Evaluation

In this self-evaluation I aim to address the tasks we were set over course of this post-production module, how well I feel I did, the skills I have learnt and where I feel I could have improved. The first exercise was to put together a 4.30-5 minute documentary piece about poetry in Sheffield using the footage provided.


The Movement from Christopher Wood on Vimeo.


Although this was supposed to be a paired project, due to there being an odd number in the class at the time I ended up working on my own. I found this lack of a partner difficult and I think I would have got a quicker start if I had had someone to bounce off when going through a trial and error process to get to grips with Avid. I had attended all the lessons so far but still for some reason very basic things in Avid were going over my head. I think I was very much still working in a way that was more compatible to Final Cut Pro. At this point I got in touch with my tutor and arranged an extra tutorial session and got together some questions relating to the difficulties I was having. This extra session helped greatly and I felt I could now properly start with the task.

I tried to structure a clear narrative but I found it very hard at this point to discern what the narrative was. I was also finding it difficult to cut off the interviewee without the cut being too abrupt although in hindsight I would say I probably wrongly interpreted the brief. In the book In the Blink of an Eye veteran American editor and sound designer Walter Murch, which is a set text on this module, Murch refers to 'The Rule of Six' in which he explains what he thinks is, in order, the most important elements of editing to a film when deciding how to make a cut.

He says:

"An ideal cut (for me) is the one that satisfies all the following six criteria at once: 1) it is true to the emotion of the moment; 2) it advances the story; 3) it occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and "right"; 4) it acknowledges what you might call "eye-trace"- the concern with the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame; 5) it respects "planarity"- the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography into two (the questions of stage-line, ect); 6) and it respects the three-dimensional continuity of the actual space (where people are in the room and in relation to one another)."

The first two parts of the brief for this exercise were to establish empathy with the character (emotion) and to structure a clear narrative (story). I think I probably got overly worried about not cutting off the interviewee and about including the subject I had perceived as most important, the poetry. Actually I think I should have been focussing on creating empathy with the real subject, the poet.

I did use some voice over in the piece but it was more as just a getaway from a shot. I didn’t want to use a continuous shot of the poet talking or reading for too long and specifically in the reading sections, as it was a separate recording of the reading that the poet was miming too and he would sometimes go out of synch, so I would cut away to different shots but I don’t think the shot choices and timing of this were particularly considered or creative, they served as more of a stop gap until the next shot or section of poetry. By the time I had got a rough edit together we were already moving on to the next exercise and I was advised to focus on that. I think I ended up using this task as a way to learn the basics of Avid as opposed to a creative challenge because I was quite slow on the up-take. From a technical stand point this exercise was vital for me because I picked up basic skills needed on Avid such as the use of bins, splicing, marking points, title sequences, linking and unlinking audio to video and the general importing techniques.


The second task we were set was a to create an experimental piece of fiction from a new set of footage. This was called Non-Synch Drama Editing (Night Journey) as the final edit was also to be 4.30-5 minutes long.


Night Jouney from Christopher Wood on Vimeo.

Again working on my own the first task with this exercise was to organise and separate the clips. All of the footage and sound were in long sequences put together which meant that we hand to get to grips with sub clipping and sorting through footage as we watched it. The footage was made on film so the were some flashes between shots which acted as guidelines when separating.

We were given a rough script for the film but were told that the narrative could basically take any form we wanted as long as it was thought through. The story that I got from the film was of two men in a carriage on a night train. One man starts to see things in the other and comes to conclude that he is a cannibal. They then begin to negotiate whether this man will eat him and it is left somewhat ambiguously for the audience to wonder whether or not the man was actually a cannibal.

This piece seemed to me to be much more about the sound than The Movement was. There was lengthy narration which I sifted through and took which lines I wanted from. The fact that the sound was non-synch made the task easier in a way because one of the main challenges for me with The Movement was to try and synch up the poetry reading recording with the reading to camera by the poet. In another way this made the piece a harder edit because there had to be much more consideration of making creative cuts that fit with what was being said on the narration and making sure the audience was away which role was which between the two men.

After the narration was put into an order I looked back to In the Blink of an Eye in a section called "Cut Out the Bad Bits" where Murch says,

"In fact, one way of looking at the process of making a film is to think of it as the search to identify what - for the particular film you are working on - is a uniquely "bad bit." So, the editor embarks on the search to identify these "bad bits" and cut them out, so long as it does not disrupt the structure of the "good bits" that are left"

I feel that much of editing out the "bad bits" can be instinctive and that you should trust yourself as an editor to know what you feel works and what doesn't. Using this method I got together a rough editing with the visuals and then narration and then began to think about the Foley. First I put in the sounds of the train going on the tracks at the start, which is then interspersed in the film. Then the primary sound that I needed was the inner train hum for when the characters are in the carriage and the narration is going on. This helps greatly to keep the feeling of motion which is vital to this film. A big part of dialogue is about whether the protagonist will fall asleep therefore allowing the cannibal free reign of the carriage, but one thing keeping him awake is fear and the other is the prospect that there is a destination to this journey.

I did my best to structure a narrative from the material supplied and tried to create some interesting cuts that fitted with and at some times were un juxtaposition with the voice over and the shots either side.

Pacing-wise I liked the idea of a non-linear narrative in which we see the cannibal walking away from the train at the start but at this point we are not sure why. We then jump back to when the protagonist is first beginning to see this man as a cannibal and the into the cannibal talking about when he first saw the man. I wanted all this to lead up in a crescendo to the protagonist pulling the emergency stop of the train and at his most fearful and coming full circle to the cannibal walking away.

With regard to technical skills acquired I think the main one in this exercise was the idea of sound editing in Avid by using transitions to keep the train hum going in the background among other things.

I would have like to improve greatly on the sound and add some more in such in the forms of music to help the piece build more and more Foley at times like when the emergency chain is pulled.

The final project we were set for this module was to create a comedy edit of supplied footage from a film called Out of Date. As this was a comedy edit the focus seemed to be on pacing and timing. But also because this was our last task it would be an exercise in fine cutting, detailed editing and generally honing our skills into a shorter but likely more complex edit.

Out Of Date from Christopher Wood on Vimeo.

The main things I achieved with Out of Date was to get a much more detailed understanding of Avid. To begin there were a number of scenes to choose from and because I know I am not the best at editing I opted for the first scene as I thought the assembly would be quicker and easier. Starting from the start seemed logical to me.

I made a rough assembly and chose the shots I wanted. I had not bargained for the problems I would have with the sound. Much of the sound was already synched with the video but because the whole scene was shot outside in many of the clips there are cars in the background noise where there is not in others. Some of the line delivery by the actors is slightly off also and these things combined forced me to learn how to key frame sound in Avid. Comedy timing-wise one thing I tried to do was stick to the Murch's 'Rule of Six' again and in the section where the protagonist insults a woman I chose to cut to the woman's face while he said the insult so as to amp up emotion and show how offended she was.

This was also my first time trying my hand in colour correcting in Avid. I first just used the Auto buttons in the colour correction tool as I wasn't sure what I was doing and then after getting some feedback knew I had to drop down the whites and try my best to make all the actors look less pale. I attempted this but I feel some of the quality and detail on the shots may have been lost and at times the film looks almost sepia. I acted on the feedback as best I could with the time I had left by hopefully making everything in synch, levelling the sound and making sure there was no repeated action it the cuts.

One thing among many with editing that I still don’t feel confident about is exporting. I have notes about exportation and parameters for the export but I don't feel I really am confident with how to get the best useable export and then be able to put it on a video sharing site, which is necessary for the course. Another thing I feel I could have vastly improved on in this module was my time management. I am not the most organised person and editing seemed to be a field which forces you to be organised but over the run of the semester I put a disproportionate amount of work in between my modules and this one suffered.