing in were those of Godard, such as Vivre Sa Vie and A Woman is a Woman. This is because Godard uses an extremely sporadic editing style through the use of jump cuts and disorientating editing that is not used as a continuity device, but rather as a device to juxtapose and contrast images. This works for Godard as his overall style embedded in the actors particularly is somewhat ambiguous. The actors never really know what they want, they are somewhat unmotivated and Godard likes to draw attention to the fact that his films are films, especially in the case of Contempt.
To continue back to the article Anne V. Coates the editor of Erin Brockovich, The Elephant Man, Lawrence of Arabia states that:
Editing is storytelling. The notion of invisible or visible editing is an antiquated view about what editing really is. The art of editing is more then a technical craft about seamless building of the raw materials. The dailies footage and recorded sounds are the interpretation of the written text, distilled through the eyes of the director and every other creative contributor during production. They do not constitute a predetermined film narrative. For me the art of editing is being able to crystallize the dramatic ideas into a coherent and entertaining series of images and sounds, that most fully emerge the viewer into the suspension of disbelief and bring the experience of the film to its fullest. Editing makes the artificial feel real. When a film works, then all the elements of technique become invisible and in turn leave a visible imprint on the mind and heart of the viewer.
Coates’s idea about editing is that it should be invisible, it should bring all that footage into comprehension for the viewer. They should be placed into the time and place of the film. There should be no artificiality, it should feel real. She also instigates that the art of editing is creating seamlessly dramatic tension and effect, bringing the story together to create something enjoyable for the viewer. I think she makes a valid point in terms of films that need seamless editing and I think this correlates with contiunity cutting and cutting on action, where the editing is so invisible that we feel as though we are trapped within the world of the film, which is always a nice feeling of escapism.
In terms of our own film we want to use editing to create a building tension and longing that replicates the feelings of Bernard. Therefore I think our editing will be very much in tune with the subjectivity of Bernard. For instance, at the beginning of the film the editing will linger on clocks, his facial expression and show routine through cutting to similar if not the same shot. His life is utterly boring. However, after his redemption the editing will be much more romantisiced and up beat repeating previous techniques but the editing will be less jarring. It will be smooth and coherent and replicate his new sense of fulfillment. Obviously a lot of this will come from the soundtrack as well.
References:
Chew, Richard: Contribution to “The Art and Craft of Film Editing: A Critical Symposium,” Cineaste, Winter 2009, 34.2, 54-64.<http://www.encyclopedia.com/searchresults.aspx?q=The+art+and+craft+of+film+editing%3a+a+Critical+Symposium+featuring+commentary+by>
Coates, V. Anne : Contribution to “The Art and Craft of Film Editing: A Critical Symposium,” Cineaste, Winter 2009, 34.2, 54-64. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/searchresults.aspx?q=The+art+and+craft+of+film+editing%3a+a+Critical+Symposium+featuring+commentary+by>
Image Source:
Williamson, Keith, “Making Cuts Project 365 Day 297″, flickr, CC-Attribution, <http://www.flickr.com/photos/elwillo/4152545302/>
wrapping up for the day
Just a brief overview of our shoot on Saturday. Everything went smoothly, well relatively. We started hlaf an hour late, but that was ok and caught up on time by lunch and hour ahead of schedule. We finished 2 and a half hours early, which was AMAZING. Everyone worked hard and well, and having the other group help out, especially with catering really put the stress away from us having to organise things outside the film itself. In terms of getting the shots done we covered everything rather extensively, making sure we got all the angles. I constantly had the shot list and was ticking off everything we covered, to make sure we did absolutely everything. It was really exciting ticking everything off and watching how productive we were being throughout the day.
me being productive
We created a lovely office-like atmosphere by confusing the white balance and using a cream piece of paper that made all our scenes have a blue-ish tinge. We were really on the ball with the white balance making sure we did it everytime we move lights, entered another room, etc. It was exceptional. Our ambitious Donnie Darko esque shot was also a success, even though Renee’s arm nearly fell off. We looked at it when we were capturing today, and apart from a slight shadow issue it looked lovely, and wasn’t overally shaky, which was good. I really look forward to speeding this up to see the effect. Everyone was really on the ball in our production, however everyone was also having a really good time, laughing and cracking jokes. I have learnt so much from the experience and strongly believe that nothing should be taken too seriously, we were planned and organised so there’s no reasom why we shouldn’t have a good time. There was a lot of singing, which is always nice.
The location was better than I ever could have imagined, especially because it was such a quiet street, we had a few planes, beeping buses and birds, but overall there were no audio problems. In fact, when we listened to it in post today the sound was amazing, crystal clear. We also managed to get a lot of our sound fxs on location because we finished early, such as clocks ticking, photocopier sounds and the buzzing of the computer, which is really good and always better than having to scout for our own sound fxs.
In terms of our actors, they matched the location perfectly and I thought costuming was brilliant. They also did exceptional jobs.
So what I learnt was this: There are two things to worry about when shooting and I think they go against each other coverage and time. You need to get a extensive amount of coverage but you also need to be wary about time constraints there fore it is integral to get atleast 2 takes and more, and if a take is brilliant get another one. But there’s really no need for 3 takes. I also learnt that it’s all about creating a nice environment to work in so keep people fed with drinks but also keep it fun. If it’s not fun then it’s not working. Have a break and get back into it. I also learnt that it’s important to give people time and be aware of other people I was constantly concerned about time, but I also had to consider the amount of time people take to do things right.
Overall, it was a really fun experience one that I hope to do in the near future again.
And that’s a wrap.
Ok so everything is running smoothly so far. We have actors (3 AMAZING actors at that), a location, all that damn paperwork, a supergroup, food, drinks, etc. It’s all looking excellent. We start shooting at 9am Saturday morning, with crew call at 8:30am. The equipment will get dropped off at the location at 5pm tomorrow, and bareally any set design needs to be done. It’s all pretty organise. We just need a schedule and call sheet and we’re ready to rock and roll.
This week we have had rehearsals with our actors, gone through costuming and thought about how we can create blue-ish tone to the whole environment, which we’re doing through throwing off the white balance with a cream/orangy piece of paper, which should work nicely. We also had some feedbak from Christine telling us a few extra pointers, such as making it all a bit documentary (The Office-like) style to ensure that our handy-dandy super awesome camera shot fits into the overall style.
All our props are collated by the awesome Ash who has been exceptional in his role as set designer. We’re ready and I’m excited. It’s going to be tiring but we have an amazing crew and an amazing cast and I CAN’T WAIT, I seriously CAN’T WAIT.
