Today's finalities and decisions

After tweaking their edits, both Dan and Jonathan burnt their versions of the films to disc and presented them to myself and Amy. Having seen Dan's more recently than Jonathan's I knew more or less what to expect from his version but Jonathan, clearly having put a lot of work into his edit since I last viewed it two days ago, was radically different. It was a much tighter edit with interesting and relevant cutaways, the music ran more or less all the way through the film and overall the new version kept my attention more than Jonathan's previous edit.

Having given Dan and Jonathan some final improvements to tweak their edits, it fell to Amy and I to decide which of their edits we would submit as the finished item. This was a difficult decision to make as we felt both pieces had strong elements and where one lacked the other made up for. Dan’s edit includes more footage of the interviews which we were worried would contribute to the audience losing interest whereas Jonathan’s piece has the same relevant material but it had been intercut with more cutaways and music to fit the mood of the voiceovers. However, in the end we chose Dan’s edit of the film simply because we thought that his footage combined with the voiceover made for a more solid conclusion to our findings. This was an extremely difficult decision for myself and Amy and we talked at length about the pros and cons of each version of the film. If I was to produce this film again I would suggest that all four of us have a greater group input into a single edit of the film in order to incorporate everyone’s ideas and opinions more fully.

I have enjoyed working on this film more than any other I have made to date as it has taught me more about the importance of organisation and group discussions than I could ever have imagined before I had made it. All members of the group have been as equally hard working and we have worked brilliantly together on all aspects of production. I think that group communication is a huge part of achieving a good end result and though we have encountered a few communication issues in some areas, we have overcome these to make a piece of work that I am immensely proud of.