EVALUATION

Night Journey:

Out of the three exercises we were assigned I found the editing process of this film the hardest, the reason being that there was no suggested structure to either the footage or voice over. Despite the existence of the original script, a tool that should have helped me order the footage, I discovered it too late, once the piece had already taken a loose form. To help us better organise the clips we wrote a transcript of all the voice over, this way we were able to quickly read through it to select the best bits, easily cutting and pasting it's order, giving it some rational direction. As there was no sync sound in the film, the only aspect of matching the dialogue to the picture to consider was facial expressions. What I mean by this is the fact that the speech was, in our opinion, seeming to be inside the mind of one of the passengers, the best way to portray the paired emotion of what was being said was through small signifiers of the face, be it a grin, a shake of the head or a creasing of the eyes etc. In this sense I feel we did well to capture some of these small actions and pair them to what was being said, in particular there are a couple of examples were the suspected cannibal directly addressed the other man in the carriage for example "your educated, you should know that". At this point in the dialogue I made sure to include a shot of the cannibal looking either into the lens as happens with certain shots or with side angles, to look at least in his direction. The effect of this, especially when the camera is facing him straight on, is to get a sense of his evil character. It also ratifies the dialogue, due to him never opening his mouth to speak, and the fact that he only makes obvious eye contact with him when he's addressing him gives the very abstract film some reality. It goes some way towards convincing the audience these are in fact his thoughts, not just the voice of another man, layered over the top.

In terms of the structure of the film there were some obvious decisions and some that took some thought. A more clear choice was to include some context as to how the character got to be on the train, the prominent location of the film. This being the case I used a classic establishing shot of the whole train station to initially locate the scene, second to this I cut to some point of view shots of the busy station, I chose to use these shots as it gives the film a sense of pace, immersing the audience into the location rather than have them watching arguably boring shots of a nondescript man walking through it. The fact that the shots are meant to be someone's point of view interested me as it introduces the concept of voyeurism. Given the paranoia the passenger gives way to later in the film, the concept that he might feel he's being watched felt like an interesting motif to include. I furthered this motif through the way I used match on action between the last point of view shot and the first shot of the passenger to suggest that the previous shots couldn't have all been from his perspective. To complete this first 'act' and before progressing the film on, I include a point of view shot that seems to watch the passenger get onto the train through a window. I'm aware of the lacking quality the shot possesses i.e. a bad focus pull, however given the motif I'm trying to inflict I feel, for the purpose stated, leaving the shot in the film is somewhat justified.

There are moments in the edit where I feel creativity was evident, the first being the quick montage of the train as it travels through the night. I wanted to progress the film while maintaining a pace but also portray that a fair amount of time has passed thus explaining the abrupt shift from day to night. To complete the montage I took the project into sound track pro, once there I cleaned up and emphasised the sounds of the train so that the sound design matched the abruptness and drama of the cuts. The second creative section of piece was the dream sequence in which we made use of layering as well as the pitching of speed, opacity and scale of the footage to suggest a restless sleep. In conjunction with the layered visuals we experimented with layering of the voice over. Through repetition of previously used voiceover clips I feel we did well to suggest an internal mental battle, this paired with ever zooming footage of the passengers sleeping face was a good technique to convey the fact he is meant to be asleep, allowing the audience to accept the intensity of editing present through this scene. Part of the reason I feel this sequence was strong was down to the selection of clips used within it and the way the intensity of it builds and then drops. The decision to have the cannibal disappear after the dream was a spur of the moment thought however and truthfully it was thought up as a way to avoid the awkward shots of him leaving the train in the middle of nowhere. I thought that having that as the ending was as bizarre and abrupt as having him simply disappearing. The way the ending finally came to be structured lead the audience to wonder whether there ever had been a second character or whether it was the imaginings of the paranoid passenger.

The biggest lesson I took from this exercise was an understanding of how flexible seemingly abstract, non-chronological footage can be, not to mention how hard it can be to weave a story out of it. I feel that this piece, more than the subsequent ones, forced me to think creatively in order to produce a work that fills all the criteria of the brief, particularly the required length due to the many continuity errors and limited locations in which to cut away too.

In a Climbers Hands:

Similarly to train journey, the biggest challenge of the exercise was structuring the film. Just as we did with train journey, a transcript of all the dialogue was written, altered and became the initial building block of the film. Aside from the difficulties that all documentary editors face, in this case the problems were hugely increased by the low quality of the footage and interview recordings. Being that the recordings were so poor very little of them made the final cut, this was a blessing in disguise as there wasn't any temptation to include too much interview based footage. The biggest downfall of the film in my opinion is the lack of engaging, relevant interview material that sheds light on the subject, something that I had no control over.

The strength of the edit, in my opinion, comes in the form of some interesting cuts. My favourite is the title sequence; I'm pleased with how the incorporation of some 'throw away' footage enabled me to create an interesting way to introduce the contributor and subject. This leads on to the way in which I chose to use footage that doesn't naturally lend its self to being cut into the edit. Another example of this is a shot that seems to whip pan to the sky for no apparent reason. The obvious thing to do with this shot would be to cut before the jarring movement. I realised however, that there was potential to utilise this camera movement and make a spectacle of it by placing it before a clip that whip pans in the same direction towards the contributor in a new location. The result is a transition that is jarring but interesting; it also got around the problem of how to transition between the various rocks the climber would climb. I veer away from straight cuts and jump cuts again in order to make another location transition, this time from his room at home to out on the moor. Again, the cut makes no attempt to be subtle however it does once again move the documentary to a new location without confusing the audience and without the need for constant new establishing shots, something the crew failed to film anyway.

In terms of sound, the major element to make note on is the choice of music. I went for a slow, guitar and drum track that I felt suited the pace of the film. The fact that essentially it’s a film about an extreme sport didn’t deter me from choosing the music I did, a lot of the time rather than focusing on the danger and excitement of the sport, the contributor talks about how his simple and unrelenting love of it. This, along with the pace, dictated the need for a light touch in terms of sound design, a bass heavy electronic track for example may have fitted the subject, however contradicted the portrayal of that subject. Aside from music, the only other sounds I used were the occasional interview recordings that I occasionally used a compressor on to boost its levels and an atmos track to hide where the spaces in speech fell. Rather than this simplistic sound track tacking from the quality of the film, it’s my opinion that it allows the impressive landscapes to effect the audiences emotions, not only this but it reflects the natural silence that would be found in such locations at that time of year.      

Out O’ Date:

I thought this exercise was the easiest of the three, mainly down to the clear way in which it had to be cut together. I think I did well to capture the emotion of the three characters well through selective uses of mid and close up shots. Timing too was dealt with well, particularly when the second milkman is cut to half way through removing the tights from his head, I like how this emphasises the movement as well as the comedic factor of them having on their heads in the first place. It also maintains a quick pace, a necessary factor in maintaining the comedy of the scene. After I’d completed a rough cut I received feedback and it was this that led me to make a couple more of the cuts more ‘snappy’. An example of this is when the woman kicks the milkman, I immediately from this to her ripping down the sign. In reality she appears to have jumped through time as there’s no way she could have gotten over to the door so quickly however in this context it works as it moves on from one joke only to very quickly set up the next.

A problem I encountered and had to overcome was the way in which the woman could be introduced to the scene. There is a long walk from her car to where the milkmen are arguing, in regard to the all important pacing, to see her walk all the way would have been far too long of a time to hold on one shot. To get around it I cut to footage of the milkman stood nearest the door reacting to some comments from the director, used without the accompanying audio track however and it looked as if he was reacting to the arrival of the store owner. This over came the pacing issues however to complete this part of the scene there had to be a reason for the men to look over in the first place, otherwise it looks like it’s all been cued in on purpose. To get over this I took the audio from her opening line from the two-shot set up and layered over the top of footage of her getting out of the car. This way it’s the line “what on earth do you think you’re doing” that seems to cause the milkmen to look in her direction.   

Aside from the places where I wanted to sound bridge two-shots to get conversation to flow better, the sound work on this exercise was very simple. An added element to the sound in the edit comes when I introduce the noise of a car pulling up during the initial fight between the milkmen, I sharply increased the sound of its final breaking to emphasis the arrival of the new character then use the abrupt sound of the door slamming shut to cut away from the fight to where the woman is stepping out.

The biggest thing I’ve learnt from the editing of all three sets of footage is the importance of a good editor. In a climbers hands particularly, due to the footage and recordings letting the production down, in the hands of an experienced editor it can be transformed. Aside from this I’ve gotten to know the software better and my speed of using it has increased. I’ve also learnt that in myself I like to experiment with the way in which any footage can be altered to create complete new meaning during the editing process. Example of this in my work include the use of footage that some may deem to be useless, like the pan across the rocks in In a climbers hands or the flashes of over-exposed shots in Night Journey.                                    

Bullet Time

First showcased in 1999 in The Matrix, the effect of bullet time, so called for its use to display a speeding bullet, is now a stable in many block buster action films. Though groundbreaking at the time, the process required to create the effect it reletivly simple. By sequentially taking pictures of the action, these images can be edited together and slowed down to result in an upto 360 degree  portrayal of the scene. In the case of The Matrix, green screens needed to be used in order to hide the  opposite facing cameras, coving the entire body and leaving only the lens visible.

As technology has advanced its become easier and easier to accomplish this effect without a budget the sizer of that of The Matrix. With the recent GoPro phenomon amature film makers have been experimenting with ways in which they can be utilized to accomplish a similar effect.

Color Correction - Skin Tones

Seeing as I'm going to serve as the role of editor during level 6 I thought it would be important to start to better understand color correction. Before moving onto anything more complex such as color grading, here is a step by step guide to correcting skin tones, an element of a scene I would consider to be most important.

Seeing as Final Cut Pro has an adequent color correction tool built in, its this that I'm going to be using. To find it you must go into effects, video filters, color correction and then colour corrector 3-way.

Next, look for a black and a white point in the shot if possible and using the eye dropper tool click on the appropriate points in the frame. Clicking on something that should be white will adjust the coloring of the whole shot so that the whites are nearer pure white. Clicking on something black will do the same but for the blacks.

Following this, going on personal preference and depending on the quality of the light, it might be necessary to slide the mids a little bit towards the red. This will naturally increase the subjects skin tone, preventing it from looking washed out.

Again, depending on the lighting used in the scene, its time to adjust the brightness of the blacks, mids and whites. Like the increasing of reds in the mids, this is subjective to your intented 'look' for the scene.  This is what my colour 3-way looks like at this point. As you can see the adjustments are very slight.

Now you want to crop the image to that only skin tones are visible. To do this cycle through ther wireframe modes (W) so that the corners of a frame can be seen. Next, press 'C' to select the crop tool and drag the corners of the frame to crop around some skin tone.

Once the image is cropped go to tools and bring up the color scopes. These scopes are graphical representations of the colour in any given shot and can be very useful once you know how to read them. There are four types of graphs; waveform monitor, vectorsope, histogram and RGB parade. For this task you want to select the vectorscope. Looking at the vectorscope a small cluster of color will be visible, there will also be a straight line, in this case this line is the skin tone line and represents the ideal colour for that particular scene. To move the cluster of color closer to the line and therefore closer to the ideal color, tweak the mids towards the required color until the cluster sits on top of the line.

Once your happy, go to the motion tab and click the reset button for crop to remove the crop you just applied. The skin tone should now be properly colour corrected and you can move on to the next scene.

Below is a before and after of the same clip. Obviously this isn't the finished image, once every shot has been corrected you can then begin grading it to give it a specific 'look'.

Before

After

The good thing about this correction is that so long as the lighting doesn't change, regardless of who comes in and out of the scene their skin tones will be perfect. To copy the attributes you applied to one clip to another clip simply go into the colour 3-way tab and drag it (using the hand icon) onto the desired clip. Just to be sure that the tones are correct on the new clip, crop into the skin, look at the vectorscop and check that the cluster is on the the line. If yes, the tone is fine, if not, once again adjust the mids until it is.

    

Front Projection Effect

Invented by Philip V. Palmquist and made famous by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, front projection is a tenique that, as the name suggests, projects a pre-filmed image onto a large, highly reflective screen. This allows an actor or subject to stand in front of this screen whilst being made to look as if they have been transported into the scene.

The set up requires the projector to be at 90 degrees to the action, reflected onto the screen by a two way mirror thats placed at a 45 degree angle in relation the actor and projector. The camera is placed in front of both the actor and mirror, hence the reasoning behind the necesarry two way properties of it. 

 

The method was invented in 1943 and used right up until the early 90's until the advancements in digital compositing rendered the technique out dated. Kubrick was so experienced with the tecnique he decided to use in in his last film, Eyes Wide Shut for some of the scene were the actors were required to walk down streets. It's even been suggested that its with the use of this technique that Kubrick was asked to stage the moon landings, utilizing his experience from working on 2001.

 

 

 


 

 

Requiem For a Dream

After finding a statistic on IMDB that said where as an average film will contain 600 to 700 cuts where as Requiem For a Dream contains over 2,000, I watched the opening sequence to see what this meant in terms of its aethietic. It was obvious right away that what was quoted on IMDB must hold some truth as not only were there interesting elements of split screen, resulting in twice as many cuts per second (average), but many of the scene's, especially ones containing Burstyn's character contain very quick cuts.

One scene in particular stands out, when Sara Goldfarb, Burstyn's character, goes to sit out in front of her building with the other elderly residents. In production I imagine Aronofsky ran the scene a number of times, filming each of the old women so that in post he could very quickly cut between them. The result is a cut that reflects the way in which old women, as a stereotype, talk to one another. That is they all have something to say and they say it very quickly. Aside from creating characterisation, it could also be a fore-shadowing for the speed addiction that she's about to obtain.



Aside from the picture editing the sound editing in this film is used to intensify elements of the film to such an extent it becomes surreal. A very quick example of this in the scene above is the sizzling sound,  reminiscent of the sound of food in a frying pan, layered on top of the shot of the sun.

The use of split screen is also worth exploring. When it's used, it's used to depict different action within the same scene, first seen in the first scene when Burstyn locks her self in a bathroom while her son, played by Jared Leto, steals the TV. The way it's used enables the audience to simultaneously watch the thieving son and the emotional distress its causing his mother despite the fact they are separated by a closed door. The other notable moment occurs when Leto and Connelly are sharing an intimate moment, again, the split enables the capture of emotion, this time in the form of each others hands running over each others skin.

As can be seen in the screen grabs, some of the shots are of actions that can't be happening at the same time as the conversation is taking place. In these instances, such as the finger tips touching the lips, the images have been used to increase the intimacy of the scene in a surreal way.  

Another interesting technique used are the quick montages when drugs are being taken. The way in which the action is represented lacks emotion and de-humanises the act, what I mean by this is that there is little or no sense of excitement or joy from taking the drugs, all the audience see's is the aftermath once the characters are already high. Even the dialogue before taking drugs suggests the same, i.e "who wants to waste some time" - Connelly, or "it's just business" - Wayans. The images used further connote this as the repercussions are often represented by scientific 'cause and effect' type imagery. I.e. eyes dilating and cells reacting to the drug. The sound design, similar to the sizzling sun, is very exaggerated during these sequences. This helps the impact of the cuts as with every cut comes an obvious audible change.      

Lastly, time lapse is used to good effect in the film to represent the effects of drugs. The most famous being the sideways tracking shot in which Burstyn apparently spent over two hours cleaning the her flat  to then decide she wasn't happy with her performance. Aside from the obvious speeding up of the footage, a clock with its hands speeding round has been layered over the top that then fades away to emphasis the passing of long periods of time.

             

In a Climbers Hands - Break Down

Unlike a drama production, it's predominately in the edit room that a documentary finds its form. With so much footage and only a few loose and nondescript 'talking head' sequences the quality of the final film is very much up to the editor. Given that there is often hundreds and hundreds of clips the first job is to organise them all so that reviewing them is easier. 

The next job is to write out a transcript of all the recorded dialogue so that your able to cut and paste its order easily without having to move lots of footage around.

I decided to start the documentary with some classic establishing shots of the peaks. It's the obvious way to introduce the subject and with the natural beauty of the landscapes clear to see it's an easy way to grab an audiences attention. At this point I introduce the first of the voice over recordings, again somewhat of an introduction to the film. The interviewee says how its a famous place for rock climbing etc and in doing so quickly makes it clear what the film is going to be about. 

One transition in particular that I'm proud of is an XCU whip pan of the rock that dissolves into one of the jib shots, extending over the lip of the rock. In order to make it work I had to firstly reverse the clip so that it would pan in the same direction as the jib shot i wanted to use. Then I slowed it down by 10% making the clip longer, allowing more time for titles to be read. The clips following the initial one had to be sped up quite considerably which allowed for a blending of the two, further hiding the cut. Finally, to complete the transition I used a quick cross fade to blend the two clips together as best I could so the end result gives the illusion there is no cut.  

The grab above is clearly overexposed and therefore shouldn't really have been used in the edit however due to so much of the footage being deemed 'unusable' some of it had to be in order to make up the set time duration of the final cut. I chose to allow this shot in the final edit as it not only allowed for a tidy conclusion to my initial sequence but since a number of clips preceding this one were also slightly over exposed (see above) I thought this one wouldn't stand out.

I chose to start with these dramatic birds eye view style shots as just as the landscapes demand attention, so do these. It also puts you in the climbers position right away, starting to build on the characterisation right away. I also liked the way that the first jib shot reveals nothing but the bare rock, forcing the audience to pay attention to the height and the danger before I reveal the climber in the next clip.

Like the transition above, there are another couple of examples in my edit where I wanted to be creative in the way I made a transition between locations. The first makes use of some camera movement that quickly tilts to the sky. I tried to match this movement with a following clip that quickly pans in the same direction to reveal the subject now in a different location, bouldering.

The grabs don't properly convey the transition. To see what I mean, go to 10:02:51:08 in the timeline.

The last transition is a take on the match cut. As the subject falls off his indoor practise wall it cuts to that his feet land on a mat, outside in a new location. My intention was to attempt to move the documentary forward with a degree of pace. As both locations (his house and the peak district) have already been established there was no need to cut back to some kind of establishing shot as I did at the very beginning of the film. The audience can work out where he now is and what it means in relation to the subject.

The only problem with the cut is the fact that in the first clip the climbers feet are uneven meaning that when he lands feet together there is a slight jarring sensation. Aside from this I believe the cut works well.

A couple of times footage that I wanted to use contained members of the crew, on the two examples below I got around this issue by scaling the image so that the edge of the frame cut off the wandering 'extra'. I was aware that by doing so diminishes the quality of the image so I took this into consideration when selecting the clips I could use this solution on. I.e. only ones that contained slithers of crew members.

Part of the brief was to maximise chractaterisation, the screen grab below shows how I used a clip and manipulated the edit so that it appears to be a point of view shot. By making the audience see the world through the eyes of the subject, they begin to form and emotional attachment with them.

The placing of the clips in this order suggests that the second is a POV of the one before. The low angle increases the scale of that the subject is trying to conquer and therefore seems to increase the risk factor and therefore the excitement for the audience.

The clip that follows both solidifies the suggestion that the previous one was a POV but it also continues to make the rock seem more threatening by dwarfing the small climber stood at its base.

In the following clips I use footage to further explore the same location. One cut that is worth noting follows a clip that pans and tilts down the face of the cliff, I used the downward motion to blend in the next clip, one which also pans down but this time over the subject as he packs away his gear. Between the cut I used a very quick crossfade to help soften the cut, my intention being to utilize the continued downward motion to connect the two pieces of footage. As before, the screen grabs don't do my intentions justice, to view it properly go to 10:01:47:07 in the timeline.

Match on action is something that wasn't all that common in the the cutting of this documentary however there were a few instances were they helped to cut away from tedious shots and add some variety to the angles. When the subject is climbing the biggest rock in particular toward the end of the film the decision to cut from the mid to the wide shot of the same action not only adds variety but also gives the audience a greater appreciation for the danger he's in, adding once again to the characterisation.

Due to the poor quality of sound recordings as well the frankly uninspiring interview footage I made the decision to only include small amounts of voice over. Of that voice over I was selective and only used material that I deemed to be relevant to the images I wanted to show. One such example would be when I cut to the footage shot in his bedroom, while the footage is some of the more mundane, I felt it important to include information in the film about he trains. The voice over states that he uses "something called a finger board" at this point I cut in a clip of him cleaning said fingerboard. Later on in the interview he takes of how by hanging off it your fingers are strengthened, at this point I use a clip of him hanging off his home made bouldering wall.

The final few clips used in the documentary are so placed as to give a final boost of characterisation. Having him stood onto of the biggest rock pulling up his ropes conveys the point that he's conquered the cliff and over come the difficulties. The next cut is to him at the bottom, ropes in hand and seemingly ready to leave. In terms of structure, to me this seemed the best way to end the film, on a high. The last shot is a wide pan of the moorland stretching out into the distance, due to it being a pan it has the aethetic of a POV, the subjects reward for completing the climb.