Documenting my role as an editor in a University assessed short film project.
Research, experience gained and problems & solutions throughout the process will all be included.
WEEK 4 - PREPRODCUTION
Tuesday October 20th
Grouping completed, I am working as the editor on Charlotte Debacker's short film: When I Grow Up. It's about how one boy's aspirations and dreams narrated over the harsh reality of his (and most peoples) life. In the end he realises that the most important aspect of life is happiness and he found that in his daughter.
Due to my post production role and with a small crew like ours we took on the advice in our lectures and assigned dual roles. This meant I was helping out wherever needed (proof reading scripts, location scouting with the group etc). Also due to our producer being very busy with external work we have to spread the work load a bit more evenly to compensate.
Wednesday October 21st
We signed up to starnow.com and castingcallpro.com and contacted a few actors through emails provided. The script requires five actors, two of which are children, which is presenting quite a few difficulties. Again, although this isn't my production role at all I was asked to help look through actor's profiles and be present for auditions - this wasn't a problem and I enjoyed the process.
Thursday October 22nd
More drafts of the script have been produced and we have found two children from Leeds willing to take part in this short film. The director has set up auditions with the children as well as other actors who responded to the advert on castingcallpro.
This week I've been helping the director, producer and script writer wherever I'm needed and instructed as, besides researching editors, colour grading, I don't currently have much to do. This isn't conforming to the classic structure of a film production team but we have so much work to do I would feel bad putting my feet up for these next two weeks. Next week will be a crucial week for the development of the film as we really need solid actors to deliver the film.
WEEK 5
Preproduction and auditions
Monday 26th October
Final script done I can now focus on research into the editing style I'll try and apply to this project.
Wednesday 28th
On the VLE there are a lot of interviews with editors which I'm finding fascinating. The depth and knowledge that the editors have of the fictional characters, the narrative, the side stories in the films they edit is profound. For example Lynzee Klingman explaining the underlying themes of "The War of The Roses". This deep understanding the editor has to have of the characters, plot, emotions, shot sequences, directors vision according to these professionals, is something I hadn't comprehended until now.
Thursday 29th October
Thinking over the interviews with Kevin Stitt, Lynzee Klingman and Alan Heim the key thing I learnt was: research and complete emersion into the story is so important to being able to produce good/solid content with a strong narrative throughout.
Today we held interviews for Julie and Sophie both actors fit the descriptions nicely. The director has asked both actors to be involved in the film.
Friday 30th October
I've bought a few books, I've been wanting to buy them for a while now:
Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Aufderheide
Making Short Films, Third Edition: The Complete Guide from Script to Screen by Clifford Thurlow
Film Music: A Very Short Introduction by Kathryn Kalinak
Making Short Films is a great book and has so much information from the authors past experiences. Throughout the next few weeks I will be reading and taking bits to try and strengthen my understanding of film and specifically short films.
WEEK 6
Monday 2nd November
More auditions today. A boy auditioned for the role of Young Tom; he fit the role well in terms of looks and voice but unfortunately he was just a little too tall to get away with being 8-9yrs old.
Have been looking at a useful website from Raindance. It lists the 6 stages of editing a film with a"Lo-To-No Budget".
1. Logging
2. First assembly
3. Rough Cut and Variations
4. First Cut
5. Fine Cut
6. Final cut
WEEK 7
Monday 9th November
Along with the books I bought I've picked up some books from the library on editing to deepen my knowledge.
The technique of film editing by Karel Reisz & Gavin Millar
Karel Reisz (hadn't heard of Gavin Millar) and his film "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" is a favourite of mine. British realism is something that has interested me as a filmmaker since writing an essay on the topic last year.
The second book is not so much about the theories and technique of film editing. "The conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film" is a number of conversations that the author, Michael Ondaatje, had with Murch, a famous sound designer and editor who has worked on an extraordinary amount of films. His sound designing credits include: The Godfather, The Talented Mr.Ripley, The English Patient, American Graffiti). He went to film school with George Lucas and worked with Coppola at Warner Bros.
The book provides me really interesting and valuable insights to the world of film editing and the industry, through a very quirky man.
Tuesday 10th November
The final workshop for our Short Film Production module was teaching the editors of the projects how to colour grade but also how to work the software and the various steps of how to import the footage. Really interesting and useful workshop as it's opened my eyes to actually how much one can achieve in post production - in terms of colour and style. If for whatever reason the camera operator gets the white balance wrong the editor can adjust the different colours that make up the clip to get the directors desired vision - although much better to get the balance right in camera.
Wednesday 11th November
Filming locations are constantly being changed and evolved due to the main location being outside and the bad weather arriving. In fact this November has been predicted to be the wettest in UK history....
Wednesday 11th November
Due to the weather we have been forced find a few alternative locations and also thought of a few more scenes that will have to be added for narrative reasons. In terms of editing and colour grading for me this will completely change the colour palette of the scene. Furthermore the differing colour spectrums from scene to scene will now be different, this is fine and the locations we have found are visually more exciting with more opportunities to excise stylish colour palettes as seen on the page "Movies in Colour".
Another Walter Murch interview comparing editing to dance and telling a good joke talking about the essential nature of rhythm and pace - something that is consistently mentioned in our lectures. Interestingly he also talks about reframing the image and how digital technology gives the editor increasing power to change the frame - a theme brought up in our workshop this Tuesday.
Friday 13th November
First shooting day is tomorrow, we are shooting the end scene of the film tomorrow and then on Sunday the middle sections.
An article by Richard Lackey shows the power of colour:
"In the sense of the work of the world’s greatest cinematographers we admire so much nothing is accidental. A strong red color has been shown to raise blood pressure, while a blue color has a calming effect. Some colors are distinctly associated with a particular location or place, while others give a sense of time or period."
I have made my own colour palettes to use as a base for the park scene tomorrow from a scene in Good Will Hunting. Re-watching the film I realise how much effort has been made by the cinematographer, costume and colour grader to create such vibrant and coherent visuals
Sunday 16th November
We've just finished our first shoot; it was a push with three of us but we managed to pull it off whilst looking vaguely professional!
Shot log attached.
I was boom operator for the two day shoot as well as the data wrangler straight after each day. After the days filming the crew sat down and went through the footage on a 50inch TV as I completed the shot list (couldn't do it on set as I was constantly needed for sound and moving equipment etc.
From my research this week on colour theory we tried to apply some of this knowledge to the shoot. I have made a few examples of the colour palette achieved on the shoot; I need to understand the colours within each scene if I'm going to have a chance to be able to colour grade successfully.
This coming week I will offload all footage and start editing the scenes we have shot with the director. This means we will have more time to re-do and re-edit If needed.
WEEK 8
This week has been relatively calm apart from losing an actor due to not being able to finance his trip up from London.
On Monday & Tuesday of this week I - with invaluable help from course staff - offloaded all the footage (80GB) onto the system through Resolve and then onto Avid.
Labelling, sorting into scene bins and colour coding took place on Tuesday and took around 3hours. This organisation, that I've never done previously, has facilitated the editing process so much. Labelling and sorting is something I will always do in the future.
Wednesday 18th
I started editing the final scene of our short - this scene's pacing is really key to the message the director wants to get across so I only did a rough edit and will refine with the director present in week 9. The shots look really nice and can't wait to start exploring the different directions the narrative can go.
One issue I have is that we recorded the sound on the second day on my H4N, as the shots we filmed weren't intended to be synced with the dialogue. After viewing some shots clearly will be more powerful with sound. We synced as much as we could with a sound pairing software but many of the shots still need syncing.
This is something I will have to just do manually...
WEEK 10
1. Logging
2. First assembly
3. Rough Cut and Variations
4. First Cut
5. Fine Cut
6. Final cut
This week I've been very busy with my two other modules as next week they both have deadlines. Nevertheless I have had to dedicate some time to editing. I have created an edit log and have systematically gone through all of the footage. I worked out that we have 11 scenes within our film.
5 x 60 = 300 and 300 / 11 = 27.
So if all scenes are equal I have 27seconds maximum allowed each. I found this time allowance very helpful while trying to work out which scenes needed more time to best get across the narrative and which scenes pacing fitted a shorter scene rather than a longer one. I have edited six out of the eleven scenes in a rough cut. All scenes have been assembled separately giving me more freedom to change and reshape. This weekend (5th & 6th) I will merge the scenes together to create the first rough cut for the director to see.
I have taken into consideration the words of Walter Murch but will pay closer attention to his rules when doing a more refined edit. These are:
Is it true to the emotion we want to achieve?
Does it tell the story and advance it in the right direction?
Does the cut happen at the right point musically?
Do we know where the audience is looking on the screen and are we taking into consideration when it cuts, what they then will be looking at in that part of the screen?
The problems of dealing with three dimensional objects in a two dimensional screen.
"It cuts like butter" - Walter Murch
LASTLY
In another video (linked in this weeks blog) showing the tactic of editing to the eye.
UPDATE:
Have been having a lot of technical difficulties. After editing every scene into a rough cut, but editing the scenes separately in different timelines, for some reason three of the edited scenes have disappeared. Will have to reedit and hope it doesn't happen again.
WEEK 11
Editing in full swing now, me and the director have been working on the story and structure as at the moment it just isn't gripping enough; the pacing is too irregular and I'm trying to work out how to change this. As no storyboard is available for this project I'm going through with the script as a guide. Because I was on set for all the filming days and was involved with the writing the script suffices as the basic structure
I think I will have to restructure large parts of the film by taking out a few scenes that aren't essential and swapping the fight & breakfast scene around. We have two days to edit before I leave; its going to be tough but I think If I persist the storyline with hopefully emerge and the emotion that we all imagined and hoped for will also appear.
I have been applying the cutting to the eye technique and it has helped a lot with making the edit "invisible" which, for this particular project, the director wants it to be.
Music is a very key aspect of the film's overall cohesion and I'm picking out a few that aren't too controlling of the visuals. For this film it needs to carry the image but also merge into the background in some areas. I've decided to use copyrighted music as firstly we don't have time to compose and perform our own music that would be of any standard in comparison to professional copyrighted music. Secondly the music I chose fits very nicely with each scene and ties them together superbly.
The first track is : A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(less) Process by Stars Of The Lid
The second is Abandon Window by Jon Hopkins
The positioning of the tracks is vital and has taken more time to get right than I planned.
I am sceptical to colour grade as we only have one day to do so and I feel that that isn't enough time to get the colour consistent and looking as good as possible. However, the director doesn't agree with the washed out look of the Black Magic which I completely understand.
COLOUR GRADING
We completed the grade in Resolve on the last day I was there. Due to this rush and lack of time I feel our grade could of been a lot better but I'm glad we went through with the grading and didn't leave it untouched as some shots now look a lot better.
SOUND MIXING
This was a first for me and I learnt a huge amount in terms of sound mixing on this project. There's much much more to learn. Creating a fluid dialogue (Scene 1) when there's irregular sounds such as rain, trees, passing cars and engine sounds posed many challenges for me and honestly I think I have done a good job for the majority of the film. Although I think I did a good job it is far from excellent with parts feeling a little unbalanced; if only I had more time!
The film is completed, I'm proud of the work and dedication we've all put into it - it feels like a succinct, whole narrative and for that I am really impressed with the team. I have deepened my knowledge of editing through reading multiple books and watching the professionals past and present in interviews and films. This module has given me time and space to research and start to understand the art and complex methodology of film editing.
This is just the beginning!