Degrees of Seperation. My edit.

I have been reading a magazine article about engagement of the audience entitled, 'point of view'. The bit that interested me was the discussion of 'subjectivity' . We have shots of Mark Herbert talking almost directly at camera.

I think after reading the article it is clear that when the subject looks directly at camera it seems more personal.

I intend to use this for effect in my film. In my opening montage I will have some of the characters talk to the camera. Coupled with his dialogue, the shots of Hussain will aim to shock the audience in order to keep them interested for the rest of the doc.

Here Hussain looks directly at camera and says "Its crap, its going to be crap, youre just going to die crap". This was taken out of context for the purposes of shocking the viewer and served as a memorable quote which inspired the title of the documentary.

To have an acclaimed producer speaking almost directly to camera helps to show a more personal point of view. Mark is extremely informative in his answer and I feel this is best as my documentary serves to educate as well as entertain.

Presentation tomorrow

Having completed my edit and presented it today, it received a good response, similar to the one I believe Jonathan to have had with his cut. Steve didn't have any criticism really, other than that it seemed to suggest an underlying message that money is important for us media students, and that this 'success' is what we're looking for. I disagree of course, but can see where he is coming from, in my edit anyway.

It seems like we have got two very strong cuts to go with tomorrow, and today is the day we decide which one we choose. Either way I am very pleased with our progress on this film.

Editing improved.

Yesterday I received some useful suggestions from Jonathan to improve my edit. The majority of the improvements were made to the sound.

The first general improvement I made was using the pen tool to make the sound fade in and out to a more professional standard, rather than using the cross fade effect.

The screenshot shows how, especially with the voiceover sections, I faded the sound in and out with the pen tool to clear it up and give it a more professional standard. I also dipped the audio levels of the sound track where necessary, to give more emphasis on the voiceover. As Jonathan also pointed out, some of the audio levels were peaking into red and so I had to alter these slightly which meant adjusting some of the other levels also. Quite a few of his other suggestions on the audio were also to move some of the songs to start a bit earlier. I feel this has worked really well in parts where it overlaps the end of the interview, and the beginning of the next voiceover.

He had suggested to use some cutaways at certain parts of the film. Below shows one attempt at doing so.


However, I felt that the use of cutaways in this part felt lost because they weren't really relevant to what Hussain the interviewee was saying, and the only one I could find that remotely seemed relevant just seemed pointless on its own. Furthermore, I wanted to keep a Cinema Verite feel to the interviews, and this was the same with the Tom Gatis interview. Not only that but in terms of his suggestion with cutting parts out, although I did want to also, I felt that with all the information being given by the interview itself, it was too important to cut any out. In the end I decided to remove the cutaway attempt, and rather than go back to using a cross dissolve effect like before hand, I didn't insert anything and left it how it was. I was pleased with the end result and felt it is somewhat of a compromise. I haven't changed any other parts in the interview as I felt they worked better.

However I did have some slight problems with the soundtrack of 'Air France - No excuses' because when I tried to use the pen tool, it would insist on cutting the beginning of the song out, which was the section of the song I wanted.

This screenshot shows how I ended up keeping the cross fade at the beginning of the song because it had the correct result I was wanting.

Final Meeting

Meet at 11:30 at the downstairs cafe tomorrow. Harry suggested planning the presentation for Friday, so we'll definitely spend an hour or so on this. I also want everybody to have a last look through the group folder and see if I have missed anything.

See you then!

Group Folder - Research Materials

If anybody has any research materials, even a few notes on anything you've seen that might have influenced the documentary at all, could I have them for the group folder please?

Also Dan/Jonathan, if you have any notes on editing styles/influences I will need these too.

I'll need everything for the group folder by Wednesday at the latest! Thanks

Filming on Tuesday

On Tuesday we are meeting to film a few extra shots for the end of the film (Steve's suggestion). We will need to get shots of the following:

Dan editing - selecting clips, etc

The preparation paperwork that goes in to making a film (we will use the group folder for this)

Meet at 11:15 at stores and film in edit one. The equipment is booked and Dan has the edit room booked out all day.

Steve's Suggestion

In the tutorial today, Steve watched my version of the edit and had one suggestion that would improve it. The idea being that because we have manipulated the public interviews to include the positive things they have said at the end, we should show this process somehow, maybe by voiceover, arguing against the negative public views at the beginning. Amy reckons this would work well with some new cutaways recorded of me editing etc.

My personal thoughts on this are that it would be a good idea to incorporate into the film, especially with the kind of tone it has already. However I feel that at this stage of the production it may be hard to fit it into the piece, and organising equipment etc at the last minute just to change something that already works may stretch us a little, in my opinion.