Week Twelve - Out O' Date Feedback (02/05/13)

In today's session, we were looking at our comedy edit films and getting feedback on them. We first started off by filling in the module feedback forms whilst we all copied our films onto the shared folder, ready to watch on the big screen.

Some of the feedback that Chris gave to other people's films that I should check on my film was:

• There should be some sound of the car entering the car park on the first close up of Alf
• There should be a wild track underneath the entire film to make the sound run smoother
• In the sound design, there could be bird song, lorries going past, a lorry beeping as it reverses
• Make sure the lady doesn't start laughing during her line as she walks inside
• Add a sound effect when Alf is kneed

When it was my turn to show my film to the class, I was very happy with it apart from one part that I didn't notice whilst editing with the headphones on. The very last line from the lady as she's at the front door, I could hear her line of dialogue twice so I will go back to the edit and take that bit of dialogue out so it is only heard once. The feedback that Chris gave me was very helpful, the feedback I received was:

• The sound of the manager walking with the high heels is problematic
• The last 10 seconds of the film needs trimming and making sure that Alf's reaction is seen after the lady has shouted out of the front door to him

Overall, I am happy with the feedback that I received and I am going to start re-editing using the feedback that I received as soon as I can. The lesson was focused on going through all of the comedy edits and after listening to everybody's feedback as well as my own feedback, I have a lot of ideas that I am looking forward to changing in my final cut of the film.

Come Dine With Me - Voiceover

I have been watching Come Dine With Me recently and noticed that the voiceover was used very effectively, making it very different from every other cooking programme I have seen. Come Dine With Me is a Channel 4 television programme where 4-5 contestants go around to each other's houses on each night of a week where each contestant holds their own dinner party for all of the other contestants and at the end of the night in the taxi home, the contestants each rate the night out of 10 and at the final night the winner is revealed.

Whilst watching the television programme, I noticed that there is a narrator who does a voiceover through the programme. This voiceover that is used introduces the show and speaks throughout, introducing each of the contestants and speaks throughout. The one thing that stands out and makes it different to all other voiceovers is that a lot of the time, it is very sarcastic. For example, on one episode that I saw, on of the contests called Johnny is walking up to the front door and the narrator/voiceover references The Shining and says 'Here's Johnny', taken from The Shining.

Again, in the same episode a few seconds later, A lady called Carol knocks on the door and ringing the door bell and holds her ear because is was a loud ring. The narrator then comes in and says 'Bit Deaf!' to add a bit of sarcasm to the show and make it more funny.

I think that the use of the voiceover, making it sarcastic and funny adds to the show very well, making it stand out from all over cooking programmes and I believe that without the sarcasm, the show wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as it is now and wouldn't be as successful. 

Out O' Date - Fine Cut and Export (01/05/13)

Today, I worked on finishing my fine cut of Out O' Date. I watched the fine cut that I had finished yesterday through to see if there was anything that I thought needed changing and I noticed that some of the sound needed some attention. On one of the sound clips, the lady was heard saying her line that I had her saying in the clip after it. I had to cut the end off the clip where she was heard saying the line where she wasn't meant to be and then move the sound from that clip forward to make the sound run smoother.

After that, I had to do the same thing with the sound of the clip where the lady was walking towards Alf to confront him about what he had done. The lady could be heard twice saying the same line so I did the same technique that I did with the previous clip.

Finally, I watched the film throughout several times to make sure that everything was how I wanted it to be and then I exported it ready to screen tomorrow morning to gain more feedback on the film.

Film Analysis - Get Back

Title - Get Back
Director - Eliot Rausch
Year - 2013
Running Time - 04:04

Get Back is a short film that looks that a relationship where the man is constantly on his phone and ignores his partner because of it.

The very first shot of the film stood out to me, as I didn't properly know what the film was about before watching it. The first shot shows a lady cuddling and kisses her partner in bed as she is falling to sleep, and in the shot, we can't see the man's face. Eventually, the camera slowly tilts up revealing the man's face and his eyes are open, focused on something in front of him, which we find out is his phone, and not focusing on his partner in bed next to him.

This was a shock to me because originally I thought that the man was asleep and his partner was trying to get to sleep, but after being shown what the man was actually doing, it brings emotion to the film, which made me feel sorry for his partner. 

Throughout the entire film, there are many shots that show that the man's partner isn't happy with the way that he is on his phone all of the time and how it always distracts him from her. These shots tend to be close ups to show her emotion by getting up close and personal with her.

There is a montage in the film, showing what appears to be the man and his partner out having a good time together in various places such as the woods, at dinner or in an arcade, however, I noticed that this montage is done very cleverly. The footage is made up of videos shot on the man's phone and also footage filmed professionally, showing both of the characters. I noticed that in the majority of the shots, there is either the man in shot and he has his phone with him at all times, or the footage is shot on the man's phone, showing that he is constantly on his phone. I think this is a very well thought out technique to get the point across to the audience about how much the man cares about his phone. 

I also noticed that the majority of the sound throughout the film when you can hear the couple speaking to one another, the sound is distorted and sounds as though it is coming out of some speakers. I think that the sound has been done like this because it shows that one of the few ways that the man communicates with his partner is through technology, for example we see them talking on Skype during the film.

Finally, one shot of I thought was very good is the shot that I have included below.

I really like this shot because it shows the separation between the couple, having them both lit very differently, the lady brightly lit and the man in darkness. There is almost a centre split down the middle of the frame showing that they are separated and also the backgrounds behind each of the characters are very different. I thought it was a very good shot at showing their separation and is my favourite shot in the film.

Overall, I though that the editing in the film made it very successful, bringing a lot of emotion to the audience and also is very clever in the way that to brings across the fact that the man is always using technology, whether it be a phone or a laptop or a video game in the arcade. 

Link to film - http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2013/04/30/get-back/

Out O' Date - Rough Cut and Fine Cut (30/04/13)

Today, I got on with finishing the rough cut for my Out O' Date project. I started off by taking the feedback that Chris had previously given me to improve the film. The first thing that I changed was the entrance of the car. When the car entered originally, the two shot of Tony and Alf and also the close up of Alf before he turned around didn't seem right. The two shot went on for too long and in the close up it looked like Alf was waiting for his cue to turn around. I cut these shots down and decided to add the long shot with the car in the foreground between them as the manager closed the car door.

The second piece of feedback that I took into account was the sound throughout the film. The two original opening shots didn't have any sound recorded with them so I added an atmos track over them that would suite them. I noticed in a lot of the other shots I could hear birds chirping in the sound so in the atmos track I used I made sure that there were birds chirping. The track that I used was recorded during my documentary project in Norfolk Park. I thought that the sound fit the shots very well. 

After adding these changes, I noticed that my sequence was only 01:18. I wanted to make the sequence longer so I looked back to the script and decided to carry on the sequence with what came next in the script. I found the footage for the next scene and added it into my project and renamed the files in the same format that I had renamed the first batch of files. 

I then started on the assembly of the next scene. I did the assembly in the assembly sequence that I had created first so then once I had done it, I could copy and paste the files into the rough cut sequence and do the rough cut in the rough cut sequence. I didn't have many problems whilst doing the assembly of the scene, how, one problem that I found was that there was only one close up shot of the lady at the door whilst she is talking and her starts smiling as she says she's going to get a bag of peas for Alf. I didn't like this shot but thought it would have looked very good. In the end, I decided that I would overlay the audio from the shot over a shot of Tony carrying Alf to the front door. After assembling the scene, I copied the sequence into the rough cut sequence to start the rough cut. 

In the rough cut of the scene, I started by trimming some of the shots down. The first shot that I made shorter was the opening shot to the scene where the milk float pulls up outside of the house. I wanted to make sure that the milk float was almost stopping when the shot started because I thought that it would have gone on for too long otherwise. 

Another major thing that I changed in the rough cut was again, the shot of the lady at the door. I left the shot as it was but whilst listening to the sound, I noticed that somebody was coughing in the background whilst she was talking. I tried to cut this cough out however, it was very noticeable that I had cut it out and it didn't work very well. I then decided to go through the clips where the lady could be heard talking and tried to add this audio over the shot. In the end, I managed to find a piece of audio that worked well with the piece so I placed it over the shot and synced it up and I thought that it worked very well. 

After making sure that the sound was alright, I duplicated the entire sequence and called the new sequence '03 Fine Cut 1' to start the fine cut. I started off by watching through the film again to see if there was anything that I noticed needing changing. One thing that I didn't like was the way that I cut to black for a second between the two scenes. I wanted to find a way to make these two scenes fit together without the cut to black in the middle. The way I did this was by overlaying the audio of the milk float pulling up over the shot of Tony lifting Alf up at the end of the first scene. I then brought the rest of the film forward to fit the two scenes together and this worked well. 

After changing this transition and trimming shots down to the correct length, I went through the entire sequence and listened to the sound and added audio crossfades to all of the shots, even if they were only 1 frame long, to make sure I could eliminate all of the clips and pops in the sound. 

Finally, I added the title and a credit to the end of the film before finishing the film and deciding to leave it for the day and have another look at it tomorrow to see if there was anything that I thought might be changing. 

Rock Climbing Documentary - Final Changes (30/04/13)

Today, myself and Lewis met to go through the feedback that we received for out Rock Climbing Documentary and make the final changes to the film before exporting it ready to hand in on Friday. The first change that I made to the piece was a fade between two shots because originally the wind came in very fast and was very noticeable. In the end, I cut the beginning section of the audio out that had the wind in it and dragged the audio from the clip before into it's place, making the transition a lot smoother and less noticeable. I added a crossfade in between the shots and made sure it was as smooth as I could get it.

The second change I made was in the same section as the previous change, and was to slightly change the cut of the music. Originally, the music cut and the beats of the music could still be heard during the fade out. I wanted to remove these beats and make the fade out a lot smooth so I removed the end of the clip and made the start of the clip longer to keep the length of the clip the same length. 

The last major change that I did to the piece was changing the structure of the film. Originally, we had two endings to the film, the first ending was the interview with the climber and then we cut onto another scene showing the climber bouldering again. I wanted to make the film end on the interview so I decided to try and move the end bouldering section into the centre of the film. The original structure of the film was the bedroom scene, then the bouldering scene, then the rock climbing and then back to bouldering. I wanted to move the end bouldering scene to just after the first bouldering scene to make it follow on. This worked very well and meant that the film could end on the interview after the climber had been rock climbing. 

As shown in the screenshot above, the shot of the climber sat against the wall with the snow in the foreground was overexposed. I wanted to try and solve this problem by changing the brightness and contrast. This didn't make the snow less exposed however, I did manage to get the colour in the shot to stand out a lot more and make the shot look nicer. 

Finally, before exporting the film, I went through the entire sequence and added audio crossfades to all of the shots to make sure that I could eliminate all of the clips and pops between each shot. After doing this and making sure that the sound was good, I exported the film ready to add to a DVD once I had finished my comedy film. 

The Swimmer

Title - The Swimmer
Director - Lynne Ramsay
Year - 2012
Running Time - 18 minutes

The Swimmer is a short film about a young man (the swimmer) who swims across rivers and lakes in Britain to a soundtrack of assorted nationalistic music. As he passes by the banks, people are their watching him and their thoughts can be heard. He then walks through the woods at night time and then returns to the water and appears to sink below to the surface.

The film was commissioned by the London Olympics 2012 and aims to give a real feel for the diversity of the landscape and people of Britain. It is a BAFTA winner for the Best Short Film for writer/director Lynne Ramsay.

One of the things that stood out to me most in the film was the use of the slow motion shots from above the swimmer whilst he is swimming. These shots added a lot of detail to the film, being able to see all of the swimmer's movements in great detail and I thought that this stood out and worked very well.

I also liked the use of the underwater shots in the film. I thought that they were shot very well and noticed that there weren't many bubbles in the water, making the shot very clear.I have always wanted to try underwater shooting and this film has inspired me to try underwater filming even more.

Overall, I thought the film was very good, showing the diversity of Britain's landscape and people very well, which was one of the main aims of the film as it was commissioned by the London Olympics 2012.