Tutorial

During this, we spoke of our idea's for the audio project and how we came to them. It was suggested that we think about how we came to the conclusion of having a concept of time, and why it was decided to have it slowing down as opposed to speeding up. So here goes..

Why time?
Because it's something that no-one quite understands. It is a complex subject and I feel that it would give us a wide variety of aspects to think of covering - however, we need to ensure that it doesn't become too 'random' - as we would like it to have some form of 'storyline'.

Why getting slower?
Because the feeling of time taking forever - I think is something that a lot of people can relate to. I think that if during editing we gradually slow down the ticking of the clock it will add a greater aspect of interest in the audio and allow it to become more engaging.

How to expand on this idea?
Since the tutorial, Me and Emma have come up with some possible ideas for the project:

• To have a circular narrative. We'd like to keep the beginning simple and create a build up throughout the middle section. We would also like to repeat the beginning sequence at the end.
• To possibly have a voice-over of someone speaking through their journal - e.g. 29.11.11, 8am, I woke up to hear... - This will in turn create more of a narrative to the piece. We could during this have the ticking sound of a clock playing constantly throughout the audio as background noise. The sound of the person doing their daily activities could be heard - writing for example - the sound of pen on paper. A hydrophone mic could be used to create the sound of hands going into a bowl of water as the person begins to wash their face - this however could prove too complicated as we wanted to keep a relatively simple idea.
• To use the concept of time as part of this piece - The person could have, for example an assignment due in and so the ticking of the clock gets faster as they run out of the time and returns to regular speed once handed in. The circular narrative could link into this through the aspect of doing the work, the build up is the rushing to get it finished in time (where we hear scribbling on paper, ripping up pages and screwing them up, tapping of the keys on a laptop...etc

We have booked out equipment for Wednesday and are hoping to be able to book a contact mic to get intricate sounds of ticking clocks for the piece. 

Audio Project - Ideas

Some initial ideas that I have had for this project, involve a concept of time.

The audio could begin with a quiet, constant ticking of an analogue clock that gradually gets slower (or faster). 

If slower - this would represent that feeling of a day taking forever which we have all felt

If faster - the ticking could turn into a heart beating - just an idea!

The ticking of a clock could evolve into sounds of other activities, a pencil writing on paper for example.  Or we could make it a more abstract piece by adding various sounds from other types of clocks - e.g. alarm, grandfather...etc.

Evaluation

  Overall, I feel that me and Jordan worked well as a team throughout planning, production and editing. We both took each others ideas on board to ensure that we had a finished result that we were both happy with.

  I think that a couple of elements could have been improved as listed in previous posts. I also think that a couple of shots that would have made our film better are:

• A Wide shot of the character walking towards the camera in the woods with the trees either side of him.
• A series of Close-ups of the character's face as he walks.
• An Extreme Close-up of his eyes as he looks at the gravestone.
• A Wide shot showing him walk into the graveyard from the entrance.

 I am happy with the final result and now we just need to present it during tomorrow's seminar...

Fine Cut

  After the tutorial with Dom, we thought of how we could improve our film straight away and came up with the resolutions found in the feedback post below. 

  We used the 'camera shooting log' to understand what footage had been used in order to know if enough was left to fill in the following deleted gaps:

• The cuts between walking sections that were shot from an angle on the opposite side to the previous
• The diminished areas of footage taken from the 'stills' after placing all of the front view shots of the character at the beginning - making them faster by cutting the timing in half

  This however proved that there was little footage remaining. We resolved this problem by repeating a section of the graveyard sequence at the end of the film. This worked in our favour as Dom also mentioned that it would be helpful for the audience to have an idea at the beginning, where the character is making his journey to. We also made the shots of the character looking at the grave at the end, slightly longer, to create a more intense atmosphere to the film.

When creating the fine cut, we refined the film and ensured that the pacing and colour effects were right and the storyline was put across well enough to understand, as well as adding the final chosen title of 'A Lonely Man'. We decided upon this title as we felt it described the essence of the film and the reasoning for his journey well. 

  We finally exported the film as a playable dvd and a quicktime file.

Edit Tutorial Feedback - 04/11/2011

During our tutorial where Dom viewed a rough cut of our film, the main issues that came up and need to be resolved are:

• To put all still's of the character facing the camera with changing backgrounds together and put as a sequence somewhere else within the film - We have decided to put these towards the beginning, to create a greater reasoning as to why the character is making the journey. 
• To alter the edits between the walking sequences, so that the camera doesn't show the view from an opposite angle. In turn giving the impression that he is walking in a different direction and making the audience feel like they are being taken out of their seats - We knew this was an issue already when making the rough cut. We plan to change this aspect by removing the shots and either making the footage longer or, though adding more close-ups to add more interest.
• To make it clearer at the beginning of the film where the character is walking to - We are going to resolve this by repeating a section of the graveyard scene that is shown at the end. This will help the audience to understand where the character is going throughout the film.

Editing

  We used Final Cut Pro to edit our short silent film. We did this using the basic knowledge we had and learnt a lot of our way around the software through trial and error during the first through sessions of editing. After this, we found it much easier to edit our project. For example, we used the blade tool to trim areas of footage as well as simply dragging it to make it smaller. We also included simple transitions such as 'cross dissolve'.

  Throughout the editing process, we took it in turns to physically edit the film using the mouse or keyboard and each put across our ideas to ensure that the result was something that we both wanted.

  We edited various aspects of the film to make that character's journey look continuous. An example of how we did this would be through cross fading cut sections of a long shot of the character walking up a path to highlight the aspect of time in the piece. Another example of cross fading that was used, was between a panning shot of a landscape and a graveyard to create a seamless piece of film.  

Filming

The Day

Call Sheet

 - This was my first attempt at a call sheet - Hopefully it was done right and if not I will at least have had some experience in making one for the future.

Schedule:

  To film this piece, we used a Canon XM2, which we booked out a day prior to the shoot.

Final Shot List

  After the pre-shoot briefing, me and my partner Jordan Barningham promptly made our way to the graveyard in the village - that we knew of through our research prior to the shoot. Here we filmed the sequence that will be edited towards the end of the film as a way of demonstrating the character's main focus of the film. 


  We then made our way up a route named 'Grindsbrook', that was recommended to us by the lecturers. We used a map given to make our way towards what was still a beautiful landscape, despite the miserable weather.

 We decided when we saw this to change some other aspects of our film. The storyline was then changed to a character that is making a journey throughout the film to a graveyard, where the grave of a loved one stands. Interchanging between this footage, the almost 'still' shots of the character with a changing background of around 5 shots is viewed. This demonstrates the places they shared together. The ending shows all of the stills in a constant flow as his back faces the camera. This displays his distress as he faces the views. A series of shots of him at the grave is shown as it fades to black. The overall film still uses the same original concept with a few 'tweaks'.   

  We filmed all of this footage on the route and chose our locations based on lighting, relevance (with the use of paths in walking segments) and scenery to create overall production value.

Camera Shooting Log

Problems

  Our initial idea of having the effect if the background changing as the camera circled the character, didn't go to plan. This was due to the lack of steadiness of the camera. To avoid this problem in future, a steadicam would be needed to stabilise the camera and allow all of the intended shot to be in view.

  In order to resolve this problem, we managed to gain a similar effect by filming the footage in the same planned locations as a 2 second shot of the character facing the camera standing still. To add some variety, we also filmed the same shot but with the subject's back facing the camera, the reason of this will become clear in the final shot list.

  Another issue that we came across was that we had never been to Edale before - Our planned mise-en-scene. This made it hard for us to make a clear plan of each location for our film. However, we resolved this problem beforehand by viewing images on google, although this still didn't give us an explicit representation of the place. This meant that that it was up to us on the day to find positions suitable enough to fulfil our planned expectations for the film, making it a longer process. In the future, I would view the location before filming as this was not possible for this project.