Editing - Timelapse

 

Editing - The last few days

 in the last few days of our editing process we mainly focused on the soundtrack, titles, and colouration. One of the main ways that we establish tension in our sequence is our Soundtrack. for the soundtrack we asked a friend of ours (Luke) who takes music tech to compose a soundtrack for us. over the course of a few days we sat with Luke and discussed what we would like to do with the soundtrack. Once we decided on a vibe for the soundtrack we began composing it. the original song that we decided to use for the
soundtrack had to be changed due to copyright, so we went back to the drawing board and chose something different. Luke helped us add dynamics to the sound effects in out sound track and give it an ominous feel at the end with distortion. Our soundtrack builds tension by going from a simple homey jazz piano piece with the light sounds of a ticking clock, to a distorted combination of sounds, and at the end you are left only with the sounds of a clock ticking. The soundtrack establishes tension by going from a comfortable homey piece of music, which tricks the audience into thinking that its a lighthearted family movie, into a distorted collision of sounds that is unpleasant to the ear, as the narrative unravels. The titles were the next thing that we focussed on. For the titles we had to create a list of false names as we weren't encouraged to use our real ones for this project. once we had a list of names we began syncing them up to moments in the sequence. over the editing process we ran into a few errors when creating the titles, in our first draft the titles ran almost all the way through the sequence, which is distracting to the audience, meaning we needed to cut down and re-organize the titles. lastly we looked at the colouration of the sequence. we adjusted the colouration of some of the scenes to give them a dull looking hue to them, to give the audience the impression that they don't live in the most lavish of areas. 

How did we establish tension? in our sequence we decided that we were going to keep it very simple. in the first part of the sequence we showed a father and daughter innocently playing monopoly together and chatting. this gives the impression that this is a family movie, as it is set in a comfortable family home. however, when the father goes to make coffee and burns his hand you can tell there is something off about
the daughter by the blank stare on her face and the uncomfortable distortion that we put in the soundtrack. after the incident the narrative seemingly continues as the father sits down again to play with his daughter. when the camera pans around his back to reveal that there is no daughter there, we see a long shot of him supposedly 'talking to his daughter' while playing the game, and the soundtrack begins to collide more and more, instilling a deep sense of discomfort in the audience. the lack of information about the daughter leaves the audience wanting to know more about what happened, who is he? why did she disappear?.

Some of the things that i think my group and i should reflect on is our camerawork and time management. some of the shots that we did on the day of filming have little wobbles of the camera or tripod in them, which leads to a very shaky shot for us to edit. Due to the order that we filmed the shots in, we ran out of time and energy to film some of the important scenes in the sequence. However, this is nothing that we cant fix with a little more practice and planning beforehand. Overall i am very proud of the work that my group and I did on our opening sequence.

Editing - The first few days

 Once we finished the filming of our opening sequence. we moved on to editing it. 

on our first day of editing we watched all of the clips individually and picked out the ones that made

the final cut out of all of the takes. after this we began putting all of the clips together to create the first draft. since some of our shots were panning shots or focus pulls, we had to to quite a few takes for each. which meant reviewing the footage quite tedious at times. some of the shots however were easy to eliminate as they contained small mistakes that the wobbling of the camera or a mic in shot. even some of the final shots that we used has small mistakes like little wobbles. One of the most prominent mistakes that we made was not getting enough shots of the kitchen scene. since the kitchen scene was the last one that we filmed, the whole crew was tired. Meaning, that we only got two long shots in the kitchen, one at high angle and one at a lower angle. we didn't however get a close up shot of his hand, so we had to improvise without it 

after going over all of the clips we then began putting them all together to make the rough draft of the sequence, to see how long it would be. when we put all of our chosen clips together the title sequence was about 3:30 long which was a minute over the time limit that we were given, which means that we needed to cut all of the clips down, and eliminate the ones that were not completely necicairy to the narrative.

 one of the big decisions that we made was too cut out most of the extreme close up title shots that we recorded. we did this because they were taking up over a minute of time in our sequence. in our original concept we had the idea to open the sequence with shots of the board and hands playing on the board. however, this was not convenient to us while editing, so sadly most of them needed to be cut. 

Shoot day reflection

 Last Friday (March 4th) my group and I recorded our final draft of our opening title sequence.

our day started at 8:30 when we all met on campus, in our classroom and began to get all fo our equipment ready for transport to our location. at about 9:20 we left campus with all the equipment and made our way to Peaslake to set up and start shooting. 

once we got to our location (Peaslake house), we met up with Stu and his daughter Elodie and made our way up to his flat to begin setting up. 

Once we finished setting up at round 10:30,  Annie and I started practicing the first panning shot of the table. To do this, I operated the camera, while Annie helped be push the tripod so that we could pan around the table 

After we Practiced that shot enough we began filming at 10:40. the first shot that we did was the panning shot around the table. after we finished this we moved on to close ups of Elodie and Stu playing monopoly. for this we had to get them to create a set routine that they would perform on the board every time we did a separate take, this is so we can stitch all of the diffrent shots together and still have consistent movement and dialogue.

 We then began shooting scenes with dialogue between the father and daughter characters. For this we needed to plug in the mic and have someone hold the mic while shooting. 

After shooting these scenes we moved on to shooting extreme close ups of the monopoly board for the titles.  To do this we had to switch the lens to a zoom lens and switch out the tripod for one without wheels so that we could go lower to the ground.  for this we did shots that lasted a duration of 20 seconds so that the audience had time to read the titles (the shots will be cropped to appropriate lengthy during editing process). we also used pull focus so that we could use two items per shot as the focal point. we needed to film at least 10 title shots for this.

After this we then moved on to doing the main transition shot of the title sequence. for this we needed to move the tripod behind Stu and gradually move the camera behind his back while his daughter ducks underneath the table to create the illusion that she has disappeared. for this shot we first needed to practice the movement of the tripod with the same technique that we used when doing the first panning shot (Annie guiding the tripod and me guiding the camera)

for the final shot of the evening was the kitchen scene. in the kitchen scene we see the father character making coffee and then burning himself. this scene was one of the most difficult shots to get due to the amount of space in the kitchen that we had to use. since we could only fit about three people in Stu's kitchen since the tripod took so much space up, we all had to cram into a corner while shooting. 

Saul & Elaine Bass

 Who is Saul Bass?

Saul Bass is an American filmmaker and Graphic Designer. He is best known for his work in title sequence and Film posters. Some of his most prominent work being on movies such as 'The man with the golden arm' and 'Carmen Jones'. the movies 'Carmen Jones' was Bass' first big break in the industry, the team of filmmakers were so impressed with his work on the poster that they even invited him to produce the title sequence to the film. Saul Bass was then invited to work on the Otto Preminger film 'The man with the golden arm' where he took the tab-boo topic of drug abuse and made it the focus of the poster. This caused his name to blow up in the industry, leading him to work with names such as, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese. Before Bass the title sequences of movies were often overlooked as disengaging to the audience, and were often projected on to a curtain before the movie, the curtain would only open for the first scene of the movie. Bass made it his mission with his minimalistic yet detailed designs to create engaging title sequences for the audience. Because of this, the movies he worked on often came with a note too "pull curtains before titles"

 

Who is Elaine Bass?

Elaine Bass, the wife of Saul Bass was commonly looked over in the industry due to her husbands success. Previous to her marriage to Saul, Elaine had already created a name for herself, working in Graphic design for 'Capitol Records'. during her career at Capitol, she was offered a job as Saul Bass' assistant in 1955. from 1960's onwards, most of Saul Bass' design work was often made in collaboration with Elaine, however due too the prejudice against women at the time period, her name was often looked over. 

Analysing a title sequence: Carmen Jones

The movie Carmen Jones is a love story set in the deep south during WWII about a man named Joe who walls in love with a woman called Carmen (an adaptation of the Spanish set opera, 'Carmen'). 

In the opening title sequence we only see a singular image, that of a burning rose. A rose is a common metaphor or signifier of love or lust, therefore, the burning rose could signify that the love that will be found in the movie is not to last. the fact that this is the only imagery that is seen in the opening title sequence could mean that the love that they found was never true or that they could never truly be together, almost like the story of Romeo and Juliet. the opening title sequence is set to the non diegetic soundtrack of the original operas 'Carmen: Overture', which is a playful fast tempo pice of music. the tempo of the music, sounding almost circus or carnival like, this could mean that the characters in the move experience an almost playful type of love.  

the titles themselves are in white and fade in and out. the font on the titles are storybook like, which means that the movie is probably a fiction movie. 

Roles on our shoot

 Isabella - Director

what is the role of a director?

the role of the director is to manage all creative aspects of the production of a film, the director manages and guides the cast and crew to create their vision of what the shot should look like. 

Kate- Camera operator, Art director 

What is the role of the Camera operator?

the role of the camera operators role is to control and operate the camera, the are commonly known to work in tandem with sound and lighting director

The role of the art director or DOP (director of Photography) is too determine the look and feel of the film. they work closely with the director.

Annie- Editor 

Laura- Editor 

The role of the Editor is to manage the camera footage, graphics, sound to create the final product of the movie. they are seen in the post production of the film.