Cabaret Dance Video

We did a one day shoot with a group of cabaret style dancers and filmed six of their routines, as they wanted a showreel to advertise their group. I wanted to see what could be done with the edit and possibly just use it as editing practice for myself. I chose one of the routines and began editing through.

It was unusual for me to edit something like this, as the way it needed to be done was very different from anything I've done before. One reason for this is that usually when editing a short film or something similar I would be looking to use the best shots I could in artistic terms, whereas with this being promotional material for a business, I had to keep that in mind throughout and use the shots that best showed off the dancer, and the routine.

In terms of editing choices this video was much more restrictive for me also, as their is already a set routine that has to be followed, and so when putting two shots together I was basically looking for the right moment to cut not for creative purposes, but just so that the edit flows right. There was issues towards the end of the dance as the dancer changed her routine from one take to the other, and so getting the timing right was very difficult, and I ended up having to create a mix of the two routines in the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo-9pJz0Gag&feature=youtu.be

60 Second Film Project

After watching Martin Scorcese's personal journey through American cinema, James asked us to create a 60 second film that conveyed some of the same messages as the documentary. I decided to make a film about a Hitman with a conscious, who is being pressured into making a kill he doesn't want to by 'The Studio'.

https://vimeo.com/60134023

Conspiracy Theory Edits

For the first assignment of semester two, we were given the task to create a three minute documentary detailing a conspiracy theory of our choice, using only footage found online. This idea was inspired by the work of Adam Curtis, who had used this format multiple times to great effect. After watching one of his films, and some previous student work based on the theory that Paul McCartney died in a car crash, we set out to choose a topic of our own. 

There were two ideas that stood out to us, simply because we already knew the theories and had done research into them to a certain extent. The first of these was the idea that famed rapper Tupac Shakur had faked his own death in order to escape to a different country unnoticed. The other idea was to document the strange events that apparently happened after the filming of the 1976 film 'The Omen' which is famed for having strange and unfortunate things, sometimes lethal, happening to its cast and crew. This idea was abandoned as we decided this was more of an urban myth than conspiracy theory. 

The action we took was to plan our film, simply to get an idea of what footage we would need to collect in order to tell this story. We decided to follow the same sort of structure used in the aforementioned student film about Paul McCartney, and so after planning, we basically wanted to follow this structure: 

• Begin by introducing Tupac, his fame and popularity, with some statistics to back this up. 
• Go on to explain the 'official' story of his death, with no mention of a conspiracy theory.
• Now introduce our conspiracy theory, through one or more people explaining its basic ideas.
• Provide all of our evidence to support the theory, divided into sections and all using multiple sources. 

After scouring the web for footage of Tupac, and any material that would help us make out point, our next step was to create the pacing of the film. We wanted to begin with a bang, and so for the first shot after the title plays, the city lights pop onto the screen. This creates a feeling for the viewer of immediately being involved within the film, as it surprises them to some extent, and demands their concentration. From here, as we introduce Tupac and his fame, we created a slow pace, that was steady throughout, and simply played out as any normal documentary would in its introduction, calm and informative, not doing anything spectacular. This pace then slowed down for the segment talking about his death. This was important to do as it creates the emotion linked with seeing such a tragedy unfold. We only really used one or two clips here, to reinforce this effect. 

As we then moved through to the beginning of our conspiracy theory, when it is being explained and evidence provided, we used the slow pace of the death section as a starting point, and very gradually quickened the pace, through to the end of the film. We discussed quickening it so much that we would be cutting every second as we approach the ending, but this seemed too over the top, and we also knew we wanted one or two last shots at the very end, for the voiceover of Tupac telling us to expect him back to play over. It was important that we had this slow last word, as it sets a sombre and almost creepy last few seconds for the audience to take with them.  

I feel this assignment has been valuable to me in the way it has taught me more about the pacing of a film, as the footage we had gave us so much more choice than we would have on a normal film. But another aspect of this project that I feel was vital to my learning experience was the way it showed me how imagery and sound can link together to trick the viewer in some ways. For example I could have a sound clip playing of one of Tupacs songs, as he claims that he will come back resurrected, and if I put an image over the top of this that shows him in a sort of religious position, this creates a much more powerful impact on the audience than simply the sound or the image alone. 

The link to the video is below:

Tupac: Dead or Alive?

Scene 37

When beginning my edit of Scene 37, I immediately found that it was easier to work with than Scene 34. The sound was a huge improvement, and there was a greater variety of takes and shots to work with. This did mean I spent longer watching through the rushes, but I think this helped me in the way that by the time I started putting things into order in the timeline, I already had a good idea of which takes were the best, and which shots I wanted to incorporate when. I also thought the scene allowed for more variety in the way we approached the edit, as selecting a certain shot to show at a certain time could hold suspense in a more obvious way than Scene 37 could. One example of how I found this to be interesting was when the couple standing behind our protagonist leave the room. I decided to show the man coming over from the left, but then cut to the reverse shot so that the audience cannot see whether they leave or not. Katherine then looks behind her, attempting still to appear focused on the conversation with Dickie. By the time I cut back to the previous shot, the couple have been lost off screen.

This scene did also present some notable difficulties though, and these mainly sprouted from the male actor playing Dickie. As he forgot his lines on a few occasions, he did not end up speaking the same lines in the same order in each take, and it was a difficult task to assemble the pieces of his lines into something that followed the script as closely as possible. But I was happy with how this worked out, as the conversation does work, and his pauses work well to indicate his uncertainty about where Katherines attention lies.

I also attempted for the first time to perform colour correction on the scene, which I am still unsure about now, as I feel the quality of the image has been somewhat distorted by doing this.

Scene 34

Editing this scene was lots of fun for me, as it showed the process editors go through when working on feature films. Looking through the rushes, reading through the script, it all felt very professional. It was interesting for me to pick up pieces of a scene that I had no idea what was happening within the overall story, and put it together in a way that both made sense continuity-wise, and also gave me chance to explore and experiment. I found that editing this scene was less of an initial challenge than the Ghostbusters one, simply because I was now getting used to Final Cut X, and it felt more natural making my way around it.

As I progressed through the edit, I found that the main issue was the sound. The background noise of the waves and passers by could be accepted as diegetic sound, and so not only wasn't an issue, but benefitted the scene. But the problem that did come from the sound recorded was when these background noises grew louder than the characters dialogue, making it hard to hear the most important aspect of the sound mix in this specific scene. Most lines that suffered from this were easy to get around, simply by using pieces from different shots or takes. But as you will most likely notice, around the middle of the scene there is a line spoken by the female actress that is only just audible. This could not be replaced with any other takes as just after the line is delivered the male actor sits back down next to her, and on the timeline of my edit this would have created a continuity nightmare. This problem is something I hope to address in my next edit, and hopefully get right.

The link to my Final Edit of Scene 34 is below:

Scene 34 Final Edit

2001: A Space Odyssey Match Cut

Possibly the most famous match cut of all time, this incredible cut spans the entire history and beyond of evolution and the human race, symbolically snapping between the first time tools were used to a spacecraft, and in one huge time jump, lasting a millisecond to us, showcases just how far our species has come. It is undeniably an impressive cut, and shows how so much meaning can be put into one simple edit.

Final Ghostbusters Scene Edit

After changing most of the cuts from the initial edit, and a lot of cleaning up, we decided that we had a finished version of the scene that was a vast improvement. The sound, although still far from perfect, was much more audible than before, and slightly cleaner. Obviously it was impossible to get perfect sound with the equipment we were using but I believe we did well eventually with what we had to work with. We spent some time making slight alterations to when cuts were made, and from doing this it was easy to see how changing the timing of a cut by one frame can make a big difference to the final product. After working with both Premier Pro and Final Cut X editing software, it has become clear that Final Cut is definitely for me. I am a visual type of person and the layout, design and smoothness of Final Cut mixes well with this. The main thing I have taken away from this project is how effective it can be to produce multiple drafts of an edit, first putting together a rough version and then smoothing out all the kinks. By doing this I believe we came out with a much better finished edit than we would have if we simply put one single version together. 

Below is the link to the Final Edit of our Ghostbusters Recreated Scene. 

Ghostbusters Scene Final Edit