Week Eleven - Poetry Documentary (25/04/13)

In today's session, we were looking again at our Moving Image Production Narrative films that we will be presenting next week. Before looking at these, Chris told us the research topics to add to our blogs this week and also two books that we should look at if we were to pursue editing next year. The topics that he gave us to research were:

• Senna
• Use of Music in Shane Meadows films
• The Swimmer by Lynne Ramsay

The books we were introduced to were:

• A Broadcast Engineering Tutorial for Non-Engineers
• Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis

We then started looking at people's rough cut of there Narrative module films. The first film that we looked at was Lewis' film, Steel Bells. I thought that the film was very well cut and I am also looking forward to seeing if when it is finished with the sound design complete. One thing that wasn't done correctly was that the sound on the film was the sound from the camera. This was because Lewis had handed it over to the sound designer to sort the sound out. Chris then took us the correct way to post produce films. The order that he showed us was:

• Importing
• Converting - Apple ProRes 422
• Log
• Sync the Sound
• 1st Assembly

He stressed that syncing the sound before starting to cut was very important. This is because if the sound was left as camera sound without checking the Marantz sound, when it s passed on to the sound designer, some of the sound for some of the clips might not have been recorded, meaning that the sound would be unusable.

Later in the session, Chris looked at my rough cut of my 10 minute documentary, that he had helped me  a lot in the previous session. The feedback that Chris gave in this session was positive, stating that all of the elements that were needed were in the film, however, they were in the wrong order. The feedback he gave was:

• The right bits are in the edit, just in the wrong order.
• The main interview in the bedroom goes on for far too long, and could be used throughout the film rather than just in one scene. 
• After the line where Addie talks about poets not lying, I could cut to the shot of Kai talking about the reason for him getting into poetry, which was because of depression, and then cut to a shot of him performing his poem.
• The crossfade between Dan and the lady playing the guitar didn't work
• In the Gorilla poetry night scene, Dan recites a poem that doesn't rhyme, and there is a clip in the film where Addie talks about poems not having to rhyme, and these clips may look good together. 
• The lady playing the guitar was nice to hear and watch and there should be more of her in the film.
• The park scene should come between the Gorilla poetry night and the Riverside night.
• Addie talking about discovering poetry should come after the park scene.
• In the Riverside scene, Addie should be the last poet seen, and he should get the applause.
• The Riverside scene could start with Raymond and Adam, followed by another poet and then finally cutting to Addie's poem to make the night look more populated. 
• The interview in the golden hour seen didn't have a poetry feel to it.
• The golden hour scene went on for too long, needs to be shortened to have more of an impact.
• The pull focuses come in too early and leave too late, the focus should be pulled straight away.
• The film should end on a poem

Even though there was a lot of feedback that required a lot of work to be done to the film, I am very happy with the feedback that I received because once I have used it to edit the film again, it will improve the structure of the film and make it flow a lot better than it previously did.

After speaking with Chris about the documentary film, I asked him if could give me should feedback on my Out O' Date edit. The feedback that he gave me was:

• Need to solve the entrance of the car
• Need to add atmos track and sort the sound out.

I was very happy with this feedback and I am looking forward to sorting the sound out on the film because this is also something that after watching it back, I thought wasn't done as best as I could do it. I believe that the picture cut is almost done and I think that I need to trim the shot of the lady walking over towards Alf slightly as I think it is a bit too long and also I would like to trim the shot of Tony and Alf looking at the banner as the car pulls up in the background because it doesn't seem natural the way that they are looking at the banner after they have finished speaking.

Overall, I thought that this session was very helpful, providing me with a lot of feedback for me to use to improve my films and I am looking forward to using this feedback to make the best films that I can.