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)

What's the Difference Between Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 4444?

ProRes is a lossy video compression format that was developed by Apple and it is for use in post-production that support up to 4k (the horizontal resolution, up to 4000 pixels).  ProRes was created for video editing and not for use of viewing videos after they had been edited and exported. The format retains a high quality without the need of expensive disk systems compared to uncompressed video that would need expensive disk systems.

Apple ProRes 422

The key features of ProRes 422 are:

• 4K, 2K, HD and SD Resolutions
• 4:2:2 Chroma Subsampling 
• 10-bit sample depth
• I-frame only encoding
• Variable bit rate encoding
• Normal 147 Mbit/s, High Quality 220 Mbit/s and ProRes (LT) 100Mbit/s at 60i
• Fast encoding and decoding

Apple ProRes 4444

ProRes 4444 is very similar to ProRes 422. It was introduced with Final Cut Studio in 2009 and provides better quality than it's predecessors, especially in the colour area. The extra features are:

• 4:4:4 Chroma Subsampling
• Up to 12-bit pixel depth
• Variable bit rate encoding
• Alpha channel support

Week Six - Avid (07/03/13)

In today's session, we began speaking about any problems people were having with the Rock Climbing documentary. One of the problems that was brought up that was on the rough cut that we've been provided with, most of the sound is missing. This is because part of the brief is to create our own sound design. Somebody else also asked if we had to use the rough cut that we had been given. We don't have to use the rough cut but it is advised because there is already a structure there.

After that, we were shown a book that we should read called How to get into and survive Film, Advertising and TV post-production - The Alternative Guide.

We were then told about two questions that we should research into. These questions were:

• The Career of Anne V Coates
• The Difference Between Apple Pro Res 422 + 4444

We were also told about some films that we should watch and look at the editing on these films. These films were:

• Bad Timing
• Don't Look Now
• Out of Sight

After that, we looked at a scene from Out of Sight and we spoke about the music and the use of freeze frames in the scene. 

We then moved onto our first lesson looking at Avid. We opened up the program and before even getting to the main screen, I had to create a project. This is different to Final Cut Pro 7 because that automatically opens up a new project for you. I prefer having to create a project rather than one automatically being opened because this makes sure that you set it up correctly before you jump into the editing. The three images below show the opening screen, the setting I used to create my test project and also the start up screen of Avid.

One of the first things that I noticed when the project loaded up was that the screen was very similar to the screen on Final Cut Pro 7, the only main difference being that there isn't an infinite timeline. Also, I learnt that when importing footage, you have to put it into a bin, it isn't possible to place it outside of a bin like on Final Cut Pro 7. I then imported my first piece of footage. I learnt that importing footage takes a lot longer on Avid. This is because when you import the footage, Avid turns it into the correct resolution and makes sure that all of the settings match up to the project settings. This is very time consuming, however, rendering in Avid doesn't need to be done very enough, even when adding effects and transitions, it plays in realtime with the need to be rendered. The image below shows the footage being imported.

I then was shown various buttons used on Avid, such as settings the in and out points, which I can use the same shortcuts for as I do on Final Cut Pro 7 and also was shown how to correctly get the footage onto the timeline, using the overwrite button. I was then shown about the different modes used in Avid. On Final Cut Pro 7, everything is possible to do done under one mode using different tabs, however, on  Avid, the mode needs to be changed, for example, when you want to trim a clip, you need to use trim mode and when you need to edit an effect, you need to be on effect mode.

I then was shown how to easily add a transition between two clips. To do this I had to place the timeline cursor where I wanted the transition to be and then I clicked the Quick Transition button on the right hand side of the screen. After that, I learnt how to add new video and audio tracks to the timeline, by going to Clip - New Video Track / New Audio Track. This would come in very useful when it comes to layering projects. Following that, I learnt how to access the effect palette and use effect mode correctly.

After learning everything I have mentioned above, I had a go at putting a short sequence together to get to know how to use Avid better. I used a lot of cross fades using the Quick Transition button and also inserted 

Rock Climbing Documentary - Setting Up the Project

When I was introduced to this project, I was given a rough cut that included a lot of footage but didn't have all of the footage attached, for example the footage from the original tapes. Also, the sound on this rough cut wasn't connected but this isn't a problem because part of the brief for this project is to create our own sound design.

I started off by importing all of the footage from the tapes into the project. I wanted to make sure that I had as much of the footage that I could get to be able to create the bets documentary I could.

After importing the footage, I went through the clips and started to rename them all using a simple filename format. First I would put a abbreviation of the shot type at the start of the name and then I would describe the shot afterwards. The abbreviations that I used were:

• CU - Close Up
• ECU - Extreme Close Up
• MS - Mid Shot
• LS - Long Shot
• WS - Wide Shot

Using the abbreviations made it simple to see what each shot was without cutting off some of the description of the shot, which is what would have happened if I didn't use abbreviations. 

I also started to colour code some of the files as I was looking at them. Final Cut using the follwing meanings for each colour:

• Orange - Good Take
• Red - Best Take 
• Cyan - Alternative Shots
• Purple - Interviews
• Green - B Roll

I used most of these colours, however, I decided that it would be easier to use red as bad takes and green as best takes, because in my eyes, red means bad and green means good, so using this format would make it a lot less confusing and easier to edit with. 

After doing 5 out of the 9 tapes, which took me about 3 hours, I decided that I would label the tapes that needed renaming with 'NEEDS RENAMING' and spoke to Lewis to let him know what I had done and he said that he would do the rest of the renaming since I had done more than half of it. 

Finally, before finishing for the day, I renamed the bins holding all of the footage slightly, by adding to the end of each tape name with what was on the tape. This would make it a lot easier to find the footage on each tape. 

Overall, I am happy that I got straight on with renaming the footage and I am looking forward to looking through the rough cut 

David Lean

David Lean was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, born in 1908 and passed away in 1991. He is best known for his works such as:

• A Passage To India (1984)
• Great Expectations (1946)
• Oliver Twist (1948)
• Brief Encounter (1945)

As a young boy, he would spend every evening in the cinema and in 1927, his aunt advised him to find a job involving films, doing what he loved. He went to Gaumot Studios where he was offered a months trail without pay and stared off as a teaboy, shortly after was promoted to a clapperboy and then to a third assistant director. He started his editing career in 1930, editing newsreels for Gaumont Studios and also Movietone. He then started editing feature length films in 1934, starting with Freedom of the Seas and then Escape Me Never in 1935.

By 1942, he had edited more than two dozen feature length films and began his directing career. In 1968, he was given membership of the Guild of British Film Editors. Also, his final film, A Passage to India, he directed and edited the film himself. 

His first film that he directed was in collaboration with Noël Coward on In Which We Serve in 1942. Following that, he adapted some of Coward's plays into films, including Blithe Sprit (1945)  and Brief Encounter (1945). Following that, he also adapted some of the works by Charles Dickens, such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). 

He was also a founding member of the British Film Academy, which is now known as the British Film and Television Academy (BAFTA). 

What is H.264?

H.264 is a video compression format. It also has another name and is often reffered to has MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding). It has been primarily created for use with high definition systems such as HDTV, HD DVD and Blu Ray and has also can be used with lower definition portable devices such an iPods, Smartphones and Sony's PSP and PS Vita. It offers high quality videos with smaller file sizes than what would normally be offered by MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 ASP. 

The intent of H.264 was to create a new video compression format that will deliver high quality video in as low file size as possible.

Sources

http://www.h264info.com/h264.html