Silent Disco - Final Evaluation

The overall outcome of Silent Disco was good, and there are lots of strong points to take from it. That said there are lot of things to learn from and take in to my next films. I was pleased with my personal performance although there were some things i could have improved, and aim to in future productions.

Location research being the first. I was really happy with some of the locations i managed to find, including Hannahs bedroom for the first scene (as seen below). The main reason i chose this room was because of its length, with the idea of using pull focus's as mentioned in my earlier blog Shooting Day 1 - Thursday 3rd March 09. But also because it was a nice space, and a clear girls bedroom. The sound was difficult to get at points, but after editing I decided to cut the sound from the first scene completely as in the feedback we were told it wasnt ultimatly clear she was deaf. This works really well and is a strong intro to the film, especially combined with the deaf sound (which will I talk about later on).



But I feel like some of the others could have been a bit better. In particular the party scene. The room it's self and lay out were really good, but i feel like it was kind of let down by the amount of extras. After reading the script etc and planning, I think we were all under the impression it was going to be an actual party scene, rather than a gathering, so i went out with the intention of finding a big open plan down stairs to fit lots of people and fill out. So with that in mind i didn't really focus on the location of the fridge. I think a better location for this scene would have improved it a lot, one with the front room separate from the kitchen. We then would have less problems with light during the fridge scene as well. Also more extras would have made the scene look more authentic, but unfortinatly we were let down on the day or very near to it by the majority. Although i think I did a good job of making the party scene look lively, and we did well fo fill the space with the amount of extras we had. And the choice of music really speeds up the pace of this scene.

The party scene was amoung the hardest, and most tedious to film. On the second day of shooting we shot all day, with the fridge scene being the last. The original script had alot more fridge sentences than we decided to shoot on the day. This was mainly down to a lack of variety in the shots and we thought it would be better to be concice, than cause the scene to drag. As this was the last thing we filmed at the end of a long day everyone started to get tired and this attitude was quickly reflected in our work rate, and enthusiasm. After reviewing the footage, and the rough edit it was clear this scene needed to be reshot. This was a good decision and although not everyone could attend the footage was alot better that the first time round. It was also easier to make it better because myself and Ed were able to write up a list of shots we had missed, new ideas, and ultimatly things to get and we could learn from what we didn't do in the first place, and reviewing the footage. (this list can be found here)

The music for the Party scene was a track by Fred V. I think it was a good choice and fits the scene well. During the edit i contemplated EQ'ing the sound to make it as if it was in the room. I tryed it out and could get it sounding good by cutting out a large amount of the high and low frequencys, and adding slight reverb. But as I progressed in the edit i realised the sound from the scene its self wasnt great, and there were some points where the wild track wouldnt fit the image, especially the sweeping shot of the party because i wasnt able to follow with the boom so we didn't have a good sound recording for it. So i decided to scrap that and mute all the diagetic sound and just run the music as a soundtrack instead. I think this works well but after watching the finished edit back, i think its hard to tell whether the track is meant to be diagetic or non diagetic, due to the fact i used fades and cuts during deaf sounds etc. looking back i wish id just used the EQ'ing i constructed and used low quality sound for the scenes themselves, with the wild track laid over. After fiddling around with the cue points in the track and cutting it to fit, i was able to align the drop with the start of the sweeping shot. I feel this gives the party scene a lot of impact and i was really happy with its placement, regardless of how its EQ'd. The POV shot's were something we talked about in pre production and i was really keen on doing as it would really reinforce the fact shes deaf, and show the audience the world from her POV. I created the deaf sound using Logic Pro using a sign wave, playing a C# and pitching it up 3 semitones. The sound came out nicely and i was happy with how it accompanied the image. I originally was planning on using a low pass filter on the diagetic sound so that it came through out the deaf sound as dull, distant thuds. But after trying this it didnt really cut through in the audio mix, so collectively myself and Ed chose not to use it. Looking back i wish I'd spent longer doing this, and maybe played around with pusing up the gain to help it come through in the mix, as i think this would have added some depth to the POV shots instead of just hearing a ring.

Overall i was happy with the finished edit, and the way myself and Ed worked throughout. Dan's rough edit was a good basis to start doing a final edit and a plan the sound (a list of things I planned to do with the rough edit can be found here) From this i was able to amend and cut down the film, and also start to get an idea of sound and plan it with Ed. I Loosely cut the film down as much as i could without the re shoot footage, leaving enough space/time roughly judged from the first take's, to put it in after. The reshoot went really well, as there were a lot less people, and myself and Ed had had time to go away and think about shots and plan for it, and because we knew the space i think it made it easier. So it was alot more focused and not as much pressure to rush as there was before. The new footage fitted quite well and I thought i did a good job of merging the different shoots together. Looking back i wish we had made her speech more muffled and not so clear when she says 'im deaf'. Becasue in the current edit we know whats said, and it seems silly that he wouldnt either. Although the intention was to show him not understanding her, and then her showing him on the fridge. But in the current edit, it looks like she tells him twice. There were also issues with Chris's acting in response to this. It was overdramatic in both shoots and even after telling him plenty of times in the second shoot he continued to do so. This is something i really wish we had changed and done more and more takes until he got it right.

I was really happy with the groups performance and think we worked well as a team. Everyone carried out their roles well and supported each other through out. The main things i will take forward from this are: Lighting, this project has really highlighted to me lighting every scene possible is important, and is something I had underestimated until now. without decent lighting even a nicely framed, and exposed shot will be degraded. EQ'ing music or making a clear divide between it being diagetic and non diagetic, this is something i fell down on in this film in places, and will defiantly look to improve in the future. And also location research, In future I will aim to go to the locations with the director before hand to plan the shoot. Rather than turn up and think it all up on the spot. This was proven in the reshoot - because we both new the space already it was so much easier to plan ahead of the shoot. And if we had done this for every scene I'm certain the overall outcome would have been higher. I feel as if i have leant a lot from the 2 films on this module, working in slightly bigger groups means you've got to work harder for your team as well as your self and I aim to take forward all these points in to my 3rd year.

Here is the finished edit:

Work Placement - Paint Works

Wednesday

I arrived at 9:45 and met danny at 10, we spoke about my interests and experience to try and sort out some work I could do. I was set the task of writing a guide to filming a skateboarding film. It had to include techniques and equipment used, as well as health and safety precautions. So i started on this straight away until 11 when some of the students arrived. Danny asked them if there was anything i could help them with, and there was a project that needed to be captured and edited. It was a political debate at BSU. I then spent the day capturing the tapes on 2 different computers, whilst working on the written project in between.

Thursday

Started the day by carrying on with research on skate project, and writing it up. I worked on that untill lunch, came back after lunch and finished it off, and then went through it with Danny, he was impressed with it and said it was going to be put in to a file at Paintworks for anyone interested in making a skateboarding film. After this i started on the political debate, but there was problems with the footage being from 2 different computers so some of the clips were named the same, so i had to spend the whole afternoon renaming them, and deleting all the clips that had copied them selves. It took ages and was really tedious but it was kind of my fault. One of the students set up the other computer for me so i just assumed it would have been done properly.

Friday

Arrived at 9:45, but Danny wasn't in till 11. So I spent the morning talking to some of the students and looking through their work, I was also involved in the production meeting for their showcase event. It was really productive and anything i wanted to know i found out. This was one of the best things about going to Paintwork's, and made up for the fact i didn't really have much to do whilst I was there. In the afternoon myself and Danny tried to get the multiclip going but it wasn't happening. There were to many issues with the footage and tapes and Danny told me not to worry about it.

Tuesday

I filmed with danny at Newton park for the Future Fairs, a day of talks about different subjects and ways of getting in their respective industries after uni. I arrived at 8am to meet Danny, Although he was 30mins late so we didn't have much time to prepare. It was a good experience because we had to set up really quickly, in front of lots of people. It was high pressure but i carried out my tasks well - Setting up camera's, tripods, tapes, batteries, and wiring up the mics. We had to film 3 1 hour talks in a row, and only had 4-5 mins between each one to change the tapes and get ready for the next one. For the first 2 I was on camera, responsible for getting close ups of who ever was talking, and for the last one i was on sound. It was a very useful experience and Danny was a great help, I just made sure to ask lots of questions where ever I was unsure and i was really happy with how i worked.

Media Event - Write up and evaluation of the Day

Looking back on the day there wasn't really anything that went wrong from a personal point of view. And overall the day seemed to run pretty smoothly. I arrived at 7:45 and went straight to the stores to meet Leila, where we waited for her so we could get the kit, and move it to the correct rooms. Once all the kit had been put in the rooms i went over to the big draw room to set up the cameras and make sure they were all in the correct format etc (VGA not Jpeg, as VGA is a smaller file size, therefor easier/quicker to edit/export, and even though this obviously means a loss in quality per frame, when running at 6FPS or higher it isn't going to make a noticeable difference). I then spoke to Chloe and the guys doing the shoot out about bringing over the tapes, and organised who was going to, That was the last thing i needed to check on before heading over to the main house to welcome the students and watch the introductions.

The students arrived around 20 minutes late which i think somewhat rushed the introductions, but alas Chloe's intro went well and the 'Epic Intro video' followed. This didn't go down as well as i think the majority of us would have liked, receiving very few laughs. Although at the same time they had only just come through the doors so we shouldn't really have expected much more from them. But the video its self i was really happy with, i think regardless of its reception, it did the job of breaking the ice and showed the students we were up for a laugh, which may have eased them in to the upcoming activities. I left soon after the Introductions to stock up on food for lunch as i was going to be editing for the majority of the day.

During the first activities I floated between the rooms and tried to get a look at each activity in progress, spending slightly more time at the shoot out to try and make the edit easier and quicker by having some idea of the shots captured. Once the first activities were nearing a close i made my way to the big draw and waited for the SD cards, which i then ran over to the gatehouse to start editing. The editing process panned out really well overall, and i was able to edit the stop motions really quickly using Quicktime 7. Which meant that by the time Ross had ran over the shoot out tapes, i was almost finished with the stop motions. So i just started logging and capturing the shoot out whilst i finished exporting the Big Draw's. The Shoot out edits were relatively easy, and mostly just a case of finding the best take from each shot, and putting it on to the timeline, however there were a few cases where it was slightly more challenging than this. for example the first group i edited had done all there shots, and then gone back and filmed close ups at the end, so it wasn't all in chronological order. Another issue was continuity in some of the takes, but we just had to disregard this and work with what we had. Another thing that really added to the finished product was gun noises, and the theme tune from 'The Good the Bad and the Ugly' Which Mike was able to find. We quickly dropped this in to each edit and edited the gun noises to sync with the action.



I repeated this process 3 times, as the footage came through from the more recent groups. On the last Shoot out we were under quite a lot of pressure to get it finished, and as Tom was finished with filming the shoot outs, he came over to help. This was great as he was able to edit together the last shoot out, while myself and James exported the ones we had already edited. This also gave me a chance to put everything we had edited that day on to Tim's (the students lecturer) memory stick so he could distribute it to the students once they were back at college. I think although this wasn't planned in advance, it helped us out as it saved time, and if we had had to transfer all the projects on to individual memory keys we might have over ran.

Once we'd exported all the media we ran over to catch the guest speakers, who were very inspiring and just as helpful to us as the students. Once they were finished we showed what we had edited on a projector. The footage came out alot darker through the projector, and looking back i wish we had done a test run to discover this. Although it looked fine on the monitors in the edit suite, and im sure it will when they review it at home. The day ended with a fake graduation for the students, which i think went really well, there were a lot of laughs, and this gave the students a chance to mingle with us and the guest speakers. I think this was a really good relaxed way to end and tie up a really enjoyable day.

I was really pleased overall with my groups performance on the day, everyone knew their own roles, and was at hand to support each other where needed. James did a really good job of leading the group and his general attitude on the day was reassuring, it also made doing my own job easier. I was very happy with my role on the day and thought i executed my jobs to the best of my ability.

Media Event - The Big Draw edit

After doing some research and speaking to Mike Johnston, i found a simple, time efficient way of editing the Big Draw pictures. Using Quick time 7 you are able to compile a stop motion timeline quickly and simply. As the photos taken on the camera are ordered sequentially, Quick time can recognise this and from just clicking on the image labelled '1' it will then put them together in order. All you have to do is then set the frame rate. This may have to be longer or shorter for different groups depending on how many pictures they take.

Media Event - Wed 6th April - Run Through!

Full day practice
(6th April Wednesday)
11:00 – 12:00 NA.GO3
12:00 – 13:00 NA.GO2
14:00 – 15:00 NA.GO1

Ive been in contact with Pat, and we've been discussing using a programme called Istopmotion. Which basically allows you to take photos on the camera, and they will instantly be put on to the timeline, which saves the hassle of having to import them all from the camera and arrange them yourself. The only problem with this is we are using 2 cameras per shoot, and we are not sure whether you are able to run 2 separate tracks along side each other. Which might cause problems when trying to bring it all together.

Although we will only really know after the run through. I think its good that were doing a full day run through because it will mean we've all got to do our jobs to the same time scale as we will on the day, so any errors or improvements that need to be made to the activites/structure of the day should quickly become apparent.

Media Event - 1st April

Today we shot most of the footage for the intro video, it was fun coming up with things for everyone to do and there were some really funny sequences. We have decided to try and edit together what we've got at some point over the weekend or early next week. For music I've got access to some produced by friends, who have given me permission so I've got their stuff as an option.

For the Big Draw we did a quick run through, and it took between 25-30 mins to draw a big picture with one person drawing, so hopefully if we just give them a slightly bigger area than that, with 6/7 of them it (fingers crossed) should be okay. Brad mentioned a programme that you can run the camera directly into, and it logs all the pictures straight on to the timeline for you, this would be good for what we need to do, although the problem i can see is that we are running 2 cameras per draw. So unless the programme can run 2 tracks for separate cameras, there isn't much point using it. Because were the using an extra programme, and we will still have to transfer the pictures from the other camera, so there is more potential room for error.

Im meeting with Pat next week to log the pictures and get a time for roughly how long its going to take to: Import the photos>compile them on the timeline>Burn or transfer. Although after looking at the days schedule and trying out the exercise, i feel a bit more comfortable with it and I'm sure(if everything goes well with Pat next week) we should be fine on the day. I think that the fact the groups are doing it at different times means the footage will be coming through staggered, which means i can set up 3 comps and work on them all at the same time as there each in different stages of the process.

Media Event - Introduction Video

An introduction video was suggested a few weeks ago on the facebook group, and after goood feed back from the majority we have decided to make one! The aim of the video is to create an over exaggerated video, to introduce ourselves to the students, and by making our selves look stupid/ look like we can have a laugh, we will hopefully make them feel more at ease. it is also a chance to show them what we can do and the standard of our abilities.

After hearing about the idea, i instantly thought of the 'Jackass' movie intro's. They use slow motion and freeze frames to capture the characters doing stupid things, and it works really well!





Our take on it is going to be more media focused than the examples above, although using the same editorial concepts. So for example we might have someone turn round holding a boom mic, to face the camera and pose in slow motion. Or have someone catch their finger in a clapper and cry in slow motion. The aim is to be funny, and to entertain them, much like the videos above do.
We are meeting on thursday (30th March) as we are all in uni, to sort out a plan, to film it, and are aiming to have it edited by early next week.