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.  

 

Out O' Date

This illustrates the labelling process I undertook before cutting the footage. 

Here is the final time line, complete with an audio track exported as a WAV from sound track pro. 

Here I had to take take the audio track off a different clip so as when the woman gets out of the car there is just cause for the milkman to turn around. As was pointed out to me, if she wasn't to some how get his attention there would be no natural reason why he would so instantly turn to react to her arrival. When I took the export into final cut I had to use a compressor effect on the clip where the woman delivered the first line "what do you think your doing." I did this because being that she is so close to the camera when I decided to place the audio clip the recording is too quiet and sounded like she was much further way. The end result is a much louder piece of dialogue that sounds as if it could have been recorded nearer the camera than it actually was.

  

To further the realism of the scene I added foley of a car pulling up and layered it over a couple of clips preceding the shot above. When in sound track pro I altered the levels to better blend it into the atmos track, bringing the sound levels of the approaching car up and up until it can be seen (above). I also synced the distinctive sound of a car coming to a halt and peaked the levels, making the sound more distinctive and deliberate sounding. 

Another problem that I had to over come with this part of the scene is the fact that there's a continuity error in the form of the woman jumping from from walking from the car to being shot over-the-shoulder next to the milkman. In order to get around this problem I cut to some footage of the second milkman stood still looking in the direction of the approaching woman, resulting in it looking as if he is reacting to her arrival rather than the reality that he is waiting for his cue to deliver a joke. 

As most of the scene is made up of mid shots that needed cutting back and forth to it was important to  incorporate sound bridges in order to get the timing right between dialogue and therefore maintain the comedy. In the screen grabs below it can be seen where I've bridged dialogue in order to capture reactions and emotion of the non-speaker.    

I chose to make the most of the sound of the car door slamming to emphasis the woman's arrival into the scene. Introducing the sound as close to the cut as I could without breaking the match on action of the previous clip helps transition what is quite a jarring cut.    

Under the whole scene I added an atmosphere track that hides the gaps between the recordings of dialogue. In sound track pro I reduced the volume of the whole track so that it sounded more natural against the speech. 

During the sequence in which the two milkmen stand side by side and argue it was necessary for the sound recordist to capture two recordings, one for one actors set of lines and one for the other. As a result of this when played back to back, as is needed when cutting two and from characters, the levels noticeably change. The screen grab below illustrates how I've altered on of the recordings by reducing the volume at the beginning of the clip so that the level matches that of the one before.   

One of my favourite cuts in the scene is the one shown below. By cutting half way through the actors motion of removing his headwear it maintains a pace that helps with the timing of his reaction and therefore the comedic element.

Another way in which I maintained a pace is through the use of a jump cut near the end of the scene with the emphasised comic sound effect of the milkman getting injured helping to carry the transition.    

The last cut of the scene also helps to keep the pace. There no need to linger on the shot of the woman throwing the sign, once its out of frame the joke is finished and the audience can move on. Not only this but to see the injured milkman doubled over at the same time as the woman continuing to tell off the second milkman emphasises their inferiority and incompetence adding to the comedy of the situation.