Editing Seminar
During Deb's seminar last week we were given a range of random different clips from adverts and tv exerts and told to create a new story or meaning by editing them using Premiere. I found this quite difficult at first because I found a lot of the clips weren't particularly interesting so took a while to trawl through them and find some good material. Below is my attempt at this. The story is basically about some guy who takes a 2CB pill in a pub, has intense hallucinations and then dies. I couldn't do as much with this as I hoped to beacause I only have the trial version of Premiere on my PC (also lack of time) so wasn't able to add any effects or mix the audio properly so the result is kind of half finished...will try and make it better (particulalrly the audio) once I have the full version of Premiere. I have used the montage editing technique here to give a surreal and disjointed effect.

Editing
We have been asked to find a piece of writing about editing that me. I am particularly interested in montage editing as I find it to be more artistic and allows you to use imagery in a way to make something look more exciting and appealing than it maybe actually is, for instance with film trailers.This style of editing is also used in adverts/commercials, a side of audiovisual design which I am quite keen to get involved in.

The paragraphs below are taken from http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp050.htm.

Thematic/Montage Editing
In thematic editing, also referred to as montage editing, images are edited together based only on a central theme. In contrast to most types of editing, thematic editing is not designed to tell a story by developing an idea in a logical sequence.

In a more general sense, thematic editing refers to (as they say in the textbooks) a rapid, impressionistic sequence of disconnected scenes designed to communicate feelings or experiences.

This type of editing is often used in music videos, commercials, and film trailers (promotional clips).

The intent is not to trace a story line, but to simply communicate action, excitement, danger, or even the "good times" we often see depicted in commercials.

From continuity, relational, and montage editing we now move to a technique for enriching editing and stories by adding extra "layers."
Below are some examples:

Kidulthood Trailer


Wu-Tang & Onyx - The Worst music video


Playstation 3 advert


Parallel Cutting
Early films used to follow just one story line -- generally, with the hero in almost every scene.

Today, we would find this simplistic story structure rather boring.

Afternoon soap operas, sitcoms, and dramatic productions typically have two or more stories taking place at the same time.

The multiple story lines could be as simple as intercutting between the husband who murdered his wife in the previous scenario and the simultaneous work of the police as they try to convict him. This is referred to as parallel action.

When the segments are cut together to follow the multiple (different) story lines, it's referred to as parallel cutting.

By cutting back and forth between two or more mini-stories within the overall story, production pace can be varied and overall interest heightened. And, if the characters or situation in one story don't hold your attention, possibly the characters or situations in one of the other storylines will.
Example:

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Films of Interest
I have decided to start composing a list of films that are of interest to me in terms of visual style, plot or script which I can derive influence from. I appreciate films that display interesting or surreal set and costume design or an off key visual style as well as an unusual plot therefore am particularly interested in the horror genre when it comes to film making.
I have only listed the film and director for these films for now but shall be making a deeper analysis into all aspects of these films on my journal throughout the year. I

Killer Klowns from Outer Space - The Chiodo Bros.
Halloween - John Carpenter
Sin City - Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller
Beetlejuice - Tim Burton
Team America - Trey Parker & Matt Stone
Big Trouble in Little China - John Carpenter
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Terry Gilliam
Planet Terror - Robert Rodriguez
Predator - John McTiernan
Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarentino
Kidulthood - Menhaj Huda
Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels - Guy Richie
Child's Play - Tom Holland
Heathers - Michael Lehmann
Labrinyth - Jim Henson
A Nightmare Before Christmas - Tim Burton
Cat's Eyes - Lewis Teague
Tales from the Darkside - John Harrison
Twilight Zone: The Movie - Joe Dante/John Landis/George Miller/Stephen Spielberg
True Romance - Quentin Tarentino
Batman Returns - Tim Burton
Black Christmas - Bob Clark
Pee Wee's Big Adventure - Tim Burton
Dolls - Stuart Gordon
Little Shop of Horrors - Frank Oz
The Trip - Roger Corman
Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom - Steven Spielberg
The Goonies - Steven Spielberg
Jaws - Steven Spielberg
Hostel - Eli Roth
The Warriors - Walter Hill
Ong-Bak - Prachya Pinkaew
Terrorvision - Ted Nicolaou
Trainspotting - Danny Boyle
A Nightmare on Elm Street - Wes Craven
The Beach - Danny Boyle
Alice - Jan Svankmajer
Itchi the Killer - Takashi Miike
The Grudge - Takashi Shimizu
Full Metal Jacket - Stanley Kubrick
The Shining - Stanley Kubrick
Eraserhead - David Lynch
Aliens - David Cameron
The Evil Dead Trilogy - Sam Raimi
Requiem for a Dream - Darren Aronofsky
From Dusk Till Dawn - Robert Rodriguez
The Wizard of Oz - Victor Fleming
Blade Runner - Ridley Scott
Heavenley Creatures - Peter Jackson
The Terminator - David Cameron
Braindead - Peter Jackson
Kids - Larry Clark
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Tobe Hooper
Alligator - Lewis Teague
Creepshow - George A. Romero
Romeo Must Die - Andrzej Bartkowiak
Total Recall - Paul Verhoeven
Dead Presidents - The Hughes Brothers
One Hour Photo - Mark Romanek
House II - Ethan Wiley
Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone
Gangster No. 1 - Paul McGuigan
Pan's Labyrinth - Guillermo del Toro
The Crow - Alex Proyas

Holding Pattern
After completing all the necessary preproduction work me and my 4 strong film crew began our 2 long days of filming. Although I did not find this to be most interesting of scripts (particularly as there was only one main character and no dialogue), this experience was invaluable as it was the first time I had the opportunity to properly use all the necessary filming equipment such as camera, sound and lighting, therefore learning how to set everything up correctly and understand how they work. Also working from someone elses pre-written script was a good experience as we had to be as creative as possible in terms of direction and design in order to make this film based on someone else's vision as entertaining and real to the script as possible.



I was generally happy with what we had produced considering it was our first film though after viewing other group's films there are definitely a few things I would have maybe liked to have done differently:-

1. Different types of shot for each scene.
Pretty much all our scenes consist of one long shot. I think it makes for much more interesting viewing to switch between shots now and then. For instance a close-up of the email Bogdan was typing or close-up of him ripping up his letter, or maybe even some steady-cam or panning shots.

2. More thought put into location and props.
I was generally happy with this apart from the scenes in the government office where we used a study room in the library. Although we had various props to make it look more like an office, there was still a lot missing and simply did not look convincing i.e. no telephone, computer or paperwork.

3. More sound/music
Although the mood we were going for this film was dull/depressing/mundane, I really liked how some group's had incorporated a soundtrack and extra sound effects to make viewing this no-dialogue film less tedious to watch.

4. Possibly further experimentation with effects and transitions during editing.

The highlight of our production of this film however is definitely the underwater scene. Here we went to a local swimming pool and attached our video camera inside a fish tank so that we could film underwater clearly without breaking the camera, we also used a brick inside the tank to gain efficient bouyancy to navigate the camera through the water with ease.

Holding Pattern
Shot lists:

Scene 1 - Establishing shot - wide angle

Scene 2- Shot 1 - p.o.v shot - walks into government office- Shot 2 - m.c.u - eating sandwich-Shot 3 - p.o.v - government official looks over

Scene 3 - Full body shot

Scene 4 - High shot, looking down- side on

Scene 5 - Wide angle shot

Scene 6 - Close up - his face, computer screen and typing

Scene 7 - Close m.c.u

Scene 8 - Full body shots

Scene 9 - Full body shot into close up

Scene 10 - Same as scene 1

PROPS: Suitcase, posters, sandwiches, newspaper, pastry, dictionary, Romanian music, letter, loose change.Office stuff: laptop, papers, mug, pens

Sound Effect Recording Seminars
In this 3 part seminar we had to first record a series of sound effects on the street using a special sound recording device; we asked to go on a scavenger hunt recording a variety of different sounds within the allotted time period, these included sound effects such as trams, keys jangling, drilling, car horn, fire engine, birds, traffic, dogs barking etc. We had to do our best not to pick up any other background noise in the recording. The next stage was to transfer these to hardrive, convert them to appropriate sound file format and edit the 'in' and 'out' points to make the sound effect as authentic as possible.



In the final seminar we were asked to select a video clip from a given selection of films, cartoons and adverts and remove the audio. We then had to take the sound effects we had recorded and use them with the visuals where appropriate using Adobe Premiere. I chose to use a gun shoot-out scene from the 1997 movie Grosse Point Blank. We hadn't recorded any gun shot sound effects during the scavenger hunt there had to recreate them as best we could using Sound Forge. I used the 'pneumatic drill' and 'crushing can' sounds and editing them using various distortion effects to create 'machine gun' and 'pistol' effects respectively before adding them to the video at the appropriate moments.

Overall I really enjoyed this task as sound production is something that I have never had the chance to experiment with before and found it to be fairly innovative and creative. However my lack of knowledge with Soundforge and the Adobe Premiere sound mixer meant my final result in this exercise was slightly unsatisfactory in parts though good practice. I would like to try to get to grips with this sound production more in my spare time as well as producing music in Cubase or FruityLoops.

3 Point Lighting

We had a seminar on this a few weeks back which although I found extremely uninteresting; has enlightened me on the importance of this technique and that it is standard procedure in film and photography, something which I never knew. Still although I have had a bit more practice with lighting now, I am still uncertain of when the lighting is correct for the appropriate shot.

Key/Main Light:

This is the main light. It is usually the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. It is placed to one side of the camera/subject so that this side is well lit and the other side has some shadow.

Fill Light:

This is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is used to fill the shadows created by the key. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key. To acheive this, you could move the light further away or use some spun. You might also want to set the fill light to more of a flood than the key.

Back Light:

The back light is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear. Rather than providing direct lighting (like the key and fill), its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.

Genre - Horror
Horror films are films of the horror genre that are designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, or horror from viewers. In horror film plots, evil forces, events, or characters, sometimes of supernatural origin, intrude into the everyday world. Horror film characters include vampires, zombies, monsters, serial killers, demons, ghosts and a range of other fear-inspiring characters.

I find horror to be one of the most fascinating genres genres of film due to the lack of boundaries allowing the film maker to really stretch the imagination and make more interesting and surreal use of story, character and art production; this shall be one of my primary focuses for the year so shall talk about this more later.



Above is my groups attempt at a typical horror scene and we are all fairly pleased with it. My main interest in this piece was the art production and decided to use Alex's large artistic graffiti covered basment as the location along with a monster/witch mask found at a local costume shop. I thought the location was fairly unique seeing that it had a kind of colourful and surreal urban feel to it yet was dark and creepy at the same time.
The most impressive aspect of this film though would have to be the audio produced on FruityLoops, it creates a nail biting and intense build up as the victim wonders through the basement before intensifying to the max as the light shines onto the monster attacking before cutting out.
Given more time I think I would like to have tried this shot using a series of different camera angles and shots other than just the first-person POV and also worked on improving the shot of the killer appearing to be more subtle and scary as in more classical horror movies such as Halloween; other than that I was pleased with the result and will look forward to working on similar projects in the future.

Form and Interview

Task
Part 1
Think about the documentary form.
Where does your stage 1 project fit?Do some research about
the types. More exist than mentioned this morning.
Think about visual styles that might fit that documentary form.

Part 2
Devise a series of questions and camera stagings that seek to
help illuminate personality subject matter POV of main character.
Is a pre-shooting script appropriate? If so devise one.

Part 3
Directed study task discussion.
We will discuss your Treatment and script completed over this last week.

Types of Documentary

Expository
A very traditional form of documentary in which an unseen speaker performs a voiced-over commentary that literally explains the images that we are seeing. It is the form often associated with wild life or historic documentaries, in which the viewer might feel in need of information about what they are seeing. The audience is not particularly ‘empowered’ by this kind of approach, finding itself in a subordinate role listening to the version of events that the filmmakers choose to prioritise.

Blue Planet


Observational
This is the mode associated with ‘fly-on-the-wall’ type documentaries. They appear to have been filmed in ‘real time’, as if the camera has happened upon events while those involved are seemingly unaware of the filming going on. The filmmakers correspondingly attempt not to interfere in what is underway. We do not hear their questions and we do not see them. There is no voice-over telling us what to think or what conclusions we should draw.

Airline


Interactive
Many documentaries feature a certain amount of interactive mode filmmaking. Such sequences will involve those being filmed responding to questions asked of them. In such interviews, the questions of the filmmaker may be left in or edited out. This may be a way that individuals in a film can make their own case, but it is also a mode that can act to undermine the interviewees, making them look foolish or deluded. Their interpretation of events or personal account may be rendered to seem trustworthy or untrustworthy depending on the context of surrounding shots or the nature of the statements being made in their own right.

Beef


Reflective
This is a style that is usually associated with more experimental documentaries, ones in which the filmmakers are interested as much in the process of making a film, of how reality can be constructed, as the actual content. At the simplest level the film may make no attempt to hide aspects of its construction - showing us the camera people for example.

Crocodile Hunter


Poetic
The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—'life-like people'—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic,lyrical and artistic.

London Drum n Bass Documentary