Filed under: media industries 2, reflection, seminar | Tags: documentary, final, reflection, self assessment, seminar
Contribution and Collaboration
My contribution to the seminar was that of post-production, where it was Eric and my job to edit the seminar footage as well as consult with the steering committee. This role was mainly a 2-way collaboration, with little to no issues along the way as Eric and I worked well together to formulate the highlight video. We worked together in that I would formulate the structure and he would do the technical aspects of putting it together so our skills worked well together in terms of complimenting each other. Due to the nature of my role being within the post-production section, which I could only really contribute to after the seminar was over I also helped out in some of the pre-seminar tasks. This included coming up with a set of questions with Gabriel and Ruby prior to the event and also talking through with Candice the questions, once both our host and back-up host were ill. Therefore, the major problem that arose through the process of hosting our seminar was our two hosts becoming ill and not being able to attend the seminar. This required a great deal of team work in terms of going through the questions and key topics with Candice as well as being on top of all the other elements that had to go into play to put together a great seminar.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/editing-seminar-footage/
Proactive Learning
My proactive learning came in the form of going to see documentaries and also attending a masterclass on documentary filmmaking. I felt that I made a conscious effort to immerse myself in the field of documentary, which really helped when it came to formulating questions as I already had formulated some through my reflection on documentaries. In reflecting on the documentaries that I had seen as well as the masterclass allowed me to be more aware and also more involved in putting this documentary seminar in place as I felt that I already had key knowledge in terms of what made and didn’t make a documentary work. This also became incredibly important when it came to formulating the highlights video as I could dissect what was important in terms of relaying this to an audience. In conjunction I felt that I technically learnt some new skills in editing with Eric, the more you do something, the more you learn and I felt that this was clearly evident through this collaboration.
Participation
Most of our group collaboration and participation was done through a Facebook conversation in conjunction with our weekly class meetings prior to our seminar. In these collaborative environments it was difficult to participate fully due to the scale of the group and having all different members working in different areas. I was able to participate more when we broke up into our separate groups. In our separate groups participation was easier and there was a better dialogue happening between each of the groups, which worked a lot better. In terms of my own levels of participation I felt that I always made a conscious effort to respond to facebook conversations if appropriate and attend most of the editing sessions with Eric. However,I felt that I could have participated more in the final editing of our highlights video. Whilst I participated with Eric in the earlier editing sessions it got increasingly harder to make times that both of us could edit. I felt that I could have made a more conscious effort to finalise the edit with him.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/is-this-reel-life/
Connections and intersections
One of the most valuable things I learnt through putting together this seminar series is how happy people are to talk about what the are passionate about and that networking is one of the most valuable things to take out of this course. Being able to approach people, even if it is simply via an email can be really difficult and daunting, yet really there are a lot of people that are willing to help you out. In conjunction to this it is really obvious to me that the value of the seminar series, is that you learn a lot from a practical perspective the ins and outs of documentary, not just in terms of content, but how to realistically apply what we have learnt in subjects such as ‘True Lies’ and ‘TV2′ within an industry-based context. For instance, some of Dennis Smith’s real documentary scenarios allowed you an in-depth perspective on what it’s like to deal with difficult subject matters and how to ethically approach documentary scenarios. What I have learnt about myself is that I still find it incredibly difficult to network, to approach people and to be confident about what I am interested in and I think this seminar series along with my own Personal Networking Report have encouraged me to become more sure of myself and confident in the skills that I have learnt throughout this course. However, at the same time I have also figured out that my previous career interest in being a Project Manager is not really what I want to do anymore, because I feel I don’t have that extroverted quality in terms of contacting and speaking to people, which is needed for this role.
Overall, I found the process of putting a seminar together quite challenging, yet extremely rewarding, mainly due to the content delivered by our fantastic guests. In our hosts both not being able to make it I felt that I learnt a lot about not getting flustered and the importance of being really organised to put swift actions in place to resolve the issue. This ability to resolve an issue comes not only from yourself but from good collaboration between yourself and your group members.
Filed under: media industries 2 | Tags: documentary, PNR, reflection, survey
From filling in the Student Careers Survey I kind of realised the key areas that I am interested in being: documentary, transmedia, editing, producing and experimental works, which kind of run in with transmedia. I found these out through different ways that either related to what I was good at in regards to skills as well as what I enjoyed doing. I think it’s really nice to find a middle ground, sometimes what you are really good at is different from what you really enjoy doing or sometimes they come together, which is nice. In terms of documentary it is something that I know from TV1 and TV2 that I enjoy doing a lot more than drama, even though I enjoy watching drama it is an entirely different story for me when it comes to making, which I have already outlined. When I say transmedia I kind of mean it in a more experimental and not necessarily internet-based I see it as videos, which work and can be appropriated as interactive, participatory environments. Editing and producing are in line with what I have done in previous projects. Producing is one that I know I am good at, yet not sure I enjoy, even though I have strong organisational skills I lack that communicative skills in terms of contacting people, I find this extremely difficult. Editing I really enjoy because it’s like connecting the dots, like inserting meaning into your footage. I find the production side quite grueling, yet I think this is only within the making narrative case.
What I found particularly difficult with the survey was this idea of career goals, because I see the media industry as out of the realms of this idea of a set career, and more as floating careers. I don’t want to be locked into a certain career for the rest of my life, in fact it would be great if I could experience all of the things I enjoy doing. I don’t want to be stuck in a job that I hate, I also want to be doing projects that mean something to me. This is something I really learnt from my MI1 project last semester, in which I realised how important it is for me to take on projects that are ethically responsible, I don’t really want to work in advertising or areas like that as I see it as a bit of selling your soul.
What I want to do now from doing this career survey is to form my PNR around it and something I really would want to do is to get interviews predominantly with females. I think within the media industry it is a different story for females, and I think I would get more out of speaking to women in the industry rather than men. I think following the line of documentary will be relevant to me, and then perhaps I could focus on areas such as producing and editing documentaries as well as experimental takes on documentary. I feel that documentary would be a nice avenue to explore all my interests, yet I would approach it in a different way to how we are approaching it for our seminar group.
So, what I need to do:
1. Figure out exactly what I want to do for my PNR.
2. Look into the history of the area.
3. Write a list of people I would like to interview and then categorise them and draw a hierarchy.
4. Contact proposed groups of people starting from the top to the bottom, with appropriate emails and ways of addressing people.
5. When contacts are approved think of ways to interview each person in terms of questions and perhaps filming or recording the interviews.
This semester has been my best semester of blog engagement most definitely because I was most interested in this course. I feel that in the second half of the semester I have really worked on reflecting and blogging about the project itself, group work and resolving issues with our project, which I think was lacking with previous blog posts. I also think I have made every blog post worth it, none of the posts are rambly, well maybe a tad but they all are significant in terms of reflecting or sorting out information or just finding better ways to do things and actually thinking about what I have learnt, which I think shows my engagement with the course. As for that digital dossier it went very unnoticed and I regret that I didn’t make a conscious effort to watch some of those documentaries and was simply due to a lack of time and also my need to be really focused on our own project and our own editing that I got very wrapped up in this. In hindsight it probably would have been really worthwhile to step back from our project and see something else to get some editing inspiration or maybe something would click. However, I think I made a really big effort to use the screening and apply this to documentary on a general basis and my own preceptions of it. I think it is important to make the most out of everything you see or do and that does mean critically reflecting on these things because they do mean something. I also think it’s important to use your blog as a reference point, which shows through some of my more dull posts which just outline things we have to do or dot points about what I am thinking about. It’s good to write things down so you don’t forget and I did use my blog to do these kind of note taking exercises, though probably did not indulge into these further and explain them later in following posts. I also feel that I made a really big effort to reflect and spend the last week after our film was finished to really try to figure out what went wrong and right and what I would do better next time and also what I have learnt about my own filmmaking and what I enjoy or don’t enjoy. Therefore this is definitely my most personal blog because at times I almost feel that I am trying to find myself through writing, which I really enjoy and therefore I actually loved blogging. I articulate myself much better in words than talking through it so I also used my blog as a way to communicate with my group sending them links to posts because my blog got to the heart of what I was trying to express. Overall I got a lot out of blogging this semester in terms of cementing my ideas and sussing out if they are fading or solid ideas that can tangibly be brought into our documentary, which I am really happy about. On one final note: Documentaries are much more enjoyable to make than drama and I think in comparison to last semester that really shows through my blogging.
So how did our documentary go?
Well, I think this is a hard question to answer because every documentary was so different, yet I wouldn’t say that our documentary stood out because we didn’t do anything that different. The documentaries that stood out were the one’s that embraced their topic and explored it the best they could and I feel that perhaps ours lacked slightly, apart from that opening fact sequence which I was really happy with. Overall, I am really happy with our documentary because it is polished, has structure and tells a story of something that I am really passionate about and that I’m really glad I did because it definitely has that humanistic stance to it. A representation of the human spirit. Therefore I am happy with the story. I truly am. What I am slightly disappointed about was not making the most of the opportunity of perhaps not doing more. There were so many documentaries that took brave steps and made the most of the opportunity, collecting footage and having an array of material to work with as well as inserting themselves into the documentary and showing that they had learnt. I wish that we would have tried all these things to really experiment and do something different that also captured the essence of Maggie. However, in saying this it was difficult because Maggie was very limited in terms of when she was available and therefore it was hard for my group members to get to know Maggie as well as I did, which I think was difficult for them.
So what does all this mean?
Be brave, take risks and don’t be afraid. Documentary really inspires me and I loved making this project and was really happy with the way Maggie was portrayed in our documentary I thought it was very ethical and presented her as a 3 dimensional character that I was not simply defined by her homelessness, which was always really important to our group. Therefore, I think we show what we originally set out to show. I also think it shows Maggie in all her elements through sadness, happiness and just being funny, which is what characterises Maggie to me. However, I think our ideas started out better and had more movement and as our options became less and things fell through we didn’t embrace this as much as we should or thought of a new creative strategy, with exception to our cutaways which I thought looked amazing and broke up the interior-ness of Maggie’s interview. I guess we almost ran out of time to think up something amazing, which is disappointing but something I’ve learnt a lot from. I think it’s really important to always share your gut instincts because your other group members may love it or hate it but atleast you know and I think a part of me is always a bit scared to express my ideas. Next time I’d want to do something that really embraces everything that documentary can be because in True Lies there is such an array of documentaries and they can really be anything you want them to be and I think I would love to play with that more.
After the screening I realised a few things about documentary and my own preconceptions of it and I was really pleasantly suprised by how amazing documentaries can be and also what works or doesn’t work as well. In terms of what works and doesn’t I think there are three categories documentaries with really great subjects, yet the film doesn’t take full advantage of them. Documentaries with not that great subjects yet the film makes the most of it and documentaries with great subjects who make the most of the opportunity. And then everything in between. I also realised that you can make talking heads work and what about that issue of subtitles? These are all my points today.
So what works?
To be honest I have no idea because documentary is so subjective and therefore what’s boring to someone is interesting to someone else. Therefore, I think it is always important to be original with style and explore the notions of things away from stereotypical representations. Example:
Australia’s Outback: The Whole Hog
This was one of my class’s documentaries and I thought that it was executed exceptionally. I thought they did really well from the rough cut, especially the ending by showing that the narrator was still unsure about the issue and therefore stopped this full sense of resolution. However, I personally have a few problems with it that reflect nothing bad about the production itself because I thought it was really clever, but proves my subjectivity point. Basically, what I wanted was to be shown that these pigs were more destructive that they were a major threat and I never saw this and therefore I think keeping in the killing of the pig still seemed unjustified in my eyes. This is a subjective point for me because I don’t think you should just kill animals for the sake of it, or for the sake of humans, even though I could appreciate where the farmer’s were coming from, they’re still farmers and they were represented this way through the very stereotypical country music. I felt that I was not seeing anything different and I left a little bit disappointed, because I wanted to be convinced and just wasn’t.
Oliver’s Girl
Another one from my class that I thought dramatically improved since the rough cut because it felt so polished and had Oliver in it more. This is my example where I think the talking head really worked because it was mixed with this really well shot active footage of Oliver. By incorporating this in more I think they really overcame the whole talking heads is boring a repetitive scenario, which happened with some of the other documentaries and shows that going out and sort of voyeuristically shooting is really worth the effort. This is because in other cases such as Making It and 43 Days there was not enough variety because you didn’t see anything else and therefore couldn’t stay engaged with the story, well this is what I found. I also thought the cut from one actress to the other in Making It was really abrupt and would have been more worthwhile and I wanted to see more of them not talking to break it up and show more.
was a key topic in terms of the issues surrounding subtitles, which is always an issue, where a lot of people made the claim that it would have been a lot better if we could understand what he said, but look were these people really listening. I agree it was hard to understand him, however I think it is our obligation as an audience to make the effort, even if it is hard to listen or maybe watch it again. We had a similar problem with our documentary because sometimes Maggie is difficult to understand, but I would never have given her subtitles because it is totally disregarding what she really has to say and stops people from actually listening. Also it makes fun of her and her inability to be completely clear, therefore I really think they made a good decision with this piece.
And now into one last point, you always have to respect the person you are interviewing. I thought that maybe the last documentary about the woman that talked to animals was a little bit a ‘make fun of documentary’ and maybe the group should have made a better effort to know this woman away from this that defines her because I thought it was slightly 2 dimensional. Even though I think it’s great to point out the contradictions of what people say, I think you always have to consider what else makes this person and present them as a whole, which I thought was lacking in this production. You need to make your interviewees 3 dimensional.
Paul sent us an email saying that perhaps we could also reflect on the course; what is good, bad, etc. I liked this course a lot better than I liked TV1, I think because I found making a documentary more interesting in terms of being creative, where with TV1 I felt it was very structured and left very little movement for creativity as we were meant to be Hollywood directed. Therefore, documentary was always going to be better, especially after studying True Lies, because I felt I came with an advantage in knowing all the things you could do with documentary, and how creative it could be.
the lectures
I thought the lectures were great, especially because we watched so much stuff. Robin’s lectures were great because they just showed us an array of different documentaries that we could refer to, and watch, which is what you want. I get the most inspiration out of watching what other people have done, so therefore watching previous years tv2′s documentaries was also really great and really important as it allowed us to see what we were capable of doing, because really some of them were amazing. I also thought the more technical lectures by Paul were really great, because that’s something we didn’t cover in True Lies and something we really needed to know when making our own documentaries. Liam’s lecture on ethics was also great, which brought in the ethical considerations from True Lies but applied it to our own documentaries. Overall, I was truly impressed by the lectures they gave us a full grasp of the course and were really helpful as well as inspirational in terms of some of the snippets we saw.
the tutorials
The three exercises we did were great in thinking about documentary and applying it in a practical manner. It also broke up the intense planning of our own documentaries. I think I really learnt a lot from these exercises and then was able to apply them later on. In fact I think we could have done maybe one more of these exercises, perhaps focusing on sound, even though the observational exercise did cover this I think soundscapes are really important to docos and I would have loved to kind of explore this further. As always all the technical stuff was covered really well from camera to lighting to sound, which we could then apply to these exercises and see where we needed to improve. In one of the last lectures, it may have been the last Paul showed a clip from Forbidden Lies where green screen was used. I think it would have been great to cover some more creative technical techniques that we could of applied to our docos, especially in the case where some of our docos were restricted to talking heads. Therefore, I think just even being made aware that we can do these things earlier on. In conjunction, I really liked Robin’s idea of showing a doco at the beginning of each tute, and I think this should be continued and span through every tute for the semester applying to whatever we cover that week. It gives something tangible to think about and talk about in the tute, because in the lecture we don’t really discuss the clips we see we just listen. Maybe, to place more emphasis on the digi doss we should use this to watch in class, because I feel that it is almost forgotton.
the readings
Some of these readings did cross over with True Lies, yet again the Rabiger ones were really great in terms of pre-production and making sure you’re really ready to film your doco. I also like that the readings stop in week 10 as it gives time to really focus on the editing process. Even though, some of the readings are a bit dry there are ones such as the interview readings with filmmakers that really made me think about what we were doing, and if we were doing it in the right way. Without, the readings I don’t think I would have thought about our doco as much as I had and I really think there needs to be more emphasis on doing the readings so that your group members are as engaged as you are. However, sometimes they are long and you don’t have time.
overall
I’m very pleased with this course, even though I do think it is the most time consuming and really is a lot of effort. However, I think that it is structured extremely well and that you have all these people around you to help you out whenever you need, which is my way of saying the staff are very accessible. I also think that all those how to movs and handbooks are so crucial and without them I don’t think we would have ever be able to export, etc. I feel that a lot of time goes into making this course a good one.
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.
Since, our blogs are due in tomorrow I thought I would do a brief reflection on my reflexive practice so far. This semester I feel much more engaged in the course and feel that my blogging reflects this. I blog on a range of things that fit but aren’t limited to posts on lectures, tutorials, readings, making our documentary and various forms of research, which include watching documentaries and reflecting on those.
I feel that after completing True Lies I have a bigger grasp of this subject and aren’t afraid to reach out and explore things beyond the lectures, tutes and readings. I really enjoy watching documentaries to gain inspiration and have watched many that relate to our own documentary.
Even though I have missed a few of the readings I feel that I have engaged with the one’s that I have read and am determined to get on top of the rest. It is quite challenging to find time to read the lengthier readings, yet I should make a more conscious effort to read the ones that I haven’t as I feel that lots of the readings have really directed my next move and channeled how I approach things in terms of our own documentary.
Another area that I have not focused on is the Digital Dossier. I think this is mainly because I have been trying to focus my watching on documentaries that directly target homelessness as they will be more useful to our project. Also we have access and watch great snippets of documentaries in our lectures and now in our tutorials, which I have made a concerted effort to reflect on throughout. However, I probably could make the time to watch and reflect more on the documentaries from the digital dossier.
I also think I could reflect more on our group work, however this remains in Google Wave where we communicate quite regularly. I feel that I need to make more of an effort to blog on the progress of our group and outline meeting notes, etc. on my blog.
Overall, I feel that the quality of what I have written this semester has improved enormously since last in terms of engaging with the material. Even though there are a few black holes I feel like nothing that I have blogged about has been skimmed over, but explored in depth. For the rest of the semester I will work on blogging more on our ongoing group collaboration, the digital dossier and finishing off those readings.
Image reference:
Foxtongue, I’m Blogging This, flickr, CC-Attribution, http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxtongue/24720422/
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
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.
