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.