Fast and Furious 6 Trailer

I am a huge fan of the Fast and Furious film series and recently the sixth Fast and Furious film's trailer has been released. After watching the trailer, I was extremely excited to see the film, which is released in cinemas in the UK on 17th may 2013.

One of the elements of the trailer that stood out to me most was the use of the music throughout. The trailer starts off is an establishing shot of what looks to be a sunny European town and the music to accompany this shot is very light and suits the shot well. Then we hear Luke Hobbs say 'So this is what a hundred million buys you huh' as Dom Torreto is walking on his balcony with a beer showing that he is enjoying his new life since the last film. When this line is said, we cut to a shot of Dom as he looks shocked to see Hobbs there and the music changes and there is a loud boom showing that he is shocked.

Whilst Hobbs is telling Dom about why he is there, we see a sequence of shots that show the reason he is there, which is because there is a job that he needs help with and catching some criminals and in the shots we see what they are wanted for. Whilst we see these shots, there is just a voice over from Hobbs as he is explaining the situation. I think that this is a very good technique because whilst the audience is hearing what the film is going to be about, they also get the visuals of what is going to be happening. The music in this sequence is very intense, showing that what is going on it going to be action packed and keep you on edge.

After seeing the shots of the convoy across the bridge, the trailer cuts back to the original shot of Hobbs and Dom on his balcony. The music drops again so it is very quiet, making the audience focus on what Hobbs is telling Dom. We then cut back to the sequence showing the convoy and the music comes back as it was previously. Then the trailer cuts back to the original shot on the balcony again and the music goes quiet again until there is a close up shot of a photo of Dom's ex girlfriend and there is another boom in the music to show that this is important, because Dom's ex girlfriend was supposed to have died at the beginning of the fourth film.

As Dom is looking at the photo, the music goes very quiet and Hobbs says to Dom that he needs his help and he needs his team. Then the trailer cuts to a shot of Dom looking up and the music comes back loud and grabs the audience's attention very quickly.

Whilst the music is loud and upbeat, we see a montage of all of Dom's team and where they are now and what they are doing since the last film. There is a voiceover from Dom saying that there is the best team in the world standing in front of you, and then the trailer cuts to a show of the team stood around a trailer, and then the trailer cuts to a shot of Dom, which is the same shot that the voiceover was taken from. 

We then cut to another montage with loud, lively music whilst Hobbs is explaining the situation to the entire team and why he needs all of their help. The first shot in the montage is a shot of the main villain in the film. I thought this was a good shot to put first because it shows the audience who the man is that the film is going to be about. The montage then shows the audience what this man has done for Hobbs to need the help from Dom's team, whilst Hobbs is explaining it all in a voiceover. The final shot we see of the montage is a longer shot of Letty, Dom's ex girlfriend, to show that she is also on the villain's team now. 

Throughout the next thirty seconds of the trailer, there is a long montage of some of the action that will be happening in the film, such as a party that they go to, a race that Dom is included in and some gun fights. The music is high and upbeat throughout the montage, like in the previous montage. Then the music cuts out and we see Dom and Letty come face to face and she shoots Dom, which shocked me since they used to be so close. It works very well cutting the music out and having silence on this part of the trailer because it is an emotional point in the trailer, seeing Dom reunited with Letty after he came to believe that she was dead. 

The rest of the trailer shows events from the film in the style of another montage with the same music track used previously but further into the track, which is the most upbeat part of the track. The final shot shown before the release date is shown is a shot of an aeroplane being taken down whilst it is trying to take off by Dom's team. I think that is was a good decision leaving this shot until the end of the piece because it is a new idea that hasn't been seen before and may attract people to watch the film even more. 

Resident Evil Retribution - Fight Scene

I have recently been watching the Resident Evil films and one of the main editing techniques that stood out to me was the editing style during the fight scenes in the film.

In the video above, I can see that the cuts to begin with are several seconds apart, establishing the location well and opening up the scene ready for the fight scene to start. Once the fighting starts, I noticed that the cuts became very fast, i'm some places being more than two cuts per second and also the camera angles between shots were very different.

I also noticed that the shots used during the fight scene were very dynamic, very rarely having a locked off camera shot and making sure that the camera was moving the entire time. I think this is done to make the scene more active, fitting well with what is going on in the shot. 

The music in the scene fit well. The main part of the music that stood out to me was the part of the scene where Alice pokes her head out of the vehicle after it had crashed. At this point. the music goes almost silent as she puts the guns on the side of the vehicle and then when we see her face the music comes back loud and lets the viewer know that there is going to be some action as the music starts to build more and more and then becomes fast during the fight scene,

I think that the use of the quick cuts, the dynamic camera movement and the music work very well to make the fight scene engage with the audience and keep the audience on edge throughout to find out who is going to win the fight. The scene kept me entertained throughout and I throughly enjoyed it. 

The Films of Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey was born on 14th January 1909 and was an American theatre and film director. He studied in Germany in Bertolt Brecht and then returned in the United States and eventually made his way to Hollywood. In the 1950s, he was blacklisted in the United States and then he moved to Europe where he made the rest of his films, mainly in the United Kingdom.

Some of his most well known films include:

• The Servant (1963)
• Accident (1967)
• The Go-Between (1970)

I was able to watch the opening scene of The Go-Between and I thought that it was shot very well. I liked the way that the window with water on it in the background was scrolling whist the credits were playing. This added movement to the opening, keeping it interesting but not taking the focus of the credits that were on screen at the time.

I also liked the wide establishing shot of the large house straight after the credits had finished. This told me that the action was going to be taking place in the house and then straight after that shot we cut to a shot of two boys on a horse and carriage heading towards the house and then entering it, showing us the interior of the house. The size of the house told me that the boy's family was wealthy and their excited told me that they possibly don't visit the house very often.

Overall, I thought that the opening sequence was very effective, clearly establishing the scene in very few shots.

Adam Curtis Documentary Work

Adam Curtis was born in 1955 and he is an English film maker. His most well know piece of work is a film he created in 2002 called The Century of the Self. The film look at how Freud's theories of the unconscious shaped the development of advertising. His work explores areas of political history, philosophy and sociology. He describes his work as journalism through the medium of film. Out of all of his works, his works have won 6 BAFTAs and he has been very closely associated with the BBC throughout his film making career.

Curtis' father was a cinematographer from Sevenoaks in Kent who worked with Humphery Jennings, meaning his family already had a link into the film and television industry. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Human Sciences at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, in which he studied courses such as genetics, psychology, anthropology, statistics, politics and evolutionary biology. He also applied to work for the BBC and he was hired to make a film for one of the BBC training courses, which was comparing designer clothes in pop music video to the design of weapons. He then gained a job on That's Life!, a television program that often placed serious and humorous together in juxtaposition.

Some of Adam Curtis' most well known films include:

• Pandora's Box (1992)
• The Mayfair Set (1999)
• The Century of the Self (2002)

The thing that stood out to me most after watching a section from The Century of the Self was the use of the voiceover. The voiceover was very factual and also seemed to go on for a long time, but it kept my attention the throughout because there was also a lot of archive footage on screen during the voiceover which helped to keep my attention. There were also bits in the archive footage where somebody would be talking and for these bits the voiceover was cut out. These parts of dialogue weren't as factual as the voiceover, showing more of an emotion than a fact. I liked how strong the voiceover was in the piece and would like to try and make the voiceover in my documentary as strong as the one in this piece. 

Bloodrop - Vimeo Short Film

Title - Bloodrop

Director - Alexei Popogrebsky

Year - 2012

Running Time - 06:37

Bloodrop is a very surreal film of a man who closes his windows to stop the wind from a passing by train from blowing all of his belongings everywhere. He picks up some of his belongings that fell and notices a black envelop containing a picture of him as if it was taken at the second he picked the picture up. He looks into the background at the picture he has on his wall and looks into it, revealing another world and he climbs through the frame into this world. A lady in the room sees him and hides herself behind the patio doors, avoiding the man. He starts acting crazy and tries to sit down, making the chair turn 2D. He then realises that anything he touches becomes 2D and he turns most of the room like this. He then sees the train coming again in his world and he grabs the lady and folding her up and throws her into his world as he follows. he jumps through and as he jumps through the frame, the frame crashes to the ground. The camera then zooms out from the man and the lady sitting with each other in his world to revealed another picture frame with them sat inside it before the credits begin to roll.

I thought that the idea of this film was very good, looking into different dimensions and each dimension being a different world. The film was also created in 2D and 3D, playing further with the dimensions. Unfortunately, I was only able to watch the film in 2D, but whilst watching it, I could see where many of the 3D elements would have looked very good, for example, when the man looked through the picture frame. 

I thought that the minimal use of dialogue worked very well, having no words spoken at all apart from at the end of the film when the man says 'Oh'. The story is told very well without the dialogue and doesn't need it, 

I also liked the way that the music was used in the film. The music got very uptempo when the exciting parts of the film were happening, for example when the train was coming and when the man was acting like a monkey in the white room, and I thought this worked very well to keep the passing of the film very good. 

Overall, I thought the film was very well made and when I am able to find some glasses to watch it in 3D, I will go back and watch it again to compare the 2D and 3D versions.  

Video URL - https://vimeo.com/28786762 

DCP File Format

DCP stands for Digital Cinema Package and is a collection of digital files used to store and convey digital cinema audio, image and data streams. 

The file structure is organised into a number of normally multi-gigabyte size Material eXchange Format (MXF) files, which are then separately used to store audio and videos streams, and also auxiliary index files in extensible markup language (XML) format.

The MXF files contain the streams that are then compressed, encoded and also encrypted in order to try and reduce the huge amount of storage that is required and also to protect the files from unauthorised use. 

The image part of the file is JPEG 2000 compressed, and the audio part of the file is linear PCM. The adopted encryption standard is AES 128 bit in CBC mode.

The newer SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) standards are used to conform the recommendations among different toll vendors and producers. 

Week Eight - Rock Climbing Documentary Review (21/03/13)

In todays session, the main focus of the session was to review our rock climbing documentary fine cuts. We started off by talking about any technical problems that people have. Some of the problems that came up and we will discuss in the sessions were:

• Lighting - getting it right
• Scratch Disks
• Sound Issues
• HD Import
• Exporting
• Go Pro Footage
• Track Laying

After that, we were given some more research topics for us to look into, these topics where:

• DCP File Format
• Blooddrop - Vimeo Short Film
• The Films of Joseph Losey
• Adam Curtis Documentary Work

We then starting looking at the fine cuts of the rock climbing documentaries. One of the things that cropped up before my screening was labelling clips professionally. The group told not to use a bin called 'Delete' or use silly names for footage. We were told that we need to keep our footage named correctly so that if anybody else was to take over as editing, they would be able to understand where the cut was up to and where to find the footage they need.

I was very happy with the feedback that myself and Lewis received. Chris give some great feedback saying that we had created a very good piece of work, the sound mixing was great and our technical skills were very good too. There were a few minor issues that I noticed whist watching the film back that I would like to change, such as a section where there wasn't much sound and a fade in one of the music tracks. Some of the feedback that we got was:

• The first music track on the edit should fade out during the shot of him putting his t-shirt on and something else should come in.
• The end of the second music track should fade on a beat and also the fade between the wind and the interview should be longer.
• We had two endings to the piece and would work a lot better if we ended on the shot of the climber being interviewed like we were originally going to. 

Overall, I am very happy with the feedback that we were given and I am looking forward to using the feedback to improve the film and get a final fine cut finished. 

Rock Climbing Documentary - Fine Cut (20/03/13)

Today, I met with Lewis at 10am to get on with the fine cut of our rock climbing documentary film. Before starting on the rock climbing documentary, I showed him the fine cut that I had done of our other film, Night Journey. He was very happy with how it had turned out and I spoke through everything that I had changed with him and asked if there was anything else that he would like changing and he said that he was very happy with it how it is.

We then got on with the fine cut of the documentary. I started by looking at what Lewis had done to the rough cut the previous day. He had added in some interview sound over the top of the atmosphere tracks that were in the piece. Lewis also added an extra scene to the end of the film, where the climber was doing some more bouldering rather than my original ending where we ended on the climber doing a short interview. I wasn't too sure about this alteration. He also added some music overlaying the atmosphere and interview tracks. He had cut the picture to the music and also added some jump cuts that I thought worked really well. However, shortly after looking at the rough cut, Lewis mentioned that the music was by a band his friend liked and that made me think about the music and in the end we had to cut it out of the film because it was copyrighted. Lewis didn't want to have to take it out because he had put a lot of effort in to making the cuts correct and adding the jump cuts but I said to him that we couldn't have any copyrighted material in the film so I took it out.

I then spent the next two hours looking through a free music archive for some music that would work well with the piece. I wanted something that was progressive and also had a nice relaxing tone to it. In the end, I found some music that fitted the piece very well. I showed Lewis the music and he thought that it was good and that we should add it into the timeline and see how well it worked. We thought that it worked very well with the bedroom scene but not very well with the rest of the footage because the interview didn't work along with the music. To overcome this, I moved the interview around a bit and had no interview of the bedroom scene, then I cut the music and added some interview during the first bouldering scene and then when we cut to the footage of the climber rock climbing, I added the music back into the piece and had no interview overlaid. I can cut the music again at the end of the rock climbing and added more interview into the film. Finally, I added a second track over the final scene of the film when the climber was boulders again that was slightly different to the original track and then slowly faded it out.

I then went back and looked at the footage with the songs in place again and realised that some of the jump cuts that Lewis had put into the film weren't needed anymore because they were in place for the other music tracks that we had to delete. I spoke to him about removing the jump cuts and looking at it without them and he said that we should do it and see how it looks. It looked a lot better without the jump cuts and we left them out.

After that, I went through the piece and listened carefully to the sound to see where it needed attention, for example on sound clips where there was a significant change in the volume of noise. I added fades to the beginning and ends of a lot of clips to make it more subtle when the clip started playing and also I changed the volume on some of the shots to make sure that the levels were all the same.

I went through the Final Cut Pro document and made sure that everything was tidy as it should be and it was. We used the V1 track for the main video footage and the V2 track for any text that we had. The A1 and A2 tracks were used for the atmosphere and sound that was attached to the footage, the A3 and A4 tracks were used for the interview sounds and the A5 and A6 tracks were used for the music. I also created a new sequence every time we started a new edit and also labelled it with the date that we started it. I also created a new sequence any time that we were making any significant changes to the piece just incase we wanted to revert to the original. Throughout the project we had the thumbnails turned off to save on the RAM on the Mac and also made sure that all of our footage was labelled correctly.

Finally, myself and Lewis reviewed the piece one last time and were both very happy with it and exported it ready to screen in tomorrows review session.

Night Journey - Fine Cut (19/03/13)

Today, I got on with the fine cut of the Night Journey project. I started by looking at the feedback that Lewis and myself received in the review session we had a few weeks ago and then started using this feedback to improve the video.

One piece of feedback that we received was that the opening sequence where we first see the victim had too many shots in it and also the point of view shot as he was walking through the crowd didn't fit very well and wasn't needed. I started by removing this point of view shot and then tried to cut down on the amount of clips that were in the sequence. I also removed a static shot looking over the train station to make the sequence work better with less shots. Finally, I took out the shot of the man boarding the train, which is shot through the interior window of the train. I removed this because I didn't really like the shot as it was shot through glass and also I didn't think it was necessary because the audience would know that the man had boarded the train just by him standing on the platform and then seeing the train leave the station. After removing this shot, I lengthened two of the shots showing the train travelling and moved the sound around to make it fit with the shots.

I then wanted to add some effects to the dream sequence to make it look more like a dream. To do this, I wanted to blur the edges of the frame on the shots of Amsterdam. I did this by having a duplicate of the clip on the layer above it, adding a mask shape and mask feather effect to the video on the top and the video underneath I added the gaussian blur effect. This would mean that the shape that I mask on the top image would be all that it shown of that image, and then the rest would be the video below, with the blurred effect, makes the edges of the frame blurred. The settings that I used for the effects I have included below in the screenshots. 

After that, I looked back at the feedback we received and we were also told that the dream sequence was a little too sudden, so to improve this, I wanted to show the victim going into the dream a bit better and try to make the transition between reality and the dream smoother. To do this, after the victim said 'Tonight' for the third time, I added the gaussian blur effect and over 4 seconds made the radius of the effect start at 0 and end at 8, bringing the effect in gradually. I then added a long crossfade to black to show the victim nodding off. Finally, I lengthened the transitions of the sounds to make the transition smoother and less sudden.

Finally, the last bit of feedback that I received was to change the point of view shot at the end of the film when the three people are looking into the cabin, because the shot that I had previously used was too high to be a point of view shot. I looked through all of the footage and out of all of the shots, there was only one more shot that would work well as a point of view from the three people looking into the cabin. I inserted this clip over the top of the original shot and then reviewed the entire film.

After looking through the film and making sure everything was finished, I saved the project and will show it to Lewis tomorrow to see if he is happy with it and anything that he would like changing and then I will export the final film ready to hand in. 

The Difference Between Chroma Key and Luma Key

Chroma Key

Chroma key compositing is a special effect/ / post-production technique for laying two images or video streams together based on the colour hues / chroma range. The technique has been mainly used to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video, in particularly used in the news, weather presenting and video games industries. A certain colour range on the top layer is made transparent, which then reveals the layer underneath. The technique is mainly used in video production and in the post-production stages. The technique is also sometimes referred to as colour keying and other terms such as green screening and blue screening.

When green or blue screening, a subject is placed in front of a green or blue screen that is lit perfectly so that it is all the same shade of the colour, and they as filmed. Then, in the post-production stage, the colour used as the background is taken away, leaving a transparent part on the video, which then reveals the layer behind. A problem with this is that the subject cannot contain as of the colour that will be taken away, otherwise they will also become transparent.

A great example of green screening that everybody will have seen is during weather presenting. The presenter appears to be stood in front of a large map of the country however, they are stood in front of a big green screen and then the map is put onto the screen digitally.

Luma Key

Luma keying is setting the brightness level, so all of the brighter or darker pixels from the set level are turned off, making them transparent. The image or video behind the top later will then be shown through the transparent sections of the top layer. Luma keying is used when working with grayscale images.

Luma keying is very similar to chroma keying, however, the difference is is that is uses the brightness for transparency whereas chroma key uses a colour range.

Michael Kahn

Michael Kahn is an American film editor, born on 8th December 1935 in New York. He is known for editing Hogan's Heroes, a TV program, he also edited feature films directed by George C. Scott and Steven Spielberg, who he has had a notable collaboration with for over 30 years, starting their work together in 1977. 

He is a member of the American Cinema Editors (ACE) and he is one of the very few editors who still edit on film today, however, he has also edited some projects digitally that weren't directed by Spielberg. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is the first film that Kahn edited digitally using Avid for Spielberg though he has edited digitally before for films such like Twister.

Steven Spielberg feels that film got him and Kahn to where he is now and he still loves the smell and the feel of it. They both started using film and they both still really enjoy it. George Lucas said that "Michael Kahn can cut faster on a Moviola than anybody can cut on an Avid."

Michael Kahn is the most nominated editor in the Academy Awards history with 8 nominations in total. He also holds the record for the most wins in the Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, with 3 wins in total. All of the films that he has won Oscars for were directed by Steven Spielberg, the films were:

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Schindler's List (1993)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)

He also received 6 BAFTA nominations for Best Editing and won 2 for Schindler's List and Fatal Attraction. In 2011, he became the recipient of the American Cinema Editor's Lifetime Career Achievement Award.

Rock Climbing Documentary - Rough Cut (16/03/13)

Today, I finally was able to get on with the rough cut for the Rock Climbing project that I had been set. After sorting all of the clips out in the previous weeks, I was able to start cutting the piece together. I looked at the rough cut that we had been provided with and decided that it would probably be easier to start a new sequence and build the film up from scratch.

I had a structure in mind that I wanted, which was to first have an opening establishing shot to show what the documentary was going to be about, then I wanted to use the bedroom scene to show that the first thing the climber does when he wakes on a morning is start rock climbing, to show his passion for the sport. Then I wanted to use one of the locations to show him bouldering and then finally use another location to show him rock climbing. Over all of this I would like to use voice overs from the interview to explain rock climbing and what it means to the climber.

So first of all, I found an establishing shot, the shot I used was a pan across the landscape to the climber in the distance, almost as a silhouette, climbing onto the top of a rock and then have to title coming in at the bottom of the screen. I then faded to black and faded back up to the bedroom scene. I wanted to use a small montage to show his morning routine and I also used some jump cuts whilst he was climbing the wall that he has in his bedroom.

After that, I wanted to show the climber doing some bouldering, which is like rock climbing but on a smaller scale. I wanted to use the shots of the climber in the foggy area for this because I think the fog added a nice element to the scene and also the bouldering in this scene was better than in the other shots. I wanted to show him trying to climb to the top of the rock but in the process I wanted to show that it took him more than one attempt and then wanted to use some of the interview where he talks about how the temperature effects the rocks. Also during this scene, I used a shot that was a close up of the climbers feet landing on the safety mat. However, the problem I encountered with this shot was that his feet landed the opposite way to how it should have done so I had to flop the shot. To do this I used the flop effect, shown in the screenshot below. Then finally I wanted to show him getting to the top of the rock before cutting to the next and final scene.

The final scene I wanted to use was the climber climbing up a cliff. This would add a sense of excitement to the film and would also show off the climbers abilities. I wanted to start the scene with him walking up to the cliffs and looking up at them before starting to get ready to climb. I then added a small montage of him getting his kit ready and getting geared up before starting to climb the cliff. Then I did a small montage of him getting to the top of the cliff, packing his kit away and then a small interview at the end before ending the film.

Also, I went through all of the interviews and turned them into sub-clips, having each question and answer in a different sub-clip so I could rename them and be able to know what each clip was easily. This was a long process but would definitely be worth it in the long run when it comes to adding the interview over the film.

After piecing the entire film together, I saved it and sent it across to Lewis for him to look at and change what he thinks needs changing and starting the sound. We agreed that we would meet on Monday 18th March to discuss our progress and where we wanted to go with the film and continue editing.

What was EditDroid?

The EditDroid was developed by a company called Lucasfilm, which was found by filmmaker, George Lucas in 1971, along with Droid Works and Convergence Corporation who formed a joint venture company. Lucasfilm is best known and responsible for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. The company was active through the mid-80's up until the early 90's and it attempted to move from analog editing to digital editing. In 1983, editing was a long and time -consuming process. George Lucas set this team the challenge for improving the editing stage of filmmaking, and after investing $40 million and three years of work, the EditDroid was created. 

The EditDroid was a computerised analog non-linear editing system. It first debuted at the National Association and Broadcasters 62nd Annual meeting which took place in Las Vegas in 1994. There was also another editing tool called the Montage Picture Processor that the event, which was it's competitor for all of it's active years. The EditDroid was never sold commercially and The Droid Works closed in 1987 and this led to the redevelopment for the EditDroid over the next 7 years. In 1993, the software was sold to Avid Technology and overall only 24 EditDroid systems where ever produced. 

The system was Laserdisc based, which meant that it counted on several laserdisc players and a database that would queue the clips up ready for the laserdisc players to play the clips in the most efficient way. There were 3 screens attached to the system, one was a Sun-1 computer display, another was a small video preview monitor and the final one was a large rear-projected monitor, which contained the cut and was controlled by the custom controller. The controller was called the TouchPad and had a KEM-style shuttle knob, a trackball (very similar to a mouse), and various buttons that included LED labels that changed in function depending on what the system was doing at the time. The EditDroid introduced the timeline as well at digital picture icons to identify what each clip was. 

Week Seven - Montage and Blog Reviews (14/03/13)

Today we started off by looking the opening of the film, 127 Hours. The storyline of the film is about a man who is always on the go and never likes to do nothing, and he goes canyoneering without telling anybody where he is going and he gets his arm stuck under a boulder and has to cut his arm off in order to survive. 

The opening sequence for this film is a montage showing lots of different images, such as people running, people cheering at a sports stadium, people praying and people taking part in La Tomatina (the Spanish tradition). All of these shots help to subtly establish the film. I noticed that in a lot of the shots, there were a lot of arms shown, this could be because later in the film it is the man's arm that becomes the reason he is stuck. Also, the shots in the montage are very busy and the people in the shots never stop moving. This could be a contrast to later in the film when the man gets stuck and is the complete opposite of what happens in the montage. 

The music in the opening sequence also fits in very well with the film, especially the lyrics. The lyrics say at one point:

"Take it if it makes you numb
Take it if it makes you come
Take it if it makes you make it perfect"

I think these lyrics fit in well with the film because he is required to cut his own arm off and once he has done this, he may become numb and will save his life because he is freed and is able to get himself some help. 

We were then asked the question, "What is a montage?. The simple answer to this question that a montage is a series of shots that are cut to music and get you into the story. A montage can also change the meaning of an image. For example, we were told about a theory where if you put an image of a woman next to an image of an empty soup bowl, the meaning of the images would change to show that the woman was hungry. However, if you use the same image of the woman and another image of a full soup bowl, it would have a different meaning showing that the woman had food and wasn't going hungry. 

We were also given some research topics that we should look into, these topics were:

• The difference between Chroma Key and Luma Key?
• The relationship between Michael Kahn and Steven Spielberg?
• What was EditDroid?

For the remainder of the session, I started to research into the research topics that we were given, starting with the EditDroid and then moving onto the relationship between Michael Kahn and Steven Spielberg.

Finally, before the end of the session, I was shown a Super 8 project and how it worked and the process of setting up it correctly, I found this very interesting and would like to learn more about these projects and start to use them. 

Rock Climbing Documentary - Finishing off Renaming (13/03/13)

Today, I finished off renaming the clips on all of the tapes that that myself and Lewis needed to get on with the rough cut of our project. I used the same way of renaming the clips that I had previous used when I started renaming them all and also colour coded the files as I went along, using the same colour coding key that I set up when I started renaming.

I noticed on one of the tapes, there were a lot of shots that were very short, being able 1-2 seconds long in total, and a lot of the takes on this tape were bad takes due to the climber falling off the rocks a lot of the time. I used the colour red a lot on this tape so when it comes to looking at the footage on this tape, I know where all of the bad takes are and won't need to look at them again.

Finally, after getting all of the footage renamed, I labelled the bin names to suit what the footage was inside the bin and then created a copy of the timeline that we had been given and renamed it with today's date so that I knew when I start it. I would like to create a duplicate of the timeline every time I edit to make sure that if anything goes wrong, I will always have a backup of the timeline.

Visit England & Blacks 2013 TV Advert

I saw this advert on TV and it instantly caught my attention. The element that caught my attention was the use of the fast cuts. Blacks is an outdoor clothing company (e.g. Walking clothes, running clothes) and some outdoor activities that they sell clothing for can be seen as extreme.

In the advert we see a group of people going on a walk through the countryside, encountering various obstacles such as sheep in the middle of the path they are trying to get past. We also see another story of a man running through the countryside and also see another man hiking through the countryside. The use of the quick cuts worked very well, especially showing the quickness of the man running through the countryside.

I also liked the use of the voiceover in the advert. There wasn't much said throughout the piece but what was said was very effective, for example the man said 'England's waiting, live life outdoors', I thought this was very well done and was a good phrase to end on, trying to get more people to take part in outdoor activities and getting them to buy equipment for that activity form Blacks.

The final element that I thought was good was the way that you never properly see somebody's face long enough to see it in detail, and a lot of shots don't show the person's face at all or it is seen from a distance. I believe this was done so that the person watching the advert wouldn't see somebody else doing the sports, but they could see themselves because there wasn't a face on screen for them to be watching.

Overall, I thought the advert was very successful as it grabbed my attention straight away and I didn't take my eyes off the TV until it had finished.

Anne V Coates

Anne V Coates is a British film editor born 12th December 1925 in Surrey. Her career is more than 40 years long and she is still editing films to this very day. She is best known for editing Lawrence of Arabia (1962), directed by David Lean. She has been nominated 5 times for the Academy Award for Film Editing for the films:

• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Becket (1963)
• The Elephant Man (1980)
• In The Line Of Fire (1993)
• Out Of Sight (1998)

She decided to try and become a film director and she started out working as an assistant at a production company that specialised in religious films. At this company, she fixed film prints of religious short films before she sent them out to British church tours. Through splicing the film at the production company, she gained a job as an assistant film editor at Pinewood Studios and worked on various films. Her first experience at assisting in editing a film was for the film editor, Reggie Mills. She has had a long career and the fact that she is still editing today, at the age of 88, she doesn't want to retire. In 2007, she was awarded BAFTA's highest honour, The Academy Fellowship. She is a member of the American Cinema Editors (ACE) and also the Guild of British Film and Television (GBFTE).

Some of her best known works include:

• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• The Elephant Man (1980)
• Out Of Sight (1998)
• Erin Brockovich (2000)
• Unfaithful (2001)
• The Golden Compass (2007)
• Extraordinary Measures (2010)